I just wanted to post a gentle warning for all people who think they can time travel to beat this game. Although very possible to beat this game time travelling you will not be able to master many aspects of the game and complete certain things such as collectables easily if you do time travel. Making elders will be very difficult and your village itself will have a harder time getting along if you time travel. It is not nearly as timer friendly as VV1 one was crop timers and other timers in the game either. One wrong move, or forget to change AM to PM or something simple and your village is wiped or crippled. Be careful gamers This game is much more enjoyable when played out in full.

My 2 cents...and there wont be much support for warpers either. If someone suspects you of warping and your having game issues, there is little support because technically its considered cheating and game stableness is not tested on the basis of cheating and seeing if it still works
Enjoy!

Great post, VM

I second that VM, excellent post!

Lisalyanne

We should have a permanent link to this particular post just for all those "why'd my game do this weird thing?" topics.

Thanks, VM!

Agreed squawky - at least a temp sticky

Time Traveling is the easiest way to take all the fun out of the game. The enjoyable aspect of both versions of VV is not watching your tribe of 90 operate, but the process it takes to get there. Just my 2 cents worth...

Hi, New here and just looking over the forum. Noticed that "time warp" is mentioned alot. What the heck is that? Now I agree with most of y'all that cheating takes all the fun out of games.

Thanks for letting me be here.
yantags

Cheating by setting your computer clock forward.

I was wondering what people were talking about when they said "Time Traveling." It's another word for cheating. And you are so right, Huskergolfer; the fun is getting there.

I have been wondering how these people get so many tech and food points so quick. Dosen't seem like it would be too much fun to end this game in a day. I just got it yesterday and am still confused LOL
Looking foreward to all the new goodies and challanges.
DON'T MESS WITH MY CLOCK LOL

If you're lucky you can get a lot of tech points quickly without cheating, but it can be tedious. Then again, if you are low on food and mushroom hunting, it's just another thing you can do.

Hello..I am new to this game and unfortunatly I saw another post before this telling people that time warping is a good thing and it will help in building and what not..
And although it did that, it really screwed my game. All of a sudden I had 0 food and 300 mins till my farm thingy was ready to be harvested...So naturally all my villagers died...And I worked so hard to get them to where they were I was close to finishing the game..I am really upset and this topic should be stickied because time forwarding SUCKS

This topic is stickied, for that very reason. I'm sorry that you didn't see it early enough to prevent disaster.

Thank you for making this topic sticky! People just don't get it sometimes. Cheating does not make you win in the end!

Ha ya. I found out a little too late that it doesn't work so well on VV2.
My people no longer age. I have 3 males, 3 children[female], and 2 nursing females. I decided not to time travel. and it has been two days. Yet the women are still nursing for 87 minutes and 120 minutes, and the children are still young. The males dont gain any skill and it takes forever for tech.

Time Traveling Sucks.

I JUST DOWNLOADED MY VV2. I THINK I WILL ENJOY THIS GAME AS MUCH AS THE 1ST. IT WOULD BE A SHAME TO WARP AND MISS OUT ON THE VILLAGERS LEARNING AND GROWING.
THANKS FOR ANOTHER TIME CONSUMING GAME. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.

I agree that you can't play this one like the last one. If you time travel, you will also miss out on the cute things that the villagers do now! There are so many new things in this chapter. If you travel past them, you will miss out.

I want to add that the advantage of playing on 1/2 speed in VV1 do not apply to VV2...

If I need to time warp my computer for a reason other than VV2, and I pause the game reset my clock, and then go back will this mess up my VV2 game?

if you pause the game time does not affect it. But set it back before you restart or the game will use the fake time as opening time, then if windows sets it back automatically your timers will be screwed.

Thanks! I was so worried... ok I know it is just a game, and that i could start over, but i am so close to an elder and I didn't want to mess this one up. (Never ever drink a strange potion if they are almost an elder - now he is 50 and no skills!)

You actually don't even need to pause the game as long as it's never running when the computer's system clock is "wrong." In other words, if the system clock changes are all done when the game is not running, and you always set the clock to the correct time before you launch VV, it will be fine.

this is the first time I am not time warping and the game is working out much better. i [censored] up so many things with my first village, time warping, that I had to kill them all.

Yesterday my daughter wanted to show me something on the April Calendar so she had me bring up the computer's system calendar. She showed me the days in April that she wanted me to see and then without thinking I just hit "OKAY" and my villagers all died! I had no idea what happened and then I remembered the posts I had read about "time warping" and I was really upset because it was not intentional. I went and changed the system clock back to the proper date but it was too late, my village was gone. It was my 2nd one and I had just started it the day before, but I was still upset to have lost all that I had. My question is now that I've started over will it affect that particular village? I seem to be gaining tech points extremely slow and not very many collectables are showing up. Is there an adverse effect to what happened?
Thanks!

Bethie - that's rough!

But no, as long as your system clock stays constant, your new village won't have been affected. Some villagers just seem to be slower than others, so keep pushing them and you'll get there.

LOL, no kidding! I was so upset and my daughter says to me "Mom, it's just a game!!" I know, I hear a collective *gasp* from all VV players! I'll keep plugging away.....Thanks for your response!

I actually "time travelled" on the first VV. So when I bought Lost Children, I figured, "Hey! Cool! I can whip through this and still have fun!" WRONG! After like the 5th time of having to restart I saw that it would not work this time. Not to mention, the sales manager asking me why customers weren't getting their quotes. Hmmm.... Oops! Darn Eudora didn't like me changing my clock. So I started playing the right way and it has really paid off. Not only do I have all but 2 collectible Butterflies and Shells and I'm not even a fourth of the way through the game but customers are getting their quotes! Woo-Hoo!! Happy gaming everyone!

I was trying to time travel, lost 5 groups. Learned my lesson, letting things go naturally, can't play all the time with my 2 small kids (3 and 1) around, they need me to! Like being Mommy to 2 different families!!

Personally to keep the urge to time warp away, I just run at least two villages....between all the collectables, things to do, and stubborn villagers, I find that there is no "lull" that makes me even want to temp fate.

Great post, VM. I love the games and can't figure the wanting to rush through.

I had to abandon 1 of my villages that had 1 gong piece left to solve. I was debugging some program and i needed to change the system date. And I totally forgot to pause my game.

So there I was warping through time like Marty McFly and ended up with 5 mothers that will continue to nurse while their babies are going their midlife crises and crops that are ready for harvest when VV3 is released!

What a disaster!

I have my game on constant 1/2 speed. That way it will last longer.

if you do cheat make sure you played clean first be warned time travel can mess up your computer

I agree with hex on playing clean first!!! That after all my friends is where all the fun is at. But........
Atfter loosing 6 tribes (Because of forgetting to pause my game and not going back to it enough), I have found something. I just did this to catch back up to where I was. If you find the stew recipe that restores health, you can figure out a way to get around the no food to time travel problem. I am not recommending this to everyone, just people like me that made a dumb mistake too many times! See if you can figure this out if you are getting mad enough at the game to give it up. It is worth trying before you give up on the game forever!

There is absolutely no need to resort to time travel. If you failed a number of times you should think about attacking the game from another angle, not cheat. There are no two ways about it; time travel is cheating.

I did say that time travel is not for everyone. I also said that I did it to catch up with where I was before, then I stopped.
I agree, playing the game without time travel is the best way, but I have kids and a life outside of my tribe. I forgot to pause the game before stopping and did not check up on it for days and I lost. I just did it to catch up to where I was. I wanted to see if there was a way around time travel, that is it. I figured what did I have to lose, after already losing it all.
It is just something that I found. Nobody has to actually do it. I am not recommending it to everyone.

It doesn't matter what your excuse is, it's still cheating. This game has a leaderboard set up, and it's not fair to people who play honestly and want to make it in the top rankings. Who's to say they didn't have a few failures when they started too?

Hey, while I'd be the first to dissuade anyone from time travelling because of the inherent problems that can be caused to their systems, I think we need not be quite so implacable in condemning someone who does it.

I seem to remember that in VV1 the discovery of putting multiple children to pick up the same mushroom was first raised in a thread that was actually called "cheats...." -- yet we all know that it virtually became a recommendation in later months.

Im fairly new to the game so "what is time travel?"

Setting your system clock forwards or backwards to try to fool the program. Not recommended - various unexpected side effects can happen, and you can also mess up the working of other programs as well.

As long as you never push refresh, your stats do not get entered. Not everybody plays to get on the leaderboard. Some people really don't care about it.

Just wondering how things went. I'm pretty new now myself and I'm starting to get frustrated. I had to put two of my villages on pause until I can figure out how to irrigate or get rid of the algae.

You can get everything from hints to spoilers in the Guide.

Well can we not be hateful towards “cheaters”? The simple warning of all the problems that will occur by time traveling is sufficient I think. I do not find it necessary to time travel, but I have edited the hex file on several occasions to help test. I say this only to point out if someone wants to cheat it can be done several different ways to do so. And if a player wants to cheat, then that is their choice I suppose. They are only hurting them selves. I know, I know they do hurt the people who want to be in the #1 spot of the leader board, but there is little that will be done about that. That has been an issue since VV1 and I’m afraid will continue to be one in the future.

I can't get it to work anyways so thats ok for me great post

I played around with time travel by adjusting the clock on my computer just for the heck of it. It works if you are careful. To help the odds of time travel aiding you in the game make sure your villagers have assigned jobs so they'll advance in that particular skill and change the clock on your computer hour by hour so that you can check on your villagers health, food points, crop growth, birth rate and skill advancement before time traveling again. VERY IMPORTANT! If you are playing more than one game, make sure those games are paused before traveling. My advice in the end though.. is..DON'T DO IT!It's not worth losing a game you spent a lot of time on.

[/b]Time Warping Works fine! the trick is not to keep going far away from your recent time. The crop timer is always your real current time. The best trick is to go back far away and keep coming to your current time. You will notice whenever you come to the recent time. The crop timer's getting lower and lower and the recent time will be the accurate timer for crops. It will reduce time consuming alot BUT [b]WHY WOULD YOU PLAY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SPEND TIME ON IT!
IF you want to play a game and you already paid for it, NEVER TIME WARP. Them money you spend will not be worth it at all!

i'm playing my 2nd tribe now COZ i finished very quickly of my 1st tribe and didn't feel satisfied. my 2nd tribe will be on X2 speed in day time x1/2 speed at night when sleeping ... Cheers you all!

I just saw that my computer is off by two days (it says Saturday, when in reality, it's Thursday today!!!) I'm playing two games, one I just need collectibles and it's my first tribe, they are very important to me.... another game I just started two days ago and I am kinda getting attached to them (this one is my cheatin' tribe and they kind of have everything easy, but still)... is it possible to fix my calendar days without affecting my games???????????? I like my tribes more than my calendar, so if not, I'm going to leave the days off oh well????????????? If someone could let me know that would be great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU!

There is no way to adjust your computer's clock back to the correct date without having some effects on the game. All of the timers in the real-time engine are affected by changes in the system clock, including hours played on the stats page. However, you can minimize the worst of those effects by taking certain precautions.

First, make sure that you have no nursing moms and that there are actually crops on the farm (it doesn't matter if it's full or not, just that there are some crops remaining), then pause each of the games when they meet those conditions.

Next, you'll want to back up your savegame files using the procedure in this post. That way you can always go back to where you were if your games suffer major problems.

Finally, with the games still paused (and make sure that you don't have any other real-time games going on your computer that may also be affected, such as Fish Tycoon or VV1), set your computer's clock back to the correct date and time. If everything looks good in your games, you can continue to play from there. If not, you probably have no choice but to put the clock back to the wrong date, restore the games, and live with the problem.

me i Pause the game always then back to normal

I inadvertently time traveled!! My clock got set ahead to september and I switched it back, now one of my tribes has to wait 59 days for their crops!


blech.

This happened to me but it eventually sorted it self out. Bear in mind i didn't get any island events or get to ring the gong until the clock got back to normal.

ok, i also inadvertantly time traveled. came home and saw that the power had gone out and when i turned my computer back on i saw it was 3 weeks ahead. i wasnt thinking and just reset it to the correct date and both of my villages were messed up on the harvesting time and the fire time. this happened last week and yesterday i finally got my harvests and the fires back to normal. however, i am still not getting to ring the gong nor am i getting the island events. i dont understand why they didnt go back to normal once everything else did. will i ever get to ring the gong again? cause if not then i'm going to delete those villages and i really would prefer to keep them. i've had both of them since the game came out and have gotten rather attached to them.

The various "parts" of the real-time engine use different time references to determine when things should happen. The farm and the fire use a different timing reference than the gong and Island Events do. That's why you see things returning to normal at different rates.

You shouldn't need to delete your games, though. If you set your clock back by 3 weeks, then everything should return to normal in your game once you reach the date and time that it was before you changed it. The game still thinks it's in "the past," as far as the gong and Island Events are concerned. Once time "catches up with itself" (so to speak), all should be well.

thank you very much LadyCFII! that gives me hope. so, i only have to wait another 2 weeks or so for everything to be back to normal then. that's not so bad. thanks again.

thank you, i agree we shouldn't time travel, it takes all the fun and aggrivation out of it

Hmm, I'm still worried about accidental time traveling and DST. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there

that is only an hour, so unless you have a newbie village, it won't totally thrash your village

Jazzo, to answer your question about Daylight Savings Time, I'm linking to a post by LadyCFII in another thread. This should explain it.

yeah, I wonder what VV would have done in the Y2K, OMG< my poor villagers!!! LOL

I didn't think anything actually happened then.

yeah, but what if something did!!! I mean, small programs like VV were probably not fixed

yay! my villages are completely back to normal. i now can get daily events and i get to ring the bong again.

Gooood!! With patience, every thing may arrive!! and Patience is a master word in VV!

Yah, VV would be so boring for time travelers.

I think what I've finally realized about this game, and probably video games in general, is that it's not always about some battle or some stage to finish, or even puzzles to complete. The outcome could be so varied, even with so many spoilers out there.

And yes, I time traveled myself into a village of 7, with one 36 year old nursing her baby into oblivion and the ony other lady in the village too old to mate. Yes, tech points have helped to clear vines and build hospitals but, I'm at a point where I could make a fatal stew and get it over with. But reading some of the hardship stories, especially about little Buru in another post, I'm going to carry on.

The only thing I'm nervous about is that I don't see many Island Events. Even before I had a notion to time travel, I only saw 4 events.

I do regret time traveling. But now that I've done it, I'm going to stick it out and see what comes of these people. And yes, I've set my time correct but little affected the bad situaton.

*crosses fingers*

I hope that your tribe will return to normale! Be patient, I think it takes a few time!

By the way, don't do it with Virtual Villagers, that does take the fun out of it.

ok,I deleated my games and started all over cause I time traveled and messed it all up.I deleated the whole game downloaded again.This time I have played right but I just started a village 2 hours ago ,Its on 1/2 time and they are all fine but I just checked it one lady has a baby it says nursing for 400 minutes.Whats up with that.I didnt even want babies till food supply was stronger.

In 1/2 speed, 400 min for nursing is normal!
Good luck to your new tribe!

*sighs* ok, i inadvertantly time traveled again. i got a new computer desk and paused my villages and shut my computer down properly. however when i turned my computer back on i saw that the date on my computer was may of 2002. since my villages were already paused, i went ahead and set the date to the correct date and when i unpaused my villages i saw i had problems. one village seemed ok but now i see that the villagers arent aging, stats arent increasing, harvest is the same. however my fire time is going down. the other villages are aging however one village says it will be almost 3 million minutes before my harvest is ready. i might have miscalcuted but that seems to be 5 years before it's ready. the other village is more reasonable, maybe only 3 months before the harvest is ready. i am wondering about the events catching up though. will it be 5 years before it's caught up? or since it was the past will it not be a factor and therefore i just need to wait for the other stuff to catch up? are my villages salvagable?

It's hard to say exactly what will happen, and a lot depends upon what was happenening in each game when the clock adjustments were made.

The only way to know the effect on the Island Events is to have saved the log file that contains the last event for each game. There is a way, by examining the log file, to determine when the next one should happen, but only if you save it right after an event occurs. The log file is erased and recreated each time you launch the game.

I wouldn't abandon them, though, until you determine how badly affected they are.

thanks for your advice.

so perhaps since my last events happened before the time traveling happened it should mean that the next scheduled one should have been roughly the next day. that day has come and went so perhaps it's just waiting for the other stuff to catch up first. *shrugs* i hope so.

You're absolutely correct... If you don't have any patience, then this obviously isn't the game for you.

I once set the clock ahead a couple hours in VV1 and everyone almost died...but I fixed them, though! They lived, but my crops took forever to grow. Don't mess with the clock...

What is time traveling. I keep my game on normal setting, is that time traveling?

Time traveling is... changing your computer's time, it affects the game.. BADLY

I agree. Also I have to admit that I used to do that in VV1, but I realised what it can do. If you want to live your game to the fullest - dont time warp!

Though I posted this some time ago...see the date...I think it still applies.

Time travel....in plain language

Good Luck!

Time warping can also confuse your computer and it will mess it up. I was time warping in one of the VV games and doing so crashed my computer and when I finally got it back on, I had to wait for the computer to do repairs.

So time warping isn't worth it believe me.

What I'm doing, is starting three or four games at once, and going back and forth between them, that helps a lot when you're waiting for tech points, because when you go to a new game, you DON'T pause the one you're playing, so you actually wind up with all your games playing at once, just remember, DON'T forget to check on each game every couple of hours.

I'm trying to play at least an hour at a time on each game.

I was playing VV2 one night and I was time-travelling days and days forward. Later I turned the computer clock back to regular time, and it ruined my game. Whenever I logged on, the contruction would be at 1%, the mothers would be nursing for 120 minutes, etc. Only the camp fire was actually following time, haha. So I had to make a new game. But I learned my lesson...

Yeah. All I can say is if you are going to time travel BACK UP FIRST!!!

It can be fun experimenting with time travelling (especially after you've finished the game) but I can tell you, you will miss your favourite little villagers, so back up and replace the new files with your old ones after travelling

Oh and don't do it to get on the high score charts. That's not fair.

lol
Time travelling is not funny but I have to say that 30 or 40 minuts make a great difference in the beggining of the game when we have to get that precious tech points
Yes, it can be done, and no problems so far...

ya but in the beginning there is a higher chance for starving ur tribe!

That's true, it messed up my village & I had to start all over.

What?! That's as bad as swearing!!

Edit: I mean, what your daughter said was almost like swearing. Don't get me wrong bethie!