I bought Village Sim today as soon as it came out; it has crashed my Zodiac 2 three times, now. I can play for a while, but then it crashes if I start a new game. Please help! I love the game, but am not happy about this!
Gatewood

Could you please provide a little more information about the crashes? It would really help a lot in figuring out what's going on. The game was beta tested on several Zodiacs and was pretty stable, so the more information you could provide, the better. I'm sure Arthur will work with you to help resolve the problem.

Hmmm. I have a zod and the demo works fine on mine... I'm not sure what else to say.

Hello. I have a Sone Clie TJ-27 and I have the same problem. I downloaded the trial version and when I attempt to create a new came (after already creating the first game and following the tutorial), I get a fatal exception error and I have to soft reset my PDA. If I continue my current game, it works just fine. But as soon as I click on the "menu" button in the lower right hand corner and select "New Game" I get the exception error. Is there a file that I can remove that will remove the curerntly saved game file?

I installed all 4 files including the music files (even though my PDA doesn't support the music). I am not sure if thie would matter.

Until I get a resolution, I won't register this game - and I really like the one game I can play!

-S

You might try deleting the file VillageSavegame.pdb and see if that helps. If it does, let us know that. If it doesn't, please provide more information on the crash to help figure out what's happening.

I don't think the music files are contributing to the problem. Out of curiosity, do you hear the sound effects on your Clie? There is a hack that one of the beta testers used to be able to hear the music on his Clie NX70V, but he didn't seem to be able to get both music and sound effects.

I uninstalled and reinstalled, and so far am going OK on the Zodiac, but it seems that it happened every time after starting a new game and accessing the menu. It happened a bunch more times last night, so I just deleted the whole thing and reinstalled it. Something obviously got corrupted.
Gatewood

I had the same problem on my tungsten E. I got around it by first starting a new game, then exiting out to the main palm menu and re-entering the game. Since then it has behaved fine. Perhaps some files get overwritten when you exit or re-enter. Hope that helps, now if I could just keep my poor little villages from starving to death.

I had the same problem with my Treo 600. I tried to start a new game. It would let me play a little, then it would automaticly re-boot. I fixed the problem by letting the villagers die due to lack of food. Then when I started a new game, all is fine.

I'm hearing more than a few reports of this, and it is something we saw a little in beta. Our in-office test devices don't do this, which makes it a little trickier to debug.

I'm starting to get the idea that there is an error in the data initialization when a new game is started.

I'm going to have a look at this and see why starting a new game might crash/lockup.

Has anyone found a reliable way to get around this? Reinstall working? Starting a new game, then entering menu, then back into game?

Gatewood has the reinstall helped? How is stability now?

I'm the Annum. above. I did not try to re-install. Like I said, what "fixed" the prob for me was having all the villagers die overnite. When I started it in the am, and selected new game, all has gone well so far. (8 realtime hours played).

Can anyone tell me, also, when it locks up on starting a new game....does it lock up at the yes/no dialog? Or does it get as far as showing the first intro story screen?

I actually get into game time. I'm guessing, but I think it is when it tries to save the new game it causes a re-boot. Then when after the re-boot, I run the program again, and there was my old game. And the old game was further along then when I tried starting a new game. Then I would try starting a new game, and again after the message, had a little play time (less then 10 mins), boom it would re-boot.

If anyone is crashing reliably, that is you can make it crash any time you want, or it always crashes when you try to do something or when you play, I would love to try some special builds on your device.

You could really help us improve stability for yourself as well as for others. PM me here and we'll set up some kind of instant messenging and try some builds.

I would not mind helping. Is there a way to backup the current game, so just incase it does actually successfully start a new game, I don’t lose where I’m at? If so, I would help you out.

P.M. if there is.

p.s. That would be a good feature, the ability to save two are three files.

Ok I have another tester with a Clie who had this exactly problem.

Since you can reproduce this, are you interested in helping me test some special builds? I can usually solve this kind of reproducable error in less than 10 tries, and I think I know exactly where to look.

Send me a private message here.

Just sent you a PM. Also, I am now registered.

Thanks,
-S

I am playing on my Palm Tungsten E. I have had a crash with every game I have played except for the first time. There has not been a pattern to these crashes. Hope you find the cause as it is such a brilliant game. When I go back into the game after a crash all the people are dead. It is very sad. Thanks......Buny

I'll post this again here, since people who are experiencing crashes are likely to see it:

Since there are many, many different kinds of crashes, it would be very helpful to Arthur if you would take a moment to write down any information that you get when the device crashes. (For example, Fatal Alert: Window68K.c, Line:86, No shadow window found (Reset), or some other code or symptom), as well as what you were actually doing when the device crashed.

Even if there is no pattern, this information (along with any other details you can provide) will help tremendously. Arthur needs more than "my game crashed" to help track down the bugs, but he will work with you to help resolve them. He has spent an entire day (or more) working with me to resolve some tricky bugs, so I know he wants to get these fixed. He just needs your help.

That crash that Buny has is fixed and there is a fixed version available temporarily here: www.ldwsoftware.com/VillageSimFixed.zip

The crash has be recognized as follows: after install game runs fine, but any subsequent attempts to start a 'new game' result in a crash.