Somehow my entire tribe got erased! I went to start my game to check on my people and it's ALL GONE! I can't even find a saved game file in my VV2 folder.

I'm not even going to bother to restart. I was just two pebbles away from having all four collections. I just don't have the spirit to do it.

I don't understand. It was working fine when I opened it a 5 am today. But an hour later - it was all gone. No more tribe Phantom. Not even the options I had set up. *sobs* All gone.

Bad luck, Jami! I feel for you.

You won't find the savegame file in the VV2 program folder. It should be (assuming you are running Windows)under My Documents > LDW > Virtual Villagers - The Lost Children (assuming the BigFish version; other suppliers will be similar). Is it possible that you were doing some computer 'housekeeping' and accidentally moved the folder/s? You might try searching your hard disk for files with the *.ldw extension. There should also be a file named ldwlog.txt - you could try searching for that, too.

where did you buy the program from?

I lost a village once when my hard drive was full -- I didn't realize there was no more space left (another app. was using drive space as virtual memory), so VV couldn't save the game when it quit. When I reopened the game, that slot was empty.

Guessing that this might happen anytime the game can't save when it quits (so for me, no space; for someone else, maybe the folder got deleted, or they don't have permission to write to it, etc.)

Don't know if that helps, since I have a Mac :), but could luck finding your game!

-- Jen

The most I did was reboot - after closing the game - because my computer was having "issues" (lots of mini-freezes) while running the game. I didn't move or delete anything.

Oh yeah, in answer to the question above I bought it from PlayFirst.

Well dont feel too bad. I had two games disappear on me too. I can't remember where I bought the game from but I had the same thing happen to me too and I can't for the life of me figure out why.

Did you find your saved game files in the C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\My Documents\LDW\Virtual Villagers - The Lost Children folder? If you did.. a trick I used once when my game went wonky/missing my village:

copy the saved game files to a safe location.

Uninstall and then re-install the game from your .exe (I save all mine from all my games ... goes back to my dial-up days) ;-).

Start the game but don't create any new villages.. just quit ASAP.

Then move the saved game files back into the C:\Documents and Settings\Your User Name\My Documents\LDW\Virtual Villagers - The Lost Children folder.

Start the game up again.

Hopefully your village(s) will be back.

My game came from Big Fish and when I do the re-install it doesn't require the unlock code (except for the very first install, of course).

~misty

I found it - and it's got - nothing. Nada. It's got absolutely no information about my former tribe. It doesn't even have a tribe in it. Just the information about my opening the game. It's all gone. And I was just TWO pebbles away! *sighs*

Did you try loading the backup file? You can see more detail of how to do that in this post.

I don't have a backup file. I never had problems with VV1 so I never bothered to backup VV2. There's three files there in the VV2 folder - Isola20.ldw Isola21.ldw Isola221.ldw and the game log which has absolutely nothing in it but a log of my opening the game.

What I don't get is why it all reset itself. All I did was close the game as normal when it kept hiccuping, rebooted my computer cause it was slow, then went online for awhile and an hour later, opened the game to find it all gone. I didn't even do so much as defrag. I didn't open any folders to delete anything. If I knew why it happened I might restart my game, but right now I'm too upset because I was so dang close to having all the collections. It's really discouraging.

Isola221.ldw is your backup. Try this:

• rename isola21.ldw to something else, like isola21.ldw.bak;
• rename isola221.ldw to isola21.ldw;
• start the game.

If you are lucky the old game will load. If not, carry out the above process in reverse to get back to where you were.

Jami, it's likely that your file didn't get deleted, but became corrupted when you started having problems with your computer. If the game encounters a corrupted savegame file, it will not be able to load it and will treat it as if there is no game in that slot. Arnie's suggestion is what I was referring to in my earlier post, but if you've run your game several times since then, it may be too late.

I haven't run the game at all. I opened it once to find the game gone, and a second time to see if rebooting fixed the problem. However when the music played I exited. I always turn game music off (no matter what game it is, the music tends to annoy me) so that was my clue it hadn't been fixed. I never once hit "play."

Edit: It worked! Thanks Arnie.

Sorry, I'm kind of dense and need things explained to me in a very much as "For Dummies" way. You should see me trying to figure out my DNA results from National Geographic's Genographic Project. I really can't understand much about them at all.

So you're saying that the backup savegame won't load, either?

I didn't know that 221 was the backup game. *blushes* I'm just not very bright.

Great! What's important is that we got there in the end. Glad to have helped.

Now if only those last two pebbles would show up! *sighs* Pebbles seem to show up the least.

Any news on the patch?