If there was a day and night I'd want it to run in their time, not ours. So our day would have a few day/night cycles for them.

One thing I'd really like is a family tree page. So you could go in and see everyone who was related to everyone else. Not just the 'son/daughter of' which disappears when they grow up anyway.

This has been discussed several times before.

At the slowest speed setting a year in VV lasts four hours in real time. That means that each VV day would last about 40 seconds, meaning that the screen would have to change from night to day and back about every 20 seconds (assuming a 12-hour day/night cycle). At the faster speeds, the changes would be after every 10 seconds on normal or every 5 seconds on fast. That is clearly impractical. The solution used in VF, meaning that each day/night cycle lasts 3-4 years in the peeps' time is obviously not perfect, but is a good compromise.

We've also discussed the showing of family trees before. The problem is that the program would need far too much memory to store the arrays containing the family trees of so many villagers. It is possible in VF only because there is a limit of eight people in the one family, and only one child will reproduce. Even then, there's a limit of 30 generations; after that before each new generation is started an earlier one has to be deleted.

Virtual Villagers 5: The Final Chapter

I would like to see the story come to a conclusive and entertaining end in the final installment. The VV Series has been great and is loads of fun, but I think that the folks at Last Day of Work have more up their creative sleeves than just Virtual Villagers. There is a new trend to bend and/or combine game genres that I hope LDOW will explore in their subsequent titles, and to do so with more VV series would kind of ruin the whole VV experience, to my way of thinking.

You want VV5 to be the last one?

I actually think it could end the Isola series with VV5 but who's to say they could start a whole new VV series with a whole new storyline. I don't want to see the story completely stopped. But maybe a new story line pulling it in a different direction. But who am I to judge I don't even know where VV5 will take the story.

I knew it had been discussed before, must have missed the answers. Well I wouldn't mind if VV had a night/day cycle like VF taking a few years. As you said it's a good compromise.

Thanks for the family tree explanation. I'll change the want to just having the parents visible on a villager until they die rather than until they grow up, so you can identify siblings etc. for longer.

Even then I suspect that would be too much data to store in memory. I'm not a programmer but I imagine the age 18 limit is there for that reason. Maybe it might be possible if the number of villagers were to be cut dramatically, to (say) 50, or their life expectancy were reduced, but both ways would be very unpopular with many gamers.

Many more leisure tasks. The variety of tasks, and the villager's preferences are what make this game seem alive to me, and most leisure tasks are simply a matter of the right pre-existing animations in the right place, with the right flavor text. For instance, playing catch with your child. Playing chess or cards with another villager. Work tasks are limited, because the village's needs are limited, but hobbies are always many and varied. There's no reason for the things villagers do for fun, spontaneously, to be as limited as I've seen in the past.

Painting pictures, which when completed, could be carried to a gallery to make room for another picture, without end. (And sculpture, pottery, etc.) Running races, playing catch, the old folks playing chess or checkers or some odd game played with stones or something. (Something for the old folks.) Throwing darts, playing hide-and-go-seek or tag. How about relaxing and drinking tea? After making a clothing hut, maybe needlepoint is an option for the older ladies.

The way the villagers play and relax in their varied ways is, I think, one of the things that makes this series of games really breathe, and I want to see more of that. Not necessarily lazy villagers, but when they DO decide to take some time off, I'd like to see them with more varied hobbies.

And REAL hobbies, rather than staring at clouds, or cooling their feet in the stream, or doing laundry. Things that a man or a woman do to give their life more meaning.

Agreed.

BTW, It's nce to see you back Lurkily!

Yeah, but maybe rarely would they find one, because if the children found all the collectables and you found hardly any, it wouldn't feel like an accomplishment.



*nice