I was wondering if over the holiday weekend while my time is stopped, if my fish will all die. I stop the time at night, and When I get back to work in the morning, usually one of my games, the fish all starved?And in the others, everything stayed the same. Is this supposed to happen, if so, what do you do if you cant check on your fish over the weekends?

If you stop time in Fish Tycoon, the game will be just as you left it when you return. If you have more than one player in the Windows version, remember to stop time for each player. Each player's time setting is controlled separately, so if you didn't stop time in all of them, that would account for the different results you've had when you returned.

Yeah I had stopped it in all games, I even check to make sure it says "time stopped" on the screen, But one of them kept going. Okay but at least I know it completely stops, Thank you very much!!

There is one thing that might have happened to cause the problem you saw. If you go to the menu and change players, and then change the game speed setting before you click Play, the game will update the tanks based on the new speed setting, and not the speed setting you had previously. You need to always click Play when you change players to make sure that nothing bad happens, and then you can change the game speed setting.

I have 3 games going on the windows version and sometimes when I stop time, it only works on the first game I stopped it on. Even though I stopped time on the other two they keep going. I come back to find my fish have aged, are hungry and most of the time developed fungus or ick.

Are you changing the game speed right after you switch players? If you are, that's the reason you're seeing time pass. As I mentioned before, if you go to the menu and change players, then change the game speed before you click Play, the game will ignore that you had it paused all that time and update all of your fishies at the new speed setting when you click Play. You must click Play immediately after switching players if you want to preserve your game speed setting. Once you've clicked Play, you can go back to the menu and change the game speed.

I feel sure that when I stop time, it doesn't work unless I go to each tank and jiggle the fish just to let them know. I forgot to do that last night and when I woke up they were all sick and nearly dead - is this possible?

I've never had to do that, and Stop Time works fine for me in all of my testing (as long as I don't change the game speed when I change players until after I've clicked Play).

The screen that had all the dead and sick fish had time stopped on the
screen before I quit the game to be away from it awhile. When I return the
screen still says time stopped but the fish are scik or dead. I always go
through all my players a couple of times to be sure they all say stopped
before exiting the game. I am sure that all games are stopped as the screen
says time stopped and the option button says the same.

While playing the game I have tried changing speeds bofore and after
clicking play and the Options button always stays where I put it both ways.
Under these circumstances I fail to see how to be sure what my speed is if
the options button says one thing and the game preceives something else.

You don't, by any chance, have Magic Fish #4 in any of your tanks, do you? That fish doesn't seem to pay attention to the game speed setting, and continues to affect the other fishies (and itself), even when the game speed is set to stop time.

As a matter of fact I do have #4 in all the tanks I breed in to speed up growth. Guess I will try putting them in the sale tank before I quit and see it this helps.

I have the same problem with "stopping time" .. I read thru all the posts and as for the Magic fish #4.. I do have that one in both players. Like the previous posts.. One of my games is fine when I return. (with magic fish #4) and the other game I have sick and starving fish. Have not had any die yet.. but very sad shape when i turn the computer on.

I do click play first.. before changing speed settings.. and I do go back and make sure the "stopped time" stamp is on both players before i turn off computer. (obsessively, I check about 3 or 4 times.) Still, when I come back one player is fine.. but the other game the time has continued to march on..

I also have had the problem with stopping time and I DO NOT have fish #4 in any of the games yet. i have lost loads of games and i cant determine if its something i'm doing. it took me ages to work out you have to go back into the game once you have stopped time for it to register, but i even do this and i still have the problem

Can anyone help?

I have never had problems with stopping time in my games (as long as I follow the precautions that I outlined above), and I have many games running on multiple computers for testing purposes - all set for Stop Time. If someone who is having this problem would care to keep track of exactly what you're doing (what steps you take to stop time, whether or not you click play after stopping time, when and how you change players, and the exact steps you take when you start the game(s) back up), perhaps we could identify what is causing the disasters in your games.

I shall keep a track and let you know over the next few days (Murphy's law it wont happen now!)

Thanks.

cleeby

That would be great!

i kept a track last night and followed your instructions and today they had all stopped as expected, you will be pleased to hear. i will continue to monitor for the next few days.

cleeby

Thanks! It would be good if someone can find the sequence of events that causes Stop Time to act badly.

ok, opened it up tonite and two of my tanks had underfed and sick fish - about to die and the were all perfectly heathy when i closed them down last night. with these two tanks it was the way i went into them to start them up that i believe was different. I closed down all five as per your instructions and got dh to watch in case i did it wrong. When i went into each one this evening if I changed player then went into options before pressing play and changed the time (to 2xfaster speed) I got sick and dying/dead fish. for those where i pressed play first, get the 'Times Stopped' message and then went into options, were fine.

I shall try it again next time to see if this is the key.

hope this helps.

cleeby

What you saw is what I would expect to happen. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, if you go to the menu and change players, then change the game speed before you click Play, the game will ignore that you had it paused all that time and update all of your fishies at the new speed setting when you click Play. Basically, the game doesn't know you had Stop Time set, if you change it to something else before you click Play (and your fish will be in the same condition they would have been if you'd left it at that speed setting when you last saved the game). You must click Play immediately after switching players if you want to preserve your game speed setting (whether that's Stop Time or any other game speed setting). Once you've clicked Play, you can go back to the menu and change the game speed.

ok well that explains it, thanks. The same thing happened tonite so i know why its happening.

might it be useful to explain this in the Help menu so that ppl dont lose valuable time / games / fishes? the reason why i ask this is that to me it doesnt make sense that you have to press play to accept the setting, e.g. i have played the game and i want to switch it off for the night, so i go into options and press stop time, why do i have to press play again to save the settings? i dont want to play i want to exit. maybe there should be a save settings button? also when i start up the game i know the game is set to stop time so why would i want to go into the game first and then come back out if i know that the first thing to do logically is reset the time speed?

just my thoughts.

the important thing is that after many months of losing hours of games i now know how to ensure it doesnt happen again.

Thanks.

cleeby

i visited this forum for the first time (and played the game!) last night. i was a little worried about stopping time all day cos some people have claimed they did to no avail. i can happily say that i had no issue with this. my game stayed paused all day!

When you stop your game although your fish would move they will not starve, get sick, lose health, etc. the only thing that will happen is that when you feed them the fed meter will go up.

I have to say that I have exactly the same problems. Screen szys time stopped, fish continure to age and die. Very frustrating!

That won't happen if you always click Play immediately after changing players. The state of your tanks is updated based on the speed that's set when you click Play.

Ladycfii, I think I've figured this out. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.

To successfully stop time:
1. stop time
2. hit play, see TIME STOPPED on screen (so the game registers the time change)
3. return to menu, switch players
Repeat all three steps above for all accounts

Upon returning:
1. hit play, see TIME STOPPED on screen
2. return to menu, change time
3. hit play again
Repeat all three steps above for all accounts.

I think I've identified the problem most of us have had with this. The game doesn't run while we're not playing it. When we exit out of it, everything freezes exactly as we left it. We've stopped the time and made sure by peeking in and saw TIME STOPPED printed on the screen.

Then we return and bring up the game. The first thing we do is change the time, and then click Play to go into the account. Because it'd be silly to click play, then come back out to change the time, then click play again, right? WRONG! That's our mistake.

You have to understand how the game works. When we're not playing in an account, nothing happens at all. Everything freezes and stays exactly the way we left it, no matter what time setting it's currently on. It stays that way until we click Play again, and in a split-second, the game looks at the current speed setting, and calculates what happened over the period of our absence multiplied by the current time setting.

BUT we've already changed the time setting so it's no longer stopped. So when the game calculates what happened during our absence, it's using the NEW time setting that we just changed it to, instead of the 'stopped' setting we had it on overnight. So our fish have starved, gotten sick, and died.

So the key is - when returning, click Play BEFORE changing the time to make the game recognize the stopped time!

So if you stop time overnight, then open the game and change the time setting BEFORE you hit play, then the game calculates how much time has passed while you were gone on that CURRENT setting, which is no longer in stopped time.

To the programmers (suggestion) - to prevent such widespread confusion, please add a short explanation to the ingame help to say that we MUST click play before changing the time upon returning. Most people would never figure this out on their own, since they have no experience with programming whatsoever.

I have been playing Fish Tycoon on Pogo (very excited to see one of your games there) and the pause time feature doesnt seem to be working. Is this a fluke, or am I doing something wrong, or....? Whenever I am about to leave, I change it to pause I go back & the fish are either dead or starving.

If you're playing the Flash version (the free online one), it doesn't have all the features of the full game. It's intended to be more of a demo than a full game.

I've found this happen too, but I've been trying something that seems to work. When you first log into a user, hit "play" with the time stopped so you can see the fist, then go back to options and change time. This seems to be working.

I found that for each game I have to stop the time and then exit, go back in and stop the time for the next game and exit. That works for me.

i have played fish tycoon numerous times......3 times where i found all 7 magic fish. i mostly turn my time onto 1/2 time and leave the game from about 1AM till 6PM the next day. my fish are hungry everytime when i go back and rarely have ick or fungi....

i also turn my time off and and never had any hungry or sick fish when i returned. we have player's games going on the same computer at the same time.

naturally, before all the research is finished you would expect to have more sick fish. but persistance pervails!

Hello,
I had a same problem one day.When I stop time,it doesn't work unless I go to each tank and jiggle the fish just to let them know. I forgot to do that last night and when I woke up they were all sick and nearly dead.Is it possible or not?

Oh, thanks! I didn't like Fish Tycoon at all 'cause all my fish would always die! I just decided to play Plant Tycoon instead.