Hi folks. I was away for the weekend and forgot to pause my games. I know some of my peeps will have died having lived "unfulfilled" lives, too late to have children, etc. How do I roll back my families to when I last closed the game 3 days ago?

Depending on when your backup files saved, the information in this post may help you.

Thanks Heather. I do have my back-up files...the files are currently dated 2-3 days ago, but the date stamp for the current and back-up are the same.. Do I open the games, then exit and then replace them with the back-up files? This is what I need to know....
thanks

Unfortunately, if you didn't pause your game, I don't think there's much you can do. You can try to back it up by keeping the game closed, and replacing the appropriate game file, but I believe that the game will take the additional time into effect and your end results will be the same, but it won't hurt to try.

Also, it would help to know if the backup files you have are the ones automatically created by the game, or ones you made yourself. This could be an important factor on whether or not the game can be restored to a previous state.

I saved some of my games from an earlier version and at the time didn't know that they should be paused. I don't know how old they were, but you know when we were playing version 02. Recently I decided to try them out, and all my peeps were alive. They were sick, their houses were nasty, I got this email about feeling neglected..Lol. But they're all living. There's still hope Reirecc.

These are copies of the original ones made by the game.....is that better or worse?

OK....I will open the games now and hope/pray for the best! I'll let you know how it turns out!

The copies made by the game will be overwritten every 10 or so minutes that you have the game open, and if you closed it 2-3 days ago it saves that information and calculates how much time you were gone in both the original save files and the backups so this is not good.

If you had a backup from 2-3 days ago that you saved for yourself elsewhere, you could've used this to return to the state they were in 2-3 days ago.

Well, you can try them, Reirecc, but that means that the backup files were not paused (which means what I said above - the game will take the time passage from 2 days ago into effect, and your end result will quite possibly be the same). There's no harm in trying, but the easiest way to do that in the future is to make your own (paused) backup files as listed in the procedures I showed you.

Yes...it all now makes perfect sense now..... I will go ahead and see how it pans out. Thanks for your input!

Lyssaria, they are saved in a separate file, but they were not taken after a pause, so, according to Heather, the program will still update them to real time. Anyway, I will go ahead....I do have to open the games SOMETIME! LOL!

Yes, the copies I was talking about were the separate files, they are backups of the original which get updated around the same time as the original. Basically, if your family was in slot 1, the original is Virtual Families1.ldw and the copy would be Virtual Families21.ldw

Like I said, it'll calculate how long you were gone and update it according to that time Only way avoiding this is having your own folder with the files to keep backed up in case something goes wrong like this. I don't think your personal backup copy needs to be paused, you'd just lose the progress that was made since the time you made your own backup.

The personal backup copy does need to be paused, or else the game will adjust time passage just like the regular backups

Really? I guess that does make sense! I've only used the backups for short-term things.. this information really is crucial, thanks Xay

Now I know why the backups topic requires you to pause the game!

Good luck Reirecc. I have my fingers crossed for you.

My families are all OK!! What I did was open game #1, saw the parents waving their deathwave, paused the game, then did Alt-F4; replaced the new file with the old one....reopened game...parents were 50 years old and happy! I did this for each game and it worked. I am estatic!!!
Thanks to all who helped with advice as well as words of comfort....it is very appreciated.

YES!!!!! That is FANTASTIC news Reirecc! I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO happy for you and your little families!

I'm really glad for you Reirecc. It would have been so hard to lose all your little families.

Congrats Reirecc! When it comes to what happened technically I have no idea, but I'm so glad everything worked out for you!

I'm running Version 5, having done the incremental upgrades from Version 1. Strange things have happened in my games. The strangest was something that is NOT supposed to happen. In one family I had the parents have four children, get "old", and the wife died. The husband got a marraige proposal (surpise) which I accepted and when I checked the Family Tree I saw that he had disappeared, and was replaced with the new wife, who then appeared as the father/mother of the children! They now officially are the product of 2 moms!!!
I'll post the image in a follow-up email...got to figure out how to upload the image.

Where did you purchase your game? Depending on the company, it could've done something different to the game that makes certain things happen that aren't supposed to happen.

I know that they're not supposed to remarry if they already had children for that reason!

I bought my game from Big Fish Games and this copy is known to produce game "ghosts" where you can get the dying peeps to come back as ghosts.

I got my game from here, www.ldw.com. I still ocassionally get "ghost"s and every now and then, various strange things....It just makes the game more interesting in my opinion.

That it does! I guess some weird things happen depending on how you update the game. I do prefer having the ghosts around if I choose to bring them out!

I'd hate to replace the mother of the children on the family tree though, that's pretty sad

Wow, that is strange Reirecc. I've never had anything that strange happen in my games. I'm glad 'cause I don't think I'd like something like that to happen in one of them.

Here is a screenshot of my "Two Mommies" Family Tree. As you can see Adrila was born into the family, she married (I can't recall his name now and there are no notes of it) and had 3 children. After she died at age 61, her hubby got a marraige proposal...I accepted, and he was deleted as Adrila's husband and his second wife (Jessette) was put there instead. He and Jessette had no children together...too old!

Oh wow, I see what you mean now.. I thought Adrila was replaced by Jessette on the tree! That's a really bizarre bug.. it's too bad because you lost the husband on there completely since he wasn't born into the family.