Hi--not in a good mood now, thanks to Virtual Town.

I was tracking the elusive Black Widow Spider, and had located one up against the eastern rock wall on the other side of the river. I brought my mayor up to the left side of the screen and armed her with the net--at which point the spider just vanished in a blink. It didn't run off, it didn't wiggle around, it didn't fade--it just blinked out. The mayor was far enough away that it shouldn't have triggered the "run away" logic on that spider.

So here's my take: in order to keep a player interested and playing, the game actually has to behave in a way that's predictable. It doesn't have to be "fair" in the sense that eight-year-olds use that word, but it does have to be fair in terms of behaving consistently once expectations have been set. Having that spider just up and vanish breaks a contract of faith between the game and the player. Even though the version number of the game is sub-1.0, it still isn't characterized as a pre-release or a beta version, so I can't reasonably posit that this is some software defect that just hasn't been worked out yet. (Or, to look at it another way, how did that defect get into the field if I'm not actively playing a pre-release or beta version?)

I'm willing to overlook that the "what happened to the old mayor?" plot hasn't moved forward since I bought the game originally, and that the only "update" I've seen involved putting in an ad-watching-for-rewards theater, but the 30-year-experienced software developer in me winces and makes rude gestures when the game violates my trust like it did with the spider this morning.

Hi Brook
About the spider,
When bugs spawn in this game, they won't hang around in map forever. they have to vanish after sometime. because it has to be a challenge to catch a bug. But i think the problem is they don't always vanish in "acceptable" ways. sometimes they vanish through holes in town, which is very acceptable. but they are not always close to a hole. so it makes problems sometimes. I beleive they will find an appropriate way to correct that.

And about the content updates, Barbara last informed us in this this post about their work. I'm assuming it will take a while until next update comes out since they are really small company. They are not only working on Virtual Town, but they are also working for Virtual families 3. Their amount of coders, designers etc. are really minimal as you can see here .
This is why they can't always keep things on track, but i bet this game will be awesome, it just needs a little time.

And also, if you are new to LDW, i highly recommend you to play Virtual Villagers series. After they had their starting with FT and PT, VV was the big time back in 2006.
If you looking something to enjoy until Virtual Town update comes, you may try Virtual Vİllagers, it ROCKS

If you see a bug (especially a spider or beetle, but also others) moving toward a fence line or a boundary of some sort, be prepared to see them disappear. In the Northern Lands, they also sometimes go behind trees and disappear.

If bugs (especially caterpillars, centipedes, banana slugs, termites, earwigs, worms) are moving toward the central river they will sometimes just congregate on the bank, but I've seen spiders vanish there as well.

Good luck with the black widow. I keep a couple of them in storage because they can be really tricky to catch. Not only do they vanish (I assume into a hole in the ground?) but if you sneak up on them you need to be quick with the net because they're runners.

I hate it when you equip your net to catch something, some idiot townie or your adopted kid comes up and it unequips, and it instantly scares the bug away.
Also, sometimes I hit the net to equip it, it doesn't, and it scares the bug away before I notice it didn't equip.
The tarantula is REALLY easily frightened, it runs away even if your net is equipped.

I have also been to that point Brook. Only I yell obscenities at the mayor (or townie or kid). Getting the mayor to dig where you want them to is almost impossible sometimes. And forget being able to see behind trees!

For trees, I do one of three things.

1) Zoom way out, so the landscape essentially becomes a plat. That doesn't help sometimes, so I

2) Zoom all the way in (tap on the mayor's headshot to cycle through three views). Occasionally neither of these work well enough, so I

3) Chop down the tree.

Thanks! I didn't know about taking their pic to get the different angles!