I'm pretty well uneducated when it comes to computers, so apologies if this is a stupid question.

I know the simulation doesn't end when I shut the program down. But is it constantly running in the background, or does the computer calculate everything that would have happened while the game was off when you turn it back on (hence my little issue with 48 4 year olds)?

My computer has been running really choppy lately, and I am trying to nail down the culprit.

Also-is there any way to disable the shoutbox, I know that is slowing this site up for me tremndously.

Thanks

I'm not sure how much usage it takes up, but one thing you could try is press al+ctr+del and click on processes. It should list any program taking up a lot of the CPU... good luck

The program shuts down when you close it. When it is restarted it checks your system clock and calculates what would have happened while the game was off, as you suggested. It does not stay in memory. I know that VV is written so that if your machine is having problems with high memory usage, VV will give up some of the memory it uses so that you might see it running slowly if another application is being a hog.

First of all Deejay, there is no need to apologize. These forums are here to help you get your questions answered.

Second - Arnie is exactly right. The game does shut completely down when you turn it off, and when you open it, it calculated everything that *should* have happened in the time that passed while it was closed - which is why you will end up with 48 4 year olds. The game determines how many children should have been born, and spawns them all at the same time.

If you cannot check on your game frequently, I suggest running it on 1/2 speed, to help reduce the effect on your village.

VV defers to other programs running on the computer, that is very true. When you are running several programs, VV will sometimes appear choppy because of this.

As far as I know, there is no way to disable the shoutbox.

I will have to keep looking elsewhere to figure out who the system hog is then.

Thanks for your help.

I do run on half speed when I close up. Reduces the chance, I've found, of waking to a dead village.

Oh, and Deejay ... Some bunny been busy! :P Seriously, I posted a few months ago that the same happened to me in a way -- and I check my villagers every day, and keep it on 1/2 time: I went to bed with 32 youngsters, and the next day found out I had 72, mostly 4 year olds. There was SO many kids, that when I went to have them "go to school" and line up the way they do, there were far too many to line up, and they stretched all the way to the shore, standing where they could, with alot of those out there just running around in place LOL. I posted it somewhere on here that I wondered if I had broken a record or something for the most children at the same time LOL!!

72 children! What a lot of mouths for the poor farmers to breed!

If you are having issues with your computer running sluggish the best answer so far is to use ctrl+alt+del and click on the processes tab. sort by processor usage by clicking on the tab at the top of the numbers. You will see numbers between 0-99 whichever one takes the most is your hog. You can then trace from there to what that exe is running.

Aside from that never hurts to run a adware spyware scan and a trojan detector like a squred.

You can check your startup items by going to start, run, typing msconfig, and clicking on the startup tab. Just dont tamper with anything you dont know how to use. In the startup tab simply unchecking things will let you turn them off so they dont start next time you reboot your system.