I have a Nook HD, 8G with a 32G MicroSD (SanDisk) card that has Android 4.2.1.

I have Fish Tycoon that I bought either at Google Play or Amazon Apps (will have to check) and it plays great for the most part. I have bought all 3 upgrades of Food, Environment and Advertising.

I did not have any crashing issues until after I completed the 3rd level of Advertising. But, the 3rd level of Advertising is the last one I bought. In other words, if I had completed the 3rd level of Advertising before completing the 3rd level of Food or Environment, then perhaps it would have started after completing those instead.

I have ran into the problem that others were posting about where it closes when Selling. Although, I can actually get into the Sell screen and even sell all my fish, but as soon as I try to get back to tanks 1 or 2, then it closes.

I decided to see if Clear Data would work, so I went into my Setting, Apps, Fish Tycoon. Clear Data is grayed out, but clear cache was not. It stated 24kb of cache. I hit clear cache and it went to 12kb.

I went back into my game and everything that I had done before I sold fish was undone. I had to choose which fish to sell, which fish to get pregnant, etc. Then I sold and this time it let me go back to either/both fish tank 1 and 2.

I went out of the game and back in again and moved a few from one tank to the next. Found 3 more I wanted to sell and moved them into the Sell tank. Went in and sold and it crashed again.

I cleared the cache (again, it stated 24kb and cleared to 12kb) then went back into my game. This time most were sold and some were pregnant and there were still 3 I wanted to sell. I moved those 3 to the Sale tank and sold them, then hit Menu and exited. Went and cleared cached from 24kb back to 12kb, went back in and had just what I wanted.

So, maybe what I reported will not help at all, maybe it will. I think the problem with the crashing is linked to the way/amount of cache.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to reproduce this on our test devices, and the issue may be caused by a low memory condition. Some customers have reported overcoming this problem by reducing the number of fish in their selling tank to less than 15. Also, many customers have been able to resolve this problem by freeing up memory on their device.

I did see that you cleared your cache, but have you freed up the memory on your device? (I'm enclosing some information below on this)

You can prevent many crashes by making sure that you close any apps that you aren't actually using before playing the game. With multi-tasking operating systems like Android OS, tapping the home function does not completely close an app and free the memory that it was using. Tapping Home places the app in the background, where it can still consume system resources. Whenever you want to make sure that sufficient memory is available for running apps, you should use the application management function in your device's Settings panel to close any apps you don't need running. This will make more memory available to run the game. If you're not sure how to close running apps, let me know.

These are the apps that are running:

Settings - 1 process and 0 services 47MB
Facebook - 1 process and 1 service 21MB
Maps - 1 process and 1 service 5.9MB
Maps - 1 process and 1 service 5.5MB
Lookout - 1 process and 3 services 19MB
Xfinity TV Go - 1 process and 1 service 5.9MB
CM Updater - 1 process and 1 service 2.4MB
DSP Manager - 1 process and 1 service 2.3MB
Google Services - 1 process and 2 services 12MB
Google Services - 2 processes and 5 services 16MB
Android Keyboard (AOSP) - 1 process and 1 service 22MB

RAM - 404MB Used 380 MB free

I don't know which ones can be turned off without causing problems, do you? Also, do you know how much "free" RAM is required? It says I have 380MB free.

When I click on Storage, I first notice that Fish Tycoon (and Virtual Family) are both in Internal Storage instead of my SD Card. When I click on Apps within Internal Storage, I see 1.4GB used, 632MB free. But that's storage space, not RAM, right? You are talking about freeing up RAM, aren't you? Or did you mean freeing up both?

I uninstalled Xfinity TV Go as I never use it anyway, but the others listed above don't have the option to uninstall. They do have a Force Stop, but I'm afraid to do that. I did move every book to the cloud and uninstalled every single app I could uninstall except for four. I kept Fish Tycoon, Virtual Families, a color bubbles app that wasn't running in the background and my clock/weather widget.

I removed everything I could, stopped everything I could, even shut my tablet down...still happening. Now, even clearing the cache doesn't help. I ended up uninstalling it. I'll be another one of the people on Amazon apps and Google Play store warning people not to buy it.

We are very sorry that you've had this much trouble with Fish Tycoon on your Nook tablet. As Heather mentioned earlier, we have never been able to reproduce, locate or fix this issue, which seems to affect only a small percentage of players. We are going to attempt to reproduce this again, using your description of how you encountered the bug. Maybe we will have some success this time.

We will be happy to refund your purchase price for the game. Please submit a Support Request on our help desk, and Heather or Jeni will take care of you.

Again, I'm sorry that your experience with Fish Tycoon was such a bad one.

Thank you, Barbara, for listening to me. I bought it from Google Play Store and left a bad review there. I will remove or modify my review since you've had the decency to respond to me with something other than a pat answer.

Actually, I don't want a refund. I really love the game, but I want to be able to play it. I had actually gotten the first four magical fish and was quite a ways into the game. I will keep it on the cloud and, hopefully, you guys will get it fixed. I'll watch for an 'update' then try again.

I didn't really give you much info though, are you sure it was enough to try to duplicate the problem?

P.S. You stated that only a small percentage of people have reported having this problem -- have you read the reviews at Google Play? Seems like a lot to me.

I'm very sorry that you felt that my reply was a pat answer, Simsane. I certainly didn't mean it that way. We have read the reviews on Google Play, but the percentages of complaints both in our supports and in the Google Play store are very small when compared to the overall downloads of the game.

We know that it's possible that many people don't complain to us or on the store, or simply delete the game when they encounter this problem, which is why, as Barbara said, we are still working to replicate the problem.

Again, I'd like to apologize if my original answer was not helpful to you.

Xay, I don't have anything against you personally, but I had read that same answer to another thread where someone else reported the same problem. So, it sounded like one of those answers where you're told, "If they complain about this, then tell them this, blah, blah, blah."

According to many of the reviews (I did go back and give it 3 stars instead of only 1 but left my report of the crashing when selling) this problem has been going on for quite a long time and yes, there are people that it works for, but there are many that are having the same problem as I am.

I have bought every single one of your PC games and have bought one of the Virtual Villagers games that work on Android and also Virtual Family for Android besides Fish Tycoon. I love your games (although, to be honest, I really don't like Virtual Families 2, but that's just me -- there isn't any problems with it) and have raved to everyone about them.

What I don't understand is why you guys would just let it go like that, knowing there are so many people having the same problems.

Is this company closing/dying... so you just don't really care? It kind of seems that way. No new PC games since VF2 and not really trying to fix the Android problems. I guess if I was the owner of a company that I was getting burned out on and thinking about shutting down, then I wouldn't care if people liked my games or not. But if this company still wants to be strong and sell games, then you would think they would care enough to try to fix problems, is all I'm saying.

Hi Simsane,

I'm Arthur the founder here at LDW. I just wanted to let you know that we do hear your complaints and we do care about the player experience. I love Fish Tycoon, too, even though it is one of our older titles.

The challenge is always balancing supporting the older games, against working on (and supporting) the newer games. Fish Tycoon was actually first launched in 2006, but what has really made it hard to get perfectly straight for everyone is that now we all like to play on our tablets and phones. That means that we have literally 100's of devices, each with their own quirks and problems, to keep straight. We are happy to field support requests and solves everyone's problems as fast as we can, of course!

Look, we will try to find the problem, but we don't own every single device and the Nook is one that we do not have (we are a tiny company!!). We will, nevertheless, continue trying to reproduce and fix it. Since it has frustrated you and we want all of our fans to be as happy as possible, can I offer you another free game, or some free currency in one of our "free-to-play" games, just as a gesture of appreciation?

Arthur

Just the fact that you will try to figure out the problem is enough. As I said, I've already bought all the PC games you offer, and on my Nook, I have Virtual Family. I bought one of the Virtual Villagers games offered for Android and tried it out on my Nook. It played, but the players were really tiny and odd looking, so I didn't like playing it. I loved Fish Tycoon until I couldn't play it anymore.

I have never heard of your "free-to-play" games, unless you mean one of the "trial" versions of Fish Tycoon, Virtual Family, etc.

But really, I don't care about the $1.99 I spent and I'm not asking for anything to replace Fish Tycoon. I just want it fixed, is all.

I do understand you don't have a Nook, but from the reviews I've read, the problem doesn't just affect Nook players. A few others mentioned their devices and they were not all Nooks. Out of curiousity, which Android device do you guys play it on? I have been thinking about buying a new Android (IOS devices are just too expensive for me) and would love to be able to buy one where all your games actually work.

We will see whether our renewed testing will help us to determine what causes the crash. You said that the crashes started happening after you researched the last level of advertising, and that you had researched all the other areas before that. We'll see where that leads us.

I would like to say though, that we didn't just let it go. It might help at this point if I explain a bit about the process of bug-fixing. The most successful method of fixing bugs is based on reproducing them in our software development environment using debugging tools, where we can force the bug to happen and locate exactly what part of the code is causing the problem. In that situation, there's pretty much a 100% chance of fixing a bug. The difficulty with fixing a bug that fails only rarely or under a specific set of circumstances is that we can't use that method, since we can't reproduce the bug and force it to occur. The only thing left to do then is to use our eyes and brains to review pertinent parts of the code to see what we can find. It's not nearly as successful, especially for these elusive bugs. Video games have a lot of complex programming.

I am not convinced that these issues are related to the particular brand or model of Android device, but I suppose it's a possibility. The devices that Fish Tycoon was tested on (back in 2010 when the game being prepared for Android) were Android phones running Android 1.6 and 2.2. Today we use a combination of Android phones and tablets. We have a mix of Samsung, Google Nexus and Amazon devices, since those represent the primary app stores where we offer our games.

Like you, we have to use our resources wisely, and those are the devices we settled on after checking out what the majority of our customers are using to run our games.

Thanks for letting me know which devices you guys are using. I have been thinking about checking into Google Nexus. Originally, I asked for a Kindle, not a Nook, but my husband said he couldn't find one at the local stores so he bought the Nook instead. It's not a "bad" tablet but I would now like a bigger screen.

I don't play games on my phone, the screen is too small and I have old eyes, lol! Besides, I'm using my son's old I-phone 3 and since it's so old, I'm not sure any games would even play on it anymore.

Just an FYI...I reinstalled the game and started over. I'm going to see what happens if I never buy the third level of advertising. I intend to buy all three levels of food and environment along with the second level of advertising though.

It'll take some time before I will know if that makes any difference, of course, especially since the 'pairs' of fish I got from the first two batches of inexpensive eggs are not high value pairs.

I think I will play for quite some time after completing the third level of food and environment before I purchase the second level of advertising. I have no problem waiting a while for them to sell.

Thanks, Simsane! Please let us know how it goes for you. We are going through our own testing, as well.

Update:

Well, I managed to get two greenfin spotanus and started building up money. I have both food and environment at level two now and have paid for level three in food. I'm still at level one in advertising, but am not having any problems selling.

I have also bought the second tank, the aerator and the temperature regulator. I can't remember if/which plants and decorations right now, so will edit this post after checking.

I have played mostly either in half speed or two-times speed. Haven't had any die (actually, I've never had any die - even playing on my PC), but have had a few sick ones that I had to cure.

Just before starting this post I moved all adults into the sales tank, moved all babies into tank two and bought three batches of the pink (least expensive) eggs and got them going in tank one. Will be back to report on plants/decorations.

Edit: I only have the plant of nutrition. No other plants or decorations yet.

This is very helpful to us. We are testing various scenarios, as well, and your feedback could provide just the clues that we need.

I now have all four plants and the snail. In the selling tank, I also have the shell, the diver and the coral. I have all three levels of research in both food and environment, but still only have the first level in advertising.

I have sold anywhere from as little as four fish to as many as 21 fish without any problems so far. Oh, and I don't know if it matters but I now have (and have sold) the first three magic fish.

I had the first four magic fish when I started having problems last time, so I think I will wait on buying the second level of advertising until after I have (and have sold) the fourth magic fish.

Thanks again for the detailed report!

I have completed one run through of the entire game, including all three levels of advertising, without encountering the crash. Like you, I've sold as few as 1 and as many as 21 fish. I have all the magic fish and have bred many of the exotic species, all without incident (I'm a very speedy player of Fish Tycoon, having tested it a zillion times since the original back in the early 2000s.)

I've got another device coming this week, and I'll be running another test on it. I hope we find the bug.

I'd say you're fast, lol! Even with the list of what will make which magic fish and how to make the various fish and fins found in the Guide section, I can't make them that fast, lol!

Well, as I said, everything is still working fine so far. I will go see if the fish I need to combine to make the fourth magic fish are adults yet. Once I have at least three of them and can sell one, then I'll go ahead and buy the second level of advertising.

I think this will work out well, with us working together to compare what happens in our games. I will try a completely different approach in the next run through the game.

I have sold some of the fourth magic fish without any problems. I now have two of magic fish numbers one, two and three, and four of number four. All pregnant and split 5/5 between tanks one and two.

I also paid for level two of advertising, but put it on 1/2 time. All fish are fed and healthy, so should be fine for 10 - 12 hours. Hopefully, at that time I'll have level two in advertising and several more fish to sell.

If all goes well, do you think I should then buy level three in advertising (just sticking with raising and selling magic fish 1-4) to see what happens after that?

It would be good to know whether or not the third level of advertising is a factor in the bug. I did my research in a different order than what you did in your current game, having fully researched Advertising before completing the other two, and I didn't encounter the crash. Since you have completed all of the others, it would be a good comparison with my test.

I'll be starting two new games today with a different order of research in each game.

OK, I'll buy the third level of advertising then. As far as which fish, when it happened before, I had the first four than too. I was strictly raising and selling them cause I wanted to build up enough money to be able to sell off all of the first four, start playing with mixing the cheaper fish, and not worry about running out of money. I had $9,000+ when it started crashing.

Will let you know what happens.

Just wanted to let you know:

a). I've been playing on Easy
b). It's about halfway through level three of advertising
c). I just sold off a bunch of the first four magic fish (don't have any other types)
d). I now have $8792 (in case hitting $10,000 makes a difference)

Edited to add:

a). 3/4 way to completing level three
b). Sold more fish and now have $9540

I'm also playing on easy, since it's... well... easier to make money!

It's good that you're including these details, since we don't know what specific circumstances trigger the crash.

My device delivery was delayed a day, so I'll be starting the two new games later today.

Bad news. After level 3 was completed, I sorted which ones I wanted to sell and clicked to sell them. The sales screen opened and I got a glimpse of the crowd moving to the door...think it showed that one sold even before anyone even got through the door, but not positive cause the game closed up so fast.

I then shut off my Nook, did a soft reboot (hold the power button for 20 - 25 seconds) then turned it back on and opened the game. I had to resort which ones to sell again, but this time it didn't close on me and they all sold. Afterwards, I chose which ones to get pregnant then went into Options to put on 1/2 time and closed the game.

Oh, but I now have over $10,000 so that didn't trigger it.

I'll see what happens when I try to sell again. One thing I have realized though, I can actually play just fine as long as I don't ever buy level three of advertising.

Hmmm, this is good, but odd. Other than it crashing that first time after level three in advertising completed, it hasn't happened again. I've sold the first four again twice without problems. I also bought two batches of the mid-priced eggs and two batches of the most expensive eggs and sold all without a glitch. I even put several of my granddaughter's games and several of my books back on without any problems.

I know that when it kept crashing over and over I only had the first four magic fish, so it can't be that a particular breed was causing it, since I tested with those same four. Well, I think I'm going to start a brand new game but this time record each and every fish and all I do. Hopefully I'll never have another problem, but if I do then I'll be able to send my records to you guys.

All I can say is, I'm sorry to have caused you guys more work and I'm sorry I wasn't able to duplicate the problem and be more helpful. I still believe there is a pproblem and feel I'm forgetting something I did or didn't do before.

I'll wait to start a new game until after I hear your thoughts on my results, just in case you'd rather I tried a little longer. I really wanted the problem found. Not just for me, but for others having the problem too.

Made some quick silvers -- hadn't seen those before. Everything still working great. I'm beginning to wonder if uninstalling it and reinstalling it made the difference. I have broadband internet but use the WiFi to install onto my Nook and maybe the first installation glitched up. Maybe the WiFi dropped out for a second or so the first time I installed the game and that's what caused the problem. Then when I reinstalled, it got All the files, so it's working properly.

I'm sorry it has taken so long to reply. I had some other Android game issues to work on Friday and Saturday, and yesterday was my youngest grandson's baptism and birthday. Busy weekend!

It is possible that uninstalling and reinstalling the game "cleared" whatever condition was causing the crash that you were seeing in your original game. At this point, all we can do is speculate, though, since the problem is so elusive. I'm going to follow your "path" on the game you've described and see what happens.

Sounds like you did, indeed, have a busy weekend! A nice one too. . I checked, but wasn't upset at the lack of response, I figured you would once the weekend was over.

I haven't started a new game yet. I might see if I can get the other 2 magic fish first then start a new game. I was playing around after buying one batch of each type of eggs and ended up making magic fish number seven, lol! Didn't do it on purpose so was surprised when I saw them.

I've been thinking about selling off numbers one through four and just having the number sevens to keep the money coming in while I just play around with different combinations. Boy, catfish are sure UGLY, aren't they?! Lol!

Magic fish number 7 is the primary fish species swimming around in my tanks. It's very handy for accumulating enough cash to purchase anything I want (including a bunch of growth hormone for those impatient times)!

You might as well play around with your current game and take advantage of the opportunity to explore more species. Enjoy some of that money!

Yes, catfish are ugly! You won't find many of them in my tanks!

Just a quick note to let you know that my tanks are on Stopped Time cause I've been busy lately. Although, before I put them on pause, I was randomly having the game close out as soon as I tried to sell and when I'd go back in, I would have to re-do picking out which ones to sell, get pregnant, etc. Anyway, I probably won't have time to get back to it until next Wednesday or so.

Thanks for the update. I'll have a few more questions for you and a couple of things for you to try, once you're ready to resume play.

O.k., my life has slowed back down again for now, what do you want me to try? My game is still paused.

I would actually like to start a new game and write everything down, but down deep I know I probably wouldn't follow through on doing that. I'd start out fine, but end up playing without bothering to write it all down. I am willing to try though.

Well, I'll leave it paused until after you have a chance to let me know what to try. No rush.

Actually, it would probably be the most helpful if you continue to play your current game and see if the glitch in the game returns. You'd certainly enjoy that path more than trying, quite possibly in vain, to find the exact set of circumstances that caused it.

If you really want to start a new game, you could certainly do that. You never know whether you'll run into the problem again until you try.

Ok, I'll just keep playing for now. I have had the problem several times where as soon as I hit the Sell Fish screen, it closed the game and when I opened it back up, I had to choose which ones to sell again, which ones to get pregnant again, etc.

I have learned that after it closes on me, I must tap the icon at the bottom of my screen that shows everything that has been opened. Then hit the clear at the top. Even if the ONLY thing showing is Fish Tycoon.

When I do that, then tap to play again, I see the LDW screen for a couple of seconds before I see the fish tanks. Then I can go ahead and move fish from tanks 1 and 2 into the Sale Tank, get certain ones left in tanks 1 and 2 pregnant, and then sell the ones in the Sale Tank without having the game crash on me.

But before I uninstalled and reinstalled, it was working to clear the cache for a while too. After a while though, the game would crash as soon as I tried to sell no matter what I did.

Anyway, I have definitely come to appreciate why this has been so hard for you guys to find and fix. Maybe it is Nook's fault, but then it's also the fault of several other Android devices as well.

Just in case it might help, I want to explain a bit about why you often have to redo things after a crash and give you some tips on how to avoid the annoyance of losing a few minutes of game play.

Anytime an app crashes, it's a very ungraceful event, and the app doesn't have a chance to save anything as it is abruptly terminated. This means that when you start it up again, it will load the data from the last time the app was saved. In the case of Fish Tycoon, the app is programmed to automatically save game progress every 10 minutes, along with another save when you close the game. If a crash occurs soon after a save point, you won't have to redo very much, but if it's been nearly 10 minutes since the last save, you will have to go back and redo much more of your recent game play.

To avoid that annoyance, when you're playing the game in a situation where you might run into crashes, the best thing to do is close the game just before you do something that has been known to cause crashes. That way, your game is saved at exactly the point you desire. Now you can open the game again and do the "dangerous" thing, knowing that if the game crashes, you can start right back up where you left off.

That little tidbit can come in handy at times!

Thank you! I actually noticed that myself. It was accidental at first -- I had just finished moving fish into the Sell Tank and getting the ones pregnant that I wanted to be pregnant and had to get up to do something else so I exited the game. Later when I came back in to sell (without remembering to first clear the Recent items) it crashed. When I went back in, everything was still how I wanted it to be.

I wasn't positive that was why, but after what you just wrote, now I am. Thank you.

We're always glad to explain things (well... if we can explain them, that is. )!

Please let us know how things are going from time to time. I have yet to see that crash in any of my games.