Bug reporting

I found what I believe to be a bug in this game. I started the game with one of the villagers a parent, one with a baby. However, as I kept playing, the time left with the baby would remain on 246 minutes, even after an hour of playing on normal.

This only happened with the villagers who started out a parent with a baby. Having a baby after you have started the game works normal with time.

Edit: I run Windows XP.

If you pause the game alot to get collectable it can mess with the timers. Leave it unpaused for awhile and it should fix it

I played for an hour without leaving the game, the villager who started out a parent with a baby, the timer would still remain on 246 minuts. So pausing/unpausing did not make a difference

It's not quite a bug, but I think it should be fixed:
-In collection screen, there are bunch of wrong pixels which isn't look cool. Do you need a screenshot or you already noticed it?

OS: Windows 7.

I don't see any missing pixels when I play.

Ok, time for screenshot.

I see what you're seeing it might be just your PC. I'll have to look at mine again

I see those on my collection screen as well.

Btw, same thing in Mausoleum screen...and there it's even worse..so yeah..

TorNis, maybe I'm confused, but I think the reason that the collectable shots look like they do is because you don't have all of them. I've gotten all of the mausoleum collectables and the picture looks clear then. When the collectables come, it makes the pictures more complete

I just looked at mine and my pixels are messed up too. I can't imagine it being because it is incomplete as the pixels are that of primary colours.

the mushrooms which show up around the tree aren't (most of the time not) visisble only few sparks and when you drop a kid on it it picks up a mushroom.

I thought it was like that because the mushrooms were growing in the deep, dark crevices in the roots of the tree.

Same here

that can it be too, but sometimes i see the bottom and not the top of the mushroom Maybe it is just the tree standing in the way

I think that something strange happened to me. I put adult villager on broken fishing Piers, and he worked some half an hour but construction progress was not shown. Then I closed the game, and left some 15 minutes. When I launched the game broken Piers were still broken and looked as if nothing is done. Now I can't put my villager to work on broken piers. He is "confused" and nothing more.. Why? Is it supposed to be like that or what?

Did you watch to make sure that your villager was actually succeeding at the construction tasks? Did scaffolding ever appear on the piers? Could you post a screen shot of your piers now? If you don't know how to do that, you can see procedures in this post.

Hi LadyCFII, thank you for your quick response. Yes, scaffolding was there. Tiko was walking from piers to pile of wood then back again to piers.. He became trainee builder on those piers.. Here's screen shot of piers now:

Shakle, completing the piers puzzle is a two part process.

Thanks for the explanation QickStorm.. The problem is that the Tiko already worked on the piers and worked successfully, but then the whole progress has disappeared. Now I'm finishing clothing hut and I hope that piers will be available for work

The whole progress hasn't disappeared. The piers do not have holes in them anymore.

If your talking about the percentage of what has been completed or needs to be completed; there isn't one for the piers. While other building projects do have completion bars, this one does not.

That explains everything! I wondered why the percentage of what has been completed is not displayed! Lol! Thanks!

Collections:
I keep collecting what I see as fish-scales by the fish sometimes
but more times then not the kids take it to the research area but it never shows up as something the scientist needs! Why are they taking the scales there and not the fish..

They are duplicates of ones you've already collected. All duplicate collectibles are taken to the lab and turned into tech points.

When I turn the game back on its as if my villagers haven't made any progress...the debris was at 37% when I turned it off. When I turned it back on it was at 36%. I've been off it for at least half a hour. So I'm thinking this is a bug?

Yesterday when i bought the game i noticed a few small issues, I had several collectibles and I quit the game and then came back, but when i looked at my research collectible, 2 were missing, but after quitting and getting back in they were there again ? not sure if this is a bug..... And also I completed the stream and a message popped up saying congratulations but when I went back in the same puzzle message popped back up ......

Elegie, since they're clearing the debris, it's supposed to go down. The number you see is the percentage of blockage, not the amount cleared.

I also started out with a nursing mother and everything in my game is running/working GREAT! I have an iMac, OS X Version 10.4.11

Fabulous job Arthur Carla and everyone at LDW.

I have been playing all day and only 2 of my villagers out of 4 adults are "masters" they have all been working on their individual jobs since the beginning. I have 2 people working as builders 1 is master the other is still adept. I am not sure if this is a bug or not. Both builders had skill to start off with. And my farmer is still adept. I have played all the VV series, and dont remember it taking this long to become a master.

I'm seeing the pixels in the collections screen that some of the others were talking about as well

I had cleared the rubble from the stream. After awhile it build back up. When it hit 76% the water around the tree dissapeared, but there where lines around the tree. They extended out past the water channel. At 75% all was good. This happened twice at 76% and above.

Looked cool to tell the truth. like the planet Saturns rings.

~Jamie

The only bug I've encountered so far is :


Also, you cannot "alt tab"
Whenever I alt tab to get to my desktop to check my email or anything, the game will not come back up when I hit it to bring it back up.
It comes up for a split second and then falls back down to the taskbar.
I have to restart the game every day I want to minimize the game for a few minutes.

Other than that, everything else has been running smoothly.

Has anyone else has these problems?

The game is great though. I love the new features.

This isn't a bug. Once the obstruction is above 75%, the flow of water is reduced, so there is less water flowing through the stream beds. Once the obstruction is above 95%, the water is only a trickle, and the waterfall comes back.

NM, the issue seemed to resolve itself 5 minutes after I posted this. Power of posting

RoseRed, do you get a crash message when when the game crashes (an access violation message, perhaps)? It helps us tremendously to have as much detail about a crash as possible.

Also, the issue you're having with not being able to Alt-tab while running VV4 full screen could be caused by some conflict with Firefox. If you use Firefox, try closing it and see if that resolves the issue. We're still looking at this.

Not a bug, just something funny I noticed. A mother that carries a child... if you grab her and hold her over the ocean, the baby will dissapear, and by dragging her back over land, the baby re-appears

Yeah, that's the same as in earlier versions of VV.

Umm yeah I know. Thats not the issue. The issue is the graphics arn't right. Wow. After work I will try to take a piture of it.

~Jamie

This is the error message I get:

error: Access Violation at 0x0041D000 (tried to read from 0x2977E0C0)program terminated.



And yes, I use firefox.

OK - we'll have a look at the crash. Did closing Firefox help with the other issue?

Yes it did! I just now tried it and I can alt tab and bring the game back up immediately if Firefox is not open.

When I have the game minimized, it is usually to check my email, which I use Firefox to open up.

No biggie though. It'll just be a matter of remembering to close out the browser before I maximize the game again

The VV games are great fun. I've always enjoyed them.

Thanks for looking into the crash issue.
Having a good time with the game nonetheless

Okay, I'm not sure which thing did it.

I made sure Firefox was closed before turning my game back on, so it could be that the game was crashing during puzzle #10 (crabs) OR it could be this:

I was hitting the space bar to pause the game: Spoiler below



So either having Firefox off did the trick or not pausing did it.

Either way...I finally got that one

That's interesting. I'll see if I can reproduce this (since you're done with that puzzle).

I had the same thing as RoseRed which is why I came here Glad to see what the issue is. I have my Firefox open as well. It happened just like RoseRed though...trying to do the same thing she was doing.

Here is the picture.



I use Windows Vista.

XPS M1530
Intel(R) Core(TM) Dou CPU T9300
2.50GHz
4GB ram
Video card NVIDIA GeForce8600M GT

~Jamie

Jamie, have you modified any of the game's files?

No.

~Jamie

Would you mind checking Vista's VirtualStore to see if there are VV4-related files in there? The VirtualStore is a hidden folder, so you will need to change the folder view options to allow you to see VirtualStore. To do that:

1. Open Control Panel
2. Type "folder options" in the search field in the upper right of the window
3. Click on the Folder Options icon
4. Click the View tab
5. Click the radio button next to "Show hidden files and folders"
6. Click Apply

Now that you have the ability to view hidden files and folders, you can look at what's in VirtualStore. To see that folder, do the following:

1. Click Start
2. Click Computer
3. Open Users
4. Open the folder for your user name
5. Open AppData
6. Open Local
7. Open VirtualStore

If you see any files in VirtualStore that are VV4-related images, you can safely delete those and see if that corrects the issue you're having.

Nothing in there VV4-related. I checked ever folder. Any other advise? Should I reinstall? I would hate to lose my progress.

~Jamie

P.S. Thanks for the quick responses!

Something is not right with your game. Those images aren't even aligned with the map. You can back up your savegame files before reinstalling, as a precaution, by following the procedures here. Then completely uninstall VV4 (click Start, then Virtual Villagers - The Tree of Life, then Uninstall), then reinstall the game from the free trial. It will remain activated, and it should load your existing games in progress. If not, you can restore your savegames from the backup you made.

I reinstaled the game. You were right. My saved games worked just fine. I will let the junk in the stream build back up, and see if it works. I will let you know.

Thanks for your time.

~Jamie

Thanks. Please let us now how it turns out.

Okay. That worked. Thanks again for your time.

~Jamie

RoseRed, the information you provided about dropping the villagers with the game paused was the critical clue to find the cause of that crash. Thanks for being so thorough with your description!

You're welcome

Glad it got figured out. You and your team are very quick about fixing bugs and other issues, as well as answering questions in such a timely manner!

Well I have read every post in this thread and see no answer and I would like to have one. When I got the game I chose one nursing mother. 12 hours into the game she still hadn't had toddler and still had over an hour to go. After reading here I started a second tribe with 2 nursing mothers. one child and 2 males. I got them a good supply of food in this tribe I haven't gone to solve puzzles or collectibles as I don't intend to keep it. I run the game on its fastest speed this one I have not paused at all not even when I log off at night. It has been running close to 48 hours and my nursing mothers are at 107 minutes and 102 min respectively. In my first tribe where I have used pause for various reasons and of course because I don't want to miss anything. It has actually only run about 18hrs longer than the 2nd one. The point is my nursing mother in this one has finally dropped down to 37 minutes but has been there for the last 5 hrs. So what I am asking what is the solution. Unless I missed it I have seen no one answer this. I am running Vista. I like the idea of one nursing mother but it it is going to take forever to get a toddler there is no point.

I'm not having this issue, but I do know one thing that causes it, are you pausing frequently to pick up collectables or shrooms? I've known this to cause the problem

Quickstorm this is the bug reporting thread. Look at older posts

Thanks, Havoria. I was really having a blonde senior moment.

Hi Skipper45mn. When I was playing VV3, I posted the exact same question. It's not a glitch, it's about the count down timer. Here's Arnie's answer from way back in '08.

In my opinion, I don't believe you gain anything by changing the game speed.
I hope this is of help to you?
Thanks, again to, Arnie.

skipper45mn does say that the game has not been paused at all though, swedane, and anyway the time period of 12 + hours seems to be more than could be accounted for by occasional pausing to pick up collectibles, etc. The only thing I can think of is that there's a problem with the system clock, or skipper45mn has been 'time travelling', which is pretty much guaranteed to mess up all LDW games.

i have seen 4 collectibles pop up in and around the common ares. However i have not been able to pick them up. Is there a reason why my adult villagers can't pick up collectibles? I tried each of my adults on each item and no luck. Very frustrating!!!

Only children can retrieve the collectibles. The Virtual Villagers games are different from Virtual Families in that respect.

Never ending stew?

Waited hours for the stew to run out but it doesn't. I need the pot emptied so I can make cloth. Help! Is this a bug?

We would need to know what, specifically, was cooked. To empty the pot, drop a villager on the low well.

Hey...all of a sudden whenever I try to get my villagers have a baby, as soon as I drop one villager onto another, the game crashes to the desktop. When I relaunch the game, I hear the kissing sound during the opening of the game. I am using Mac OS. Thanks!

In the few days that I've owned the game, the game has crashed while either picking up a crab (twice) or just doing anything really. I've had to ctrl-alt-del about five times today because the game froze my entire computer

When the game crashes though, I get this error message:

Error: Access violation at 0x0041D000 (tried to read from 0x2977E0C0), program terminated.

There's a known crash with the crab issue.

The error message isn't always with the crabs though that's what's confusing me. I don't know what triggers it

Ice, if you could take notes on the things you are doing, and write them all down when it crashes, that would certainly help The more detailed, the better

All of these crashes are being caused by the same thing. RoseRed gave us the clue we needed for these. It can happen any time a villager attempts to do something and refuses (or fails). When they shake their head, they can end up with an invalid position that the game can't handle, and it crashes. We will be releasing a fix for this, but I can't say yet when that will be.

I dropped this character on the spot you see in the screenshot to see if he could interact with the flutes but discovered he cannot move away from there on his own. He keeps deciding to do something else, doesn't leave, and this repeats endlessly until I move him manually. This is under Mac OS X 10.6.2.

First, I have to thank LDW for yet another brilliant game; I'm having a blast playing it! I think I may have unearthed a bug with food collection and storage. My tribe was blessed with tech level 3 in an island event, but as my villagers collect food, the food level actually decreases - and I don't mean the normal dips that happen as villagers eat. At tech level 3, and with only 8 villagers so far and anywhere from two to four on farming at any time, the bin should be filling up quickly. The instant that my little guys drop food in the bin, the food level goes down several digits (in one instance, for example, from 952 to 938). This began to happen when my villagers solved the



puzzle. Anyone else had this issue? P.S. I'm running Windows XP.

I have a problem. My mausoleum, lab, and flutehead collectibles are nearly complete. But I only got about 3 fish scales. Is this a bug? I keep on checking the tidal pool but they seem to be very hard to find.

Regarding the collectables: I haven't hear about any bugs or glitches there.

Examples from my two games: "With ZERO glitches"
I'm running two games. 
Game one: 4 out of 12 fish scales collected. Just collected fish scale 5.
Game two: 10 out of 12 fish scales collected.
Remaining collections, both games: Missing between 4-5 collectables.

I am sure it is different for every player!
I think you just need to be patient for a while longer.

The fish scales are only available about half the time, when the tide is out.

This is a glitch and absolutely not normal. Are you changing your computer clock?
Something is really wrong. I have played all 4 of these games nearly continuously since the first one came out and I really believe this is not normal at any speed.
Just my humble opinons

Thanks, Arnie, for adding the most important point to the conversation.

--

I am not sure if LDW would call it a bug. It's more like being out of bound. Perhaps a tad too close for where we, the players, would consider the boundary edges of the game.

The only way for it to keep repeating, is by you manually dropping him between the waterfall and the wind flutes. It's not possible for the peeps to get there by themselves.
Anyway, now I have a place to put the naughty ones.

I run the same OS as you.

I am having Audio problems.
Running XP... background sounds great, any active sounds have static. it is just on VV4, i do not have the others loaded into my computer... yet... just downloading them... :D:D

Not sure if this is a bug or not. In the strategy guide, it says that once you collect all of the scales, golden fish will start showing in your nets. Well, I don't have all of the fish scales yet. However, I have been getting golden fish all along and even have the golden fish trophy already.

Love the game, btw.

Cybele,

Yes, it looks like the guide is wrong or (less likely) it's a bug. Golden fish start appearing as soon as one or two fish scales are found.

Running Win 7 here and no problems so far.

Just a very minor thing - noticed when I hover a villager over the pond near the lab, it says they see the ocean ... well I guess it is a good view from up there but wouldn't the intention have been for it to say they see the pond?

The game guide also says you can't build the clothes hut until level 3 science is researched but it seems you can build it once you have level 2.

JoshDSM, the static in the audio is almost always caused in Windows when your computer is very busy. One way to check this is to run Task Manager (right-click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager), then click on the Performance tab. This will display your system usage. If it's very high, it can affect audio quality.

To find out which program or system process is using the resources, Processes tab. Once there, sort the processes by CPU usage (click on the CPU heading twice - the first time will show the lowest usage processes on top; the second click will sort by processes that are using the highest amount of CPU).

We know of several applications and Windows system processes that occasionally use very high percentage of CPU, including a popular virus scanning program. If you find a process that is consistently using more than 50% CPU, it is likely causing the audio problem that you're hearing. In that situation, you should try closing the the program that is consuming excessive system resources and see if the game's audio operates normally again.

If you don't find an application that is consuming system resources, you should check to make sure that you have the proper driver installed for your processor. At least one user has reported severe problems with game performance after allowing Windows to install a processor driver during a Windows update. After removing the driver and installing the correct processor driver from the device manufacturer, the problem was corrected.

Cybele UK - We had to send the Official Guide for VV4 to the art studio weeks before the game was finished. Unfortunately, we made several changes to the game after we wrote the guide, and so there are differences between what the guide describes and the way the game actually works. That's one of the reasons that the notice at the end of the guide states: "LDW Software, LLC (Last Day of Work) reserves the right to make changes in the product described in this game guide, or changes to the game guide itself, at anytime and without notice." It's impossible for us to anticipate changes that may be necessary after the guide is published.


AReyeP - While it is a minor thing, it would be nice to fix this. What's happening is that all "deep water" in the game triggers the ocean message, rather than displaying a more accurate message.

I'm having a similar situation to food level going down when it's being ADDED. I also have WINXP and running the Developers Edition. Other times it appears not to increase or decrease when food is added - doesn't matter which kind of food.

Found 2 spots from where the character cannot move from his own:

We are looking into these issues.

Just found another one bug: pick up a villager and press the M button!

I just tried it, and it's a bug, a humorous one at that

Is there supposed to be a percentage of progress when

No, certain projects never display scaffolding or percentage of completion, since they are more complex projects with multiple phases.

Ok, thank you for the quick response LadyCFII. I was just used to %'s when I see scaffolding.

I don't know if this is supposed to be a bug or not but (possible spoiler ahead)

It's the magical green rejuvenation goo of Isola!!

Well, in that case...

LadyCFII nothing else is eating my processor. Still static.

LOL
Okay, I know bugs can be annoying and are an issue to be dealt with, but that is actually hilarious!

Josh, you should check your sound card's hardware settings, then, if CPU usage is normal. The easiest way to do that is to use the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Click Start, then Run, then type dxdiag in the window and press OK. The DirectX Diagnostic tool will open. You may be asked if you want to allow checking for digital signatures (I usually allow that - it's harmless). On the first page of the tool (the System tab), you can find information about your computer and DirectX version.

If you click on the Sound tab, you'll see information about your sound card. Is your sound card's hardware acceleration slider set all the way to the right (Full acceleration)? If you test DirectSound, does it successfully pass all of the tests? What is the date listed in the driver section in the upper right? If the date is more than 6 months ago, you should check with your computer manufacturer or sound card manufacturer to see if there is an updated driver available.

The next tab is the Music tab. If you click on the Test DirectMusic tab, does the test complete successfully?

I think I found a bug:

I got the Biggles event and chose how should I care for my people, since I had either tech fully researched anyways. Well after the event passed it said I got the Trophy Ivy League, but I still haven't researched science to the third level. Is this a bug. If it helps this is running on Windows Vista.

I'm at Puzzle 16 and the games crashes with an access violation when...



I am running:
WIN XP SP3
Dell Dual-core Pentium
E5200 @ 2.50GHz
1.20 GHz, 1.99 GB of RAM with the latest version of DirectX. I play many games with no problems like this.

See attached screen shot. What is causing this? I have to start the 2nd one all over again each time and I can't get past that point.

Please see this post for an explanation of that crash.

Hi, I haven't purchased the game yet as I wanted an answer to my question before I did and I have checked back through all the posts but couldn't find anything related to my problem. For me the game is unplayable at the moment as it is flickering and quite jumpy. The sound works fine and the game play is ok but it's flicking constantly with lines flashing up on the screen all the time. After checking the previous bug solutions I have tried turning off firefox to see if that would help with this problem too but it didn't seem to work.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi Barbara,

I changed the compatibility mode of the game executable to WINDOWS 95/98/ME to see if that had anything to do with the Access Violation error.
Unfortunately, instead of checking the same steps that produced the original crashes, I went ahead and began to...



Either way, I'll be curious if a patch is issued or another version of the game is released to correct the issue.

You are far more likely to encounter the crash if you pause the game while dropping peeps. As I mentioned in my earlier post, it is a bug in the game that is related to the way villagers shake their heads, and we will be issuing a game update at some point to correct this and several other issues. Changing settings in Windows will not affect this issue, but you can greatly reduce or eliminate the crash by not pausing the game to drop villagers on a task.

Sammisam, the problem you are having is likely due to your computer's display settings. Please see the procedures here in our Support FAQ to help you determine if the game can be run successfully on your computer. I'm assuming that you're using a Windows computer. If that's not the case, please let me know.

I don't know if this is a bug or not. I recently bought rank 3 in Learning and built the school, and I have someone capable of teaching the kids. I've been having him repeatedly teach the children, but I do not notice their skills going up at all. I don't know if this is a bug, but if it's on purpose, then what's the point of the school? Also, the nursing mothers will come over when I drag the teacher to initiate teaching, but when the teacher begins teaching on his own, the children come but not the nursing parents.

I also turned the game off over night. The river was unobstructed when I logged off and I had a couple people on as "Builders". When I logged back in, it was completely blocked. Shouldn't the builders having been clearing it when the game was turned off just as the farmers keep farming and scientists keep researching?

Children learn and gain skill over time, not all at once like they did with the Chief's training in VV3. If your teacher has the minimum 'qualifications' to be a teacher, the children will not learn as much as they would with a highly skilled teacher. And yes, nursing moms only go to the school when you drop a teacher there.

Two builders are probably not enough to keep the stream unblocked overnight. We're still looking at how this is working, though.

Thanks! I'll improve my teacher's skills. Good to know. If one or two builders can keep the stream flowing when the game is on, it seems to me they should be able to do it when the game is off too, but it's not a huge issue unless it's possible to weaken the reeds again.

Hi evrybody!!
I have the Demo version for Mac.It worked only two days (yesterday and today) and now when I try to load it, it quits and then I have a message from my computer says" error".

Can someone help me please...i'm not an english player,my english is very poor.

The help that I supplied in this topic should assist you. Let us know if you are still having problems after trying those things.

Thanks you!! it works now but I lost all of my villagers...

Thanks again!

Didn't see anyone else having this problem so, hoping it isn't just me.

The 'focus camera' only works when I am on the screen with the villager. If I click on a villager it follows them around just fine until I click somewhere else. If I remember correctly from previous games you would still get status messages from that villager provided you did not click on any other villager (building?). I am clicking on empty spaces only and it immediately de-selects the villager, which is a little annoying and makes me wonder why the focus camera at all. Or possibly I am doing it wrong lol

Other than that loving the game:)

When a villager is selected, clicking on anything else has always deselected them in all of the VV games, and the focus camera in VV4 has not changed that - it's just more obvious now, with the addition of that feature. There are many different uses for the focus camera, but leaving a villager selected while you scroll around the map or work with other villagers is not possible.

Ahh okay, thanks. Not sure I see the point to it but at least I know now

On a side note I noticed earlier that some people were having trouble with firefox and alt-tab causing their game to crash. I have firefox (xp) and haven't noticed any issues at all.

That only appears to be an issue with some people who are running the game full-screen in Windows 7.

I had the same problems with my brandnew windows 7 pc and DirectX 11
Changing the DEP solved this problem, Barbara described how to do this in this thread

Thanx again Barbara for all your help, you're amazing
You guys are so busy right now, solving all those problems and issues with all the different systems ...
you need AND deserve a huge break after getting VV4 out!!!

Awwww, shucks!! Thanks!

I have discovered a small "glitch"...I have a teacher who is highly adept in most and master in everything else, problem is that the children are only learning to farm ...I am at the point in the game where I have plenty of food and really don't need that many farmers. SO my question is there a way to change what they learn or am I stuck with this. I haven't tried another teacher as of yet (thinking I should) I will let you know if this changes anything

Mishileena

***Update....changed teachers and they are still only learning farming....Hmmmmmmm. This must be a bug :(*******

Hello,
My villagers keep getting stuck on the herb table. I'm not sure how it happens, I just notice them there sometimes. They won't move away until I pick them up and put them somewhere. Here is a picture.

Thanks

Bug in Fish Statue Collection. Kids successfully placed 5 scales on statue, but now when scales are found, the child takes them to the scientists instead of putting them on the fish statue. Looks like I'm permanently stuck at 5 of 12.

Duplicate scales, flutes and lab pieces are taken to the scientists and turned into tech points. It sounds like you just haven't found a new scale in a while.

That can happen if you pick up a villager and then pressed <M> on your keyboard! <M> is the shortcut key for the game map.

swedane, I didn't press anything. I was watching tv, and when I went to look back at my village, he was stuck there. The time before that, it was a kid who didn't get to go and listen to an adult tell a story. I'm not sure what was going on when the time before that happened.
- adding to my post -
I just tried what you said, and nothing unusual happened. The map opened and that's it. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen.
-editing post again -
I got it to do what you said with the m. That's definately not what happened. When you do that they get stuck in the air where you put them. And with mine, they get stuck in the same place on the table by themselves not stuck in the air.

The villagers do get sometimes stuck in various places, and we are still evaluating all of these reports.

I'll be interested to know if you get more than 5 fish scales. For me, the kids started giving the scales to the scientists instead of putting them on the statue. So I'm stuck at 5.

It's possible of course that all the additional ones found have been duplicates.

You can tell for certain, if you leave the child selected when they pick up the collectible. The way to tell whether or not it's a duplicate collectible is to check the action field. If it says, "Collecting an item for the scientists" then the collectible is a duplicate. If it says what kind of collectible they picked up (e.g. "Collecting a rare fish scale!"), then it's a new one, and they will take it to the statue.

Well, maybe not. Maybe I'm just finding only duplicates. Thanks, LadyCFII

Hi, my game keeps crashing just after I fix the fishing nets.

Running on Macbook Pro

It doesn't matter whether my mother had a baby when I started the game, or whether it's her 8th baby (I see, by the way, that the 50-year-old age limit has been rescinded). This has been a problem right from VV1, and it only appears to be getting worse. Many times, my mothers' clocks stop at 240 minutes, 30 minutes, etc. and then after a few hours they start back up again. But I had one mother who refused to let go of her baby for a full 24 hours' worth of game play! Now I've heard of not wanting to let them grow up, but that's ridiculous!! LOL Anything we can do to make them get on with their lives?

Strange... I haven't had any crashes at all, probably cause I never pause the game...

I don't know if it's a bug or something I'm missing... all puzzles done, max population at 90, but there's a trophy for population of 100?

Oh, forgot to mention...one of the broken huts took 4 days to repair, with 6 Building Masters working on it. Is one of them supposed to be exceptionally difficult, or was this another bug?

PinkNailPolish,
I stand corrected. I see LadyCFII has the issue under review!

It is still possible to 'purposely' get a villager stuck anywhere as you can see




I have completely forgotten how to use the file manager, I don't know how many times I tried and still couldn't get it to work. I checked FAQ, but honestly that wasn't much help either. I'm just too dense where it counts.

Swedane: We are spending more time working on where peeps get stuck on their own than we are on places that the player can stick them. Use those places while you can! You can see how to use the File Manager at the end of this post.

Scully: We understand that there are issues with the nursing timer, and they are being reviewed. Each housing hut is a longer project than the previous one; that's working as designed.

Altaira: It would be very helpful if you could supply a crash report from your Mac. Without a crash report, we probably can't determine what caused the crash.

I have seen them learn farming and building, but nothing else yet.

The previous hut took 4 hours to finish...the next one took 4 days. That seemed like a LOT longer than it should have been. That's why I reported it as a bug.

Mine mostly learn Research. I've assumed that's because all my teachers are Master Scientists - but maybe it's the nature of the tribe or something.

Most of mine tend to become scientists or builders as their 'majors'. A few become farmers, and even fewer become doctors. I haven't seen any kid 'graduate' with more than a smidge of parenting skills. By the time they turn 14 all seem to be at least trainees, with a few adepts.

Along with their 'major' they tend to have picked up a little skill in all the others as well. That has only started relatively recently; in the past they would only pick up one skill. I would guess that is because I've been using Scholars almost exclusively to teach.

I've been wondering about why one skill predominates always. I suspect it's because all the teachers, even scholars, have one skill that is their highest, and that's the one they'll pass on the most. Perhaps if we want the kids to learn all the skills equally we will need to keep a faculty of at least five (preferably all Scholars), each member being maxed out in a particular skill.

I don't have the time to read through all of this to see if this glitch has been reported, but I did read someone's problem where the game would crash if a villager was placed on the crabs during "pause". The same thing happened to my sister and I; it also happens with the herbs. If we set a villager on the herbs when the game is paused, the game will crash.

Elf-girl, please see this post for LadyCFII's answer

There is a way to earn that trophy as you go further in the game.

This is a frog bug. I just noticed this today, and it doesn't seem to be happening with my other tribe. The frogs are jumping next to the love shack, as well as the stream. I'm using Windows 7 and the game is in windowed mode.

Certainly unique! But they aren't doing any harm, are they? Is the puzzle showing as solved?

The frogs are there for a reason. You should keep an eye on the kids.

I'm intrigued...

I don't believe that it is a glitch, and I don't believe that the teachers have as much to do with what the children learn as their parents do. I have had more than 50 Scholars in my village. With only one or two exceptions, their highest (usually maxed) skill has been either research or healing. If the scholars influenced what the children learn, I would expect to see a village full of apprentice scientists or healers. Instead, I almost always have apprentice builders. The only other skill that has popped up (only once or twice so far) has been farming. I have from the beginning started my villagers to master building, followed by parenting, then farming. Since the villagers on parenting seem to prefer younger, more skilled partners, they usually spend their time chasing my builders and farmers.

So, if the original posters parents were more farmers than not, it would not matter what the teachers were mastered in.

The one thing I have noticed is that my villagers never seem to choose parenting to learn. Not sure if that is intentional to allow the player more control over the parenting process or not.

I haven't seen the frogs by the Love Shack, can't wait until I do!! The only bug I can report is that my kids don't play in puddles. It says they are but they just freeze instead of running to the puddles.

It's not exactly a game-crashing bug, but sometimes my adult villagers will act Confused in the midst of their daily activities. When I clicked on one of them, the message read "Not enough room in the cooking pot."

They're saying "pit" not "pot" in that situation. The reason that they are doing that is because the fruit cookers allow a maximum of 4 farmers to cook fruit simultaneously. If you try to get any more than that, they will be confused and the player communication area will briefly display the message about the cooking pit. It does get a bit tricky when you have a lot of farmers who want to harvest and cook fruit. Each farmer will 'reserve' a spot at the cookers, even if they are quite some distance from the trees at the time they decide to harvest and cook fruit. We have verified that this is never a problem when you have only 4 assigned farmers, but when there are 'bunches' of farmers, it's really difficult to determine who might have 'reserved' a spot at the pit for themselves, since that all takes place behind the scenes in the code. You can assign as many farmers as you like, of course, but many of them will refuse until a spot at the fruit cookers opens up.

So I've been watching for the frogs at the Love Shack until my eyes burn, has anyone seen what the kids do when this happens?

Oooh! Oooh! Me!!! I have!!!

Me too!
I picked this boy Ray, 9 years old, I couldn't resist, he's so adorable!
I had a tribe with all children, the oldest 2 where 14 so they build the loveshack. As soon as that was build ...



Anyway, I really celebrated his 14e birthday!!!!

LOL, Mbee!! It's so... cute!
If it'd be a Bug, I'd petition LDW for keeping it!!

I have xp also and this is not normal. You should send a question about it to the tech support folks. Just copy and paste your exact info you listed above into a tech issue support form. They are great at taking care of you.

It's normal. See http://www.ldwforums.com/ubbthreads/ubbt...ions#Post219285

If its normal I don't know. It is a very funny thing though

The reason why I believe it's not quite normal is the frequency of this action,
along with the blanc lines in Ray's actionlines:


Ray had only a few actions until he turned 14:
blanc as shown above
dancing
nothing
running away
playing a joke on the adults
celebrating? (this one I don't quite remember, Ray is a respectable scholar now with a bunch of children and grandchildren of his own, but no-one inherited his frog-joke helas)

Thats all. I didn't see any other actionlines on him.
Maybe it is something that should be looked into.
Although I could live with this 'bug', it's FUNNY

The tide in my tide pool never goes out...and therefore, I never find any fish scales what do I do?

I'm sure it goes out. It doesn't get completely dry, but more rocks show and the water area gets smaller.

If you can see the flower, the tide is out. If you can't, it's in and you won't be able to find the fish scales.

Scully touched on this issue - my apologies if it's been covered elsewhere in the forums.

I left my game this morning, and on coming back home tonight and firing it up, noticed one of my 70 year ladies is carrying a child! Yet earlier in the game I'd used a bit of a cheat to bring one of my villagers up to master parent level knowing that a lady over 50 wouldn't conceive (and she didn't, despite the repeated attempts!) My wife frowns on me doing this btw - OK, I know, she has a good point!

So I'm wondering ... are ladies of 50 or over supposed to be able to conceive in the game? If so, what happens to the child if she passes away while carrying the child?

My wife has had the same thing happen to one of her older villagers - I run the game on slow speed and often pause it, she runs it on normal speed at all times. Both games run on a different PC so that would unlikely be the issue.

Needless to say I'll be curious to learn who the father of this child is!

Believe it or not, that's not a bug. There are lots of changes and surprises in each chapter of Virtual Villagers. I explained a bit in this post.

Let's just say that it's sad when a nursing mom dies.

Thanks for that Barbara - I missed that thread!

Oh well ... guess I'd better think twice now before using that "cheat" again

I've read through the thread and haven't found the answer to this.

My game freezes every time I try to close it. I am running the game on windows vista. I have no problems with graphics or sound and the game doesn't really 'stutter' or have problems loading up. Its just when I try and close the game. After reading this I thought it might be because I was pausing the game before closing, but I've just tried closing it without pausing it and I get the same thing.

I get no error message but the game freezes. I can access other windows such as messenger and I.E/ Firefox. It doesn't seem to matter what I use. It also happens if there are no other windows open. At that point I have to force the game to close using the Ctrl, Alt, Delete combination and get the 'This program is not responding message.

A few users have reported similar issues (primarily with Vista) with some of our other games. The best advice we can offer is what I've posted in this thread in the Technical Issues forum.

I wasn't sure if you needed to know every single place villagers get stuck on their own, but if you do, one of mine just got stuck above the soap. She's a kid who turned to go listen to a story, and just got stuck there right when she turned.
~ adding to this post ~ It has something to do with the way they turn, because one just got stuck above those steps there just as he was turning.

I think that i find a bug.

When you make and eat a stew...

The villager will say"i feel sick" but continues healthy
the action will be"Something smells YUMMY" and the will burp
(actually "twrowing up soapy stew!") but nothing.

I just started the game up and went for the third tech level in construction ... that's 5 techs I now have at max. Only the science has yet to be upgraded. Yet when I purchased the final tech level in construction I was awarded the Ivy League trophy for having researched all 6 techs (have attached a screenshot) ... I take it this is an error?

Anyway, thumbs up for a great game - may there be many more VV to come

Yep! There's a bug in that trophy that we're working on.

Another one;
When you...

Then, if you pause the game, the butterflies will still move. Also, if you switch the screen( from the in-game screen to, for example the main menu, mauseleum or collectice screen,ect.)when you return, the butterflies will re-appear from the top of the mausoleum entrace to their "real" position.
This still happens even after you complete the 5th puzzle.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or the fertility age has changed, neglected my tribe for two days or so and I came to find this, I haven't had any events or anything that would age the villager, not sure if there are any but here's the ss

It's not a glitch. Women over 50 can have babies still. But it works the best if you have them checked for parenting

Is there a bug with boys? In my group of the eleven children born, ten are boys. How is the tribe to keep going without girls?

That's not a bug. You can look here for an explanation.

I have noticed two things, not sure if they are bugs or not.

I am running Win xp and run on fast during the day, slow at night. Never paused yet.

1. The 'Never Ending Stew' which i saw someone else mention. My villagers made a stew of sweet + spicy + soapy + fruit + blackberries+mushroom + 2 food from bin, oh and fresh water. When the stew was done they all thought it smelled good and came to get some. The adults are painfully slow so the children would get their food before the adults and head over to the fire. The first two times if anyone reached the end of the bridge before everyone had their stew everyones stew would dissapear and they would all go back for seconds (and thirds.) The next few times the children and my one runner would get to the fire with their food, sit and start to eat, but as soon as the last person got their stew everyone would lose their food again and head back for more. This went on about a dozen times before I had someone pour out the stew to put a stop to it.

Screenshot (i was taking it for a contest) of everyone a split second before all their food went 'poof' and they all ran back to the pot for more.

As you can see everyone is still on their way there, but a split second later the last slow adult got her stew and then everyone's stew dissapered and they ran back for more. I tried putting the slow adults there first to get their stew, but the kids are still faster and they all got in a loop of running back for more stew every 30 seconds or so.

2. The hospital. When people get sick they go to the hospital, but when my scholar/doc is put there all he will do is "work on medicine" not heal. The only way any doctor heals is if I manually force them to heal someone, and it has to be done away from the hospital. Not sure if this is a glitch or not, but I seem to recall in the other games sick people would go to the hospital where a doctor would heal them. It seems like if a sick person is on the bed you should be able to drop a doc on them to heal them, but that doesn't happen. May just be how it is supposed to be though

Also I don't think my tide goes in and out, but they do find fish scales on occasion. The water seems to always be at the same point, I may take screen shots to be sure about that.

Just found another one.

I have not yet fully research construction, but I got the trophy for having fully researched all 6 technologies.

That one was reported earlier and we are working on it.

What about the other 2 I posted above it?

We are aware of and working on those, as well. We still have internal testing going on, and many of these issues are discovered that way.

OK sounds good, so I should just keep forcing my doctors to heal and babysit them when they have a stew... hummm sounds like real life, LOL

I know this is no glitch but it really starts annoying me bigtime. This all boys or all girls thing isn't nice at all. It made me start over too much times now and I really hope next VV games can build a F2 or F3 key in it, or at least make this male or female thing more even.

Is there a glitch or is this on purpose? I've been trying to get a scientist to become a Master so I've been taking more notice of the tech point counter, he seems to sometimes earn 14 tech points and other times up to 20, once I counted 29 tech points!

Is he the only one researching, and are you sure that there are no kids bringing collectibles to the lab?

Once, i dragged someone to the wood pile for more firewood, but he did not get firewood, it said he was "heating a rock". Weird! I didn't think there were rocks by the firewood!?

Yes Lady. No kids bringing collectibles, he's the only one researching. I will try to capture some screenshots when I open the game next time.

Here are my screenies of my Adept Scientist. Sorry I added them backwards but as you can see this time he earned a LOT of tech points. As you can see the food quota had not changed and I swear I printed these screenies one after the other.

In Virtual Villagers 4: The Tree of Life » ALL Questions about FOOD & STEWS. [SPOILERS] I wrote:
as I found it in the Official LDW Guide.

But, with my second tribe, as I didn't already purchase this level, I dropped a villager on the pier and he began to repair the fishing nets.
Not the piers that are already repaired, but the nets!!
And he succeeded on it!! I got this nets earlier than I thought!

Well is it a glitch in the game or a glitch in the guide?

Nota bene: It doesn't really bother me!!

I think the guide may be wrong then

As I mentioned before in this previous post:
The only thing you need for fishing is


I think it is cool to grab those fishies so early on in the game

I explained the differences between the game and the guide earlier in this thread.

Thanks a lot to Mbee and Babara!
And sorry if I didn't search enough among these 13 pages

I just noticed on my newest tribe that my trophies show me as having completed the wind flutes but I only have six of them. My population isn't far enough along that I can see it affects it.

-I just found another wind flute (7th), the bottom of my screen showed the message that I completed the collection.

Have you completed that collection in another tribe on that computer?

No, my only tribe that is close to completing it is at 11/12.

Hi,

I have noticed a small glitch regarding trophies. When I completed one of the technology researches, I was awarded the following trophy:
"Ivy League: You fully researched all 6 technologies"
even though I have not completed all of them. Actually, I have the first five completed, but I am at level two at Dendrology.

Not a big problem, but now I've received a trophy which I am not proud of yet :P

Tom

We're working on that one - it's been reported a few times. Popular bug!

Hi I think this may be a potential bug I have read in the other parts of the forum similar thing. While I know the gender of babies born is random in VV4 the ratio of male to female seems extremely high meaning more males born than females.

In the tribe I just lost a few days ago where all the collectibles and puzzles were complete I had a population of 90 adults and kids excluding babies that weren't dropped yet I started this tribe with 5 children 4 girls and 1 boy I don't know what the genders of the nursing moms babies were so didn't count them in the 90 pop. At this stage I have the trophy for 10 boys born but have only had 4 girls born. Of my 4 original girls only the one is under 50 at 48 and is one of my nursing moms. Can't seem to get the one for 10 nursing since I only have 3 that old enough to have kids unless I get lucky and some of my ladies over 50 produce a kid.

When I had to restart this tribe I again chose children 4 girls and one boy will have to see what that brings however I also started a tribe of nursing moms 5 of them and when they dropped I got 5 boys.

While it is random can it be fixed so the ratio isn't so far out of whack.

Hi there I posted a few pages back that my game was flickering I have followed all the instructions in the reply given by LadyCFII and all the settings were correct. I still haven't purchased it because although it's not unplayable it's not very nice and I want it to be right. I love VV games and I really want to buy this, would waiting for a patch help or would a patch have a fix for this?

I just wanted to mention it's for windows vista AND I have tried uninstalling and re-installing.

A second edit to mention it seems to work fine in windowed mode but it's not a big enough game area.

FINAL EDIT hahaha: All fixed, I called my awesome dad and he had a look and switched vSYNC on and it works now! HURRAH!

If you pick up a women holding a baby and move the duo over the ocean, the baby disappears.

But the baby reappears once you move the woman over land.

I thought maybe the mother threw the baby into the ocean until the child reappeared.

That's normal. That is a kind of 'compromise' that was made for nursing moms, and it happens that way in VV3, as well. Whenever they are in/over deep water, whether in the grasp of the Guiding Hand or on their own, the baby 'decal' is removed. We tried several alternatives, none of which is totally perfect, and this one worked out the best.

I am guessing this "decal" system explains why the babies disappear from moms' arms during the grand feast. When moms go back for seconds, they are not carrying their babies. Once they are done eating, the babies reappear.

I found one:
when you grab ANY villager and pull it to the corner, that small
circular showing the villager show that after the corner THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLACK!!! One would think that there's something that you can see in the map, but not.
That's scary if you are the villager!

Because that is the edge of the map.

I repeat.
THAT circular section of the screen(upside of the details button and left of the name/skill/action text) shows the villager and at the end of the corner there's the black screen

One of my villagers had triplets and now one is missing; seemed to happen when they turned 3. Thankfully not in the mausoleum, not in the detail screens, no event happened...just gone.

Cloth Invented; no need to wait for purchase of Science Tech 3. Building appears before purchase.

Fish Scales; golden fish appear after building nets, no need to complete finding of all scales. Scale 12 of 12 never appears.

Those are differences between the guide and the game, not bugs in the game. Please look here for an explanation.

@loisk

I've had the same with twins - one nursing mom had twins and then was there only one 2 year old boy!
Later I saved the game bevor the twins/triplets became 2 but it happened not anymore.

I'm having a problem I do think is a bug. I'm running Windows 7. I've repeated this twice and both times I get the error "Virtual Villagers - The Tree of Life.exe has stopped working. A problem has caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available."

Both times its given me this error I was catching crabs. Thinking I'd get the children into place for the next crab, I pause the game, drop the children onto the second crab, hit unpause while the first villager is carrying the first crab to the pond. The game then crashes to desktop with the error above.

I took a screenshot of the error itself if needed.

We are working on an update that will resolve that error. You can read more about that issue earlier in this thread, as well as here in the Technical Issues forum.

De-lurking to share some minor issues, comments, and a workaround for the nursing timer bug...
My Apologies for the length, and if some of this has been covered in other posts.

1. Some pixels 'missing' on the collections screen and mausoleum screen: I honestly didn't notice this until I read a few posts in this thread. I guess I had just unconsciously assumed that they were 'highlights', light peaking through branches, light reflecting, etc.
This is not really a big deal as far as I am concerned but now that it has been pointed out it would be nice if it were cleaned up a bit.
EDIT: I noticed a missing pixel on a help screen while trying to duplicate issue #5. Still a non-issue imo.

2. Tidal pool water noise: Clicking on the sand of the tidal pool 'area' still makes the 'water noise' when the tide is out.
This is not worth fixing, I just wanted to point it out.

3. Mushrooms not visible near the Tree: This seems to be true for mushrooms anywhere near the Tree even when they are a bit farther away and should NOT be hidden by the roots. The 'sparkle' is still visible. Other collectibles in the area are visible.
This is mostly just a minor annoyance but it does have a minor effect on the game.
EDIT: I noticed a 'brown' mushroom near the tree that ended up being red after I picked it up, so I thought it may be a 'coloing' issue... However I found a way to show where the main issue lies: Pick up an unbuilt hut, drag it around the screen near the base of the tree and you can see where things will be visible and where they will not.

4. Tidal pool level: It may be my immagination, but I have notiched that when running multiple games at the same time (as my daughter and I tend to do) sometimes the tidal pool of one of the games gets set to the state of the tidal pool of the other game. (In other words, if my tide just came back in but we switch to her game for a few minutes where the tide is out, then switch back to mine, sometimes my tide is low again.) I will try to do some experimenting to see how repeatable this is and if pausing one game or the other is a factor in this.
This is not really a problem, and if it turns out to be repeatable it could actually be used as a 'cheat' to keep your tide out.
EDIT: I have not been able to repeat this. I suspect that the tide level is set until the active game marks it as changed. (So my daughter's must have been changed to 'out' when her game was active, and then stayed out when I went back to mine.)

5. Non-Fullscreen sizing: (This only happened once and I have not been able to repeat the problem; usually resizing is not possible. FYI my OS is 'Windows XP Pro'. If I figure out the circumstances that led to this I will post again.) Playing with Fullscreen off the OS allowed me to inadvertantly change the size of the game window by dragging the sides or corner of the window. The system mouse pointer and the in-game pointer got out of synch and I couldn't tell what I was pointing at.
Since I have not been able to repeat this it is not a big problem either.
EDIT: It happened again. Still not sure why.

6. Nursing timer bug: I have seen this here and in previous VV games. I have seen similar issues with timers Fish Tycoon and Plant Tycoon. I do pause the game often.

However, (as I originally found in the non VV games,)
every time I have finally noticed a timing bug,
-- switching the game speed from 'normal' to 'fast',
-- letting it on fast for at least a few seconds,
-- then switching the game speed back to 'normal'
has ALWAYS fixed it for me.

I assume this action causes some timing related subroutine in the program to kick off.
This is an annoyance, but not a big deal since I have a found a 'workaround'.

I'm sorry if this has already been discussed, I swear I searched this but I find it difficult because when I do a search, it searches ALL forums, not just the one I am in.

Anyway, I had a lot of tech points saved up and bought the final medicine level at the same time as final construction level. I took all of my villagers and put them on one or the other to completed them both quickly. Well, the hospital went along quickly, but the housing hut is forever stuck at 1%

MorgaineMichele, about the search issue, when you click on the search above the forums, click on the link below the box where you type. If you click on "Advanced" you can set the forum for it to search in as well as the time frame (I would suggest that you set this to be older than the default, since the game has been out a fair time already).

When you click on the 'Search' link click the 'Advanced' link, which will take you to a page which allows you to refine your search parameters. See this sticky thread for more details.

Each of the three villagers' huts takes an increasing time to complete, with the third hut taking a lot longer than any of the other tasks. How long, of course, depends on how many builders you are using.

Building the hospital, as with the other special buildings, only takes a relatively short time.

My first batch of nursery school children seem to have learned some odd lessons.

I had a good number of them hit the "real world" of age 14 all at once. About half of them are acting normally and doing the tasks assigned once they learn them (or if they came out of school with the right skills).

The other half, though, won't continue working. They stand around the village center, or various other spots, for very extended amounts of time with Action: "Nothing".

If made to do something like bring water to the stew pot, they'll fill the pot and simply stand facing it, doing "Nothing", until manually moved.

They ocassionally will move to soak their feet, take a drink or eat, but end up sitting around again, sometimes not even changing poses for long periods of time.

I don't think it's a bug. I had the same things and I just take care that a skill is check off and I put them on the task they are supposed to do. It seems that some of them don't know how to do that by themselves!

Typical teenagers? Not that all teens are lazy, but many are.

Solitha this sounds like a memoryproblem to me. I've had it one or twice when I had more games open and my virusscanner was doing tasks in the background. This sometimes slows our villagers down. Close a copple of windows or check your memory.

Has anyone else noticed that in VV4 some of the villagers have really small heads compared to their bodies?

Has anyone noticed that if it's low tide and you click on where the high tide would be, it makes a ripple as if it were high tide?

I'm still trying to figure out the missing pixels on the collections screen. If anyone could figure it out, it would be fantastic

I've noticed that too!

i had the same thing happen but i didn't have Firefox open, i was pausing the game to drop the kids on the crabs. i believe pausing the game is what was doing it.