I've seen this mentioned before in the main forum but I couldn't find it by searching.

I've just started a new generation and was mildly surprised when no proposal was received after a few minutes. When I looked at her details screen Kristania shows as having six kids. The family screen doesn't show her as having inherited at all; she only appears as the youngest child.

This is my oldest family that's been going since the game was first released, but I assume the only thing I can do is to restart them?

EDIT: I forgot to say I tried renaming the backup, but that shows her the same, so was presumably made after the problem happened.

Are you on the 30th generation or past that, Arnie?

Yes, it's exactly the 30th. Does that mean my other games will go the same way when they reach the 30th, then?

Yes, it does appear that any long running game will experience this bug when reaching the 30th generation. We suggest pausing the game, backup your savegame files (Windows and Mac), so that your families will remain intact. We are looking into this situation.

Thanks, Heather. I've backed it up and restarted the game.

The same thing has now happened with another of my families. This time the adoptee shows as having five kids, not six.

One silver lining is that I get to start the games again from the beginning. I'd forgotten how much fun it was in the early game; lately the games were becoming a little boring.

that is true arnie

But they are still fun I am on my 18 generation

Any news on fixing this bug? I now have 2 of my 3 families "stopped" at 30 generations. It just seems sad to say goodbye to them.

Yes, I've now had to restart three of my five families. The father of a fourth died earlier today and I'm a little afraid that, if I find that his wife died while I've been away at work, that game might also need restarting. I haven't counted up, but they must be close to the 30th generation by now.

Ugh! I hope this doesn't happen to me! I'm only on the like 9th generation though...

Actually you can keep re-starting them. When you go into "family" you can click on new generation any time before the peep dies and re-select them and it starts the cycle over, or you can pause. Whichever works for you. If you do this multiple times though eventually it will default to one peep no matter who you select. I have two families in 30th generation now, and probably another two by tomorrow morning.

Can you get pass the 30th generation by doing that, FuzzyDice? I had a special naming theme going on with one family, so I was definitely hoping to go more than 30. I'm nowhere near that point yet though.

You can't get past the 30th generation, you can just keep them from dying out until they get the bug fixed. It's just an alternative to backing up and starting over.

After playing like this for a week, I finally had a little girl show up at the door for adoption. She becomes a sibling to the parent(31st Gen) peep in the family tree, but at least its possible to get a new peep.

That's interesting! Still sounds like it's not allowing you to advance to next though? I really hope they will get this fixed.

I just ran into the generation 30 glitch too. When I select a kid to be the new head of the family, it doesn't show on the family list. The kid selected ( who is unmarried) shows she has 3 kids (has none, I just picked her). When I go to Families it now always shows the new generation button. I have restarted several times and the kids now vary from the ones that should be there (my last family's kids) and ones I've never seen before, and they don't have names. Even if you do give one a name and select it, it never appears on the family list, never gets a marriage proposal, etc. Waaa

I hope this is fixed by the time I get there.

Hey, LDW, there are people on all sites complaining about this problem. Are you guys watching and listening? If so, is there a fix in the works? Help us guys. There have been many, many months of time, effort and emotion put into this game not only by me but many of your loyal gamers. Seems a "fix" or some type of suggestions shuld be offered. Thanks in advance for any comment(s) you might throw out to us.

Even just a message saying, "We're still working on correcting this bug, and will get it to you as soon as we're able" would be comforting to hear as a lot of time has passed since this was first reported. If they have no plans to fix this mistake as well, I'd rather hear them say that too, so I know to stop hoping for a fix.

I have 3 families that are now in their 31st generation. In each case, the only person in the family is the one who inherited the house. Also in each case, it says they already have children (whatever number of children their parents had). I am getting no marriage proposals for these people. Could this possibly be because the game sees their status as widowed with children, in which case they would not be eligible for remarriage and more children? Thx for your response.

Somewhere, either in this string or another on the same topic, LDW says they are working on a fix. Hopefully they will let us all know when they have it.

I wonder what percentage of players actually reach the 30th generation and come across this bug? I'd think that many will have lost at least some interest in the game before then since it seems to take over six months to reach 30 generations.

I must say that I was beginning to lose some interest. With millions of dollars in the bank and not many challenges to be completed the game became a little repetitive. I still needed one or two insects to complete the collections and therfore the trophies, but I was in some ways re-stimulated by the challenge of re-starting the families from the beginning again.

Is this one of the times we should maybe contact one of the moderators directly to see if they could possibly give us an answer? I thought they monitored our emails but as of this date (I read some of the earlier emails regarding this problem from back early fall of last year)no response at all. I don't know about you guys but I have put a lot of time and emotion into this game, have highly recommended it to others and I don't understand no response at all from the "creators".

Any feedback would be appreciated.

We are monitoring these discussions, and we know how serious this issue is. Unfortunately, there is still nothing else to add beyond my earlier response when this bug was first reported in the Virtual Families forum. We will post here when there is something new to report.

Contacting the forum moderators would only frustrate you and them, since the moderators aren't involved in the game development.

Well, both of my continual games have been hit by this glitch. I'll be sad to lose these families, since I've had them going since the game first came out. :-(

Thank you for posting, Barbara. I hope there's something new you can tell us soon. I bet a lot of people do stop playing before getting that far, but I think there's a fair number who would like to continue their families further too.

I just started my 32nd generation in one of my families. Since my 31st generation had all the "symptoms" of the glitch mentioned above (no marriage proposals, says already has children though she doesn't, etc), I assumed that when my lady (Happi) grew old and died, that my game would end. However, along the way she adopted a little boy named Havoc. It showed him as her brother in the family tree. He grew up and went off to college, then she was alone again.

When Happi died, I was waiting for the message that my game was lost, but it didn't appear, so I looked at my family tree. It looked the same as before. I clicked on New Generation and lo and behold there were 4 people to choose from to inherit the home. One was Vista, one of Happi's sisters, TWO were Havoc, identical except for career, and the other was a female with no name. She did not look like any of Happi's sisters either, so I don't know where she came from. I chose this one to inherit the home and named her Sophia.

When I looked at the family tree after starting Sophia's generation, it looked just like it did before, ending with Happi's family (her parents and siblings). Sophia is no where to be found. It does not show another generation after Happi's.

So far Sophia has not received a marriage proposal, which I don't expect her to. It also says she has 4 children. I will see what happens when she grows old and dies.

I wonder if this ability to start an additional generation had anything to do with the fact that Happi adopted Havoc, even though it put him in the family tree as her brother.

Just thought I'd share the details of this interesting turn of events.

Barbara, thanks for the info (also received a personal email from Heather regarding this issue). I just took it upon myself to try to grab your attention and get a response as I go to many different game sites and on each of the forums for Virtual Families it is a TRUE problem. We appreciate you guys looking into it and hope to hear from you soon regarding a resolution! I know you guys must have a sense of pride that you created a game we love and want to continue playing! You are amazing. Keep up the great work.

I have this game on my iPod touch. I'm on my 23rd generation, and I'll be so sad when I have to see my amily go

After the 30 generations, can you still find collectibles and earn trophies?

"We're still working on correcting this bug, and will get it to you as soon as we're able"

In all seriousness, this bug caught me by surprise. We never anticipated that people would take their families into this many generations. BRAVO!

We have the fix implemented and just need to get it up, and announce it. I believe we also have it implemented for iPhone and need to submit that for apple approval.

We are testing a new cloud download server which will handle all our downloads, and I guess the current plan is to put up the new version when the links change, which will be prior to VV4's launch, which will be within a few weeks. So, soon!

YAY! Thank you for the update, Arthur.

Will the fix work retrospectively on the 31st generation, that that is, the one affected by the bug, or will it only prevent it appearing in future generations?

I've still got the four savegame files from the original families that were affected.

Yay! Glad to hear it.

Arthur will BFG be getting this update as well?

Well Im glad to see this on here because I was getting really annoyed with the game. I to have the glitch & its very frustrating so I think Im going to pause the game & keep checking back on here for the repair info!!

The same thing happened to me and she was only child. I did not know this thred was here as I started it in another thred. and here too was my 30th gen Carla me this thred

any news yet...i looked but couldn't find an update
thank you

Hi Arthur, Just a little reminder that us Virtual Families addicts are sitting counting on this fix. Did the fix past the test? One of my families started generation 26 today.

I would really appreciate an update on this too. I check back here everyday hoping to see the new version has been released, and my current family is in the 17th generation.

I'm also here everyday - hoping to see some news about an update ...

Yikes, I'll have to restart three of my 5 families!
On Nov. 9th-2009 Xay wrote: I assume no one has an answer, yet?

We are testing a fix now. If the testing goes well, we should have a fix available soon.

Thank you for the update. I hope the testing goes well, so it can be released soon.

Thanks, LadyCFII, that's encouraging news!

On April 14, 2010 LadyCFII wrote:
Any news on the test yet?

Just to confirm, if I have updated my game, and I see version 1.00.09 on the screen, this bug should be fixed? Because when I started the game after the update, I saw a mail icon flashing, so I saved the game (paused it, went into my other name game, saved, went back into active game) and the mail icon disappeared.

My singleton has spent 3 years already wandering round the house, with no proposals. She is gen. 31 and has three kids (somehow). I hope this can be fixed, as I am trying to get 'rare' kids, and I am almost there. I was using the 'save' trick to keep getting proposals so I could pick a suitable mate, and now that doesn't work.

That bug has always been there. If you don't answer the mail before switching families it won't let you go back and answer it.

And it happens. Just try to keep a watch out for a proposal and I suggest you answer it before she turns too old

Not for me. As soon as I heard the *ping*, I would save the game, then answer the mail. If I didn't like the look of the suitor, I could pause, copy the saved game from a backup folder and go back and try again. I read about that trick on here somewhere, and it saved a lot of time waiting for Mr or Ms Right to come along.

oh wow, that's never worked for me. *shrugs* Cause I have the weird PC LOL

There are several kinds of emails, and they don't all behave the same. The flashing email icon doesn't necessarily mean that there's a marriage proposal waiting. It could be another type of email. And it's not a bug that leaving a game (by switching slots or quitting) resets emails. Many things are reset by leaving the game, by design. For emails, it all depends upon what type of email it was (and you can't know that without opening it - sort of a catch-22, huh?)

OK, so just for my understanding - the updated version should fix the 30th generation curse?

I found the link to the thread which explains how to 'choose' your suitor: Clicky I was using this method to save time waiting around for new proposals, but that doesn't work any more.

Yes, it does, plus a few other fixes, such as the issue with the store not always refreshing on time. See the readme file for more details.

I think I will have to contact Support then, as I have the latest version, but my singleton hasn't received any marriage proposals. I will wait another day or two, but she's already been in the house over 10 years.

KittyB, is it possible that your system clock was changed? That could cause what you are seeing. Also, if you pause the game often, that can affect the rate of emails, as well as events.

I don't think the system clock has been changed - I have it set to automatically update, and I think that happens pretty often, so I would've had this problem before. I have used the 'pause' option a lot in the game - I'd say for at least half my generations - and this is the first time I've had a problem with it. And it happens to coincide with reaching gen 31.

I will keep playing (well, waiting) and see if my person gets any proposals. If not, I will have to start again from scratch.

Thanks for the replies, all.

If you haven't made a back-up of that game slot file then I recommend you do it now. And if the Family Tree doesn't show her having 6 kids then hopefully you'll get an adoption event.

My Generation 30 was fine, it was Generation 31 that didn't get any proposals so I installed the updated version. Then I had to do something different to restart the 31st Generation but at the moment I don't remember what it was.

I just found an older post I made:

Was it simply clicking the Next Generation button that gave me that message? Does anyone else remember what they did to restart Generation 31?

If you never saw that message then I'm thinking that your game is not yet using the updated files. Just a thought.

If you go to the families screen you should see the 'New Generation' button at the top. If you click on that, you should get the message mentioned by MissKathy. If you click OK, the game should start agin with you being presented with a choice of the previous generation's kids to pick. If you clicked 'Cancel' or similar earler you would get a situation like the one you describe.

If you can't see the 'New Generation' button and you definitely have version 1.00.09, there's something wrong!

OK, I backed up my game, clicked on 'New Generation' and then saw the message Miss Kathy posted. I take it the only way forward is to lose my founding family from the family tree? I will have to make a screenshot, so I can remember Bono and Wifi. *sniff*

AWESOME!!! I'm so glad my post helped you! Yes, the only way to move forward is to lose the oldest family from the family tree. And this will happen with each of your next generations.

I remembered thinking that simply installing the update would automatically fix Generation 31 but it doesn't, at least not if you're already there. None of my other families are that far along so I can't test it out on them.

Okeydoke, I will make a screenshot and start my next generation. I will let you know if this fixes the problem.

Thanks, everyone, for all your help.

There is a limit of 30 generations that can be stored. Any more would place too much strain on the game's memory. That's why the first generation has to be deleted. In future, when it's time to start a new generation you'll get the same message, and the next earliest generation will need to be deleted.

I'm inching closer and closer to generation 31. Then I will lose Jessania and Cyber from the family tree. I am actually considering pausing the first two games when they reach generation 31. But I will continue playing on files 3-5 which are on generation 12.