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.