A number of you have reported being disconnected, especially when moving between the world map and your lots. Thank you to everyone who sent logs, bug reports, and screenshots. Please do continue to do so if you experience anything strange.

We believe we have found a strong candidate for what has caused this.

What was happening

When the game loaded a new area - such as the world map or a busier, larger lot - some computers paused long enough that the game stopped responding. The server took that as a lost connection and disconnected players.

This is why it has been noticed more since we introduced the new world map, as well as for those with TTS enabled as this leverages your GPU when you join a lot.

What we have changed

Thanks to player logs, and most importantly, we have been able to make changes which mean players should no longer be disconnected while loading.

Furthermore, some other changes we've made:

  • The world map loads significantly faster - we've reduced the size by about 90% and made some loading optimisations.
  • Entering a lot no longer freezes while TTS chat voices get ready as this is now initialised at game startup
    • Please note: TTS uses your graphics card to produce text to speech. This can affect performance on older devices or integrated graphics.
  • Text to speech now has an on and off switch in Settings, under Accessibility
  • No more "your connection is poor" warnings when your connection is fine
  • Loading screens now more accurately tell you what they are doing, and say so if something goes wrong
  • Roommates at Store Lots will now get store bulk discount
  • Planters no longer treat roommates as visitors
  • Some adjustments to reduce room chat delay on slower connections

Invisible players

Several of you have reported that some player characters are invisible in a lot.

This is also likely to have been contributed to by this issue. A pause at the wrong moment could stop the game building character models for the rest of your session, so people who arrived after that point showed up as nothing at all. Separately, if a request failed while you were logging in, you could end up in the world with no appearance saved to you.

If you are still having trouble

Please keep the reports coming via the in-game feedback tool.

Alternatively, please contact us at contact@vitaregame.com. The game now records exactly which part of a load was slow, so a report tells us far more than it used to.