Plants Vs. Zombies Catch-All

My wife just fired the game up after a few days' break, and all of her progress is gone...it's having her start fresh. Any ideas as to what's happened, and how she can get her saved game back from the cloud? We've already tried "restore a previous backup" from under the "Steam" menu...and she's logged out, then back in...and that about does it for all I know to do.

BTW, none of her other Steam games are reset.

Mytch wrote:

My wife just fired the game up after a few days' break, and all of her progress is gone...it's having her start fresh. Any ideas as to what's happened, and how she can get her saved game back from the cloud? We've already tried "restore a previous backup" from under the "Steam" menu...and she's logged out, then back in...and that about does it for all I know to do.

BTW, none of her other Steam games are reset.

I've never been able to restore a PvZ save (only have it on Steam). If someone else knows how, I'm all ears. My wife lost her save a while ago as well, (but it was my fault) but then again she's so obsessed with the game, she's restarted 3 times now.

If you have steam and pvz installed in more than one computer, you need to choose which saves you want to keep, since pvz won't allow for local content to override cloud saves anymore (you could do this before the game of the year update) Same thing happened to me and the only thing that got it to work was to allow the computer with the save you wanted to keep to upload its saves to steamcloud (this requires you to activate the option rightclicking on the game name within your steam library and choosing launch properties) In case you have steam not set for sharing /uploading to the cloud, you need to change it. When you do this you might want to re-start steam and you'lll see a message over the game's name telling you it is synchronizing itself with the cloud. Then you will have to do the same in the other computer and tell the game to use the cloud saves.

However, this is not a solution I find attractive, since she'll need to login (I'm supposing you're both sharing one PVZ licence in your account) and there'll be some syncronizing to do between you two if you want to play PVZ as well over your computer.

Tagging since I'm just getting into it for the first time on the 360.

Thanks for the replies thus far...

She hasn't played on any other computers.

One interesting piece of the puzzle she's just uncovered...in-game, when she looks at her achievements, it shows that she only has the ones unlocked on her current play-through--no big mystery there.

But, when she checks her achievements from her stats page on Steam, it shows all of her old achievements, in addition to the correct amount of time logged on the game.

So...does that tell us that something has happened to the files in her steamapps/pvz (or whatever) folder, but Steam still has her game saved somewhere?

If you're using Windows 7 and IF you have automatic backup set up, this MIGHT work.

Steam saves the PvZ files in a funny location: C:\ProgramData\PopCap Games

Note that ProgramData is a hidden folder, so you'll have to change that setting to see it. Once you get to the PopCap folder, you can try right-clicking and saying "Restore previous versions..." and you might be able to get the save back that way.

I don't know how it works on a Mac, can you restore specific directories?

Laura Shigihara has released the PvZ soundtrack for $10. It includes the game music and the Zombies on Your Lawn song from the video (in English and Japanese, btw).

Also, an interesting tidbit from her blog:

For those who don’t know, prior to implementing the music into the game, I composed MIDI tracks that were mixed with higher quality samples and instruments… but due to both space limitations and the need to make the music dynamic, my original midis were modded and lower quality samples were used. In the original tracks, the calm and intense versions are blended seamlessly because those versions were meant to be standalone musical pieces as opposed to blocks for dynamic usage (with the exception of Watery Graves, which has both a slow and a fast version). I really wanted to share these original tracks because this was how they were meant to sound, but I also wanted folks to be able to get the in-game music.

Warcraft players may or may not have noticed the Peacebloom vs Ghouls quest chain in Hillsbrad. Completing it nets you a Singing Sunflower pet voiced by Laura herself.

Mytch wrote:

Thanks for the replies thus far...

She hasn't played on any other computers.

One interesting piece of the puzzle she's just uncovered...in-game, when she looks at her achievements, it shows that she only has the ones unlocked on her current play-through--no big mystery there.

But, when she checks her achievements from her stats page on Steam, it shows all of her old achievements, in addition to the correct amount of time logged on the game.

So...does that tell us that something has happened to the files in her steamapps/pvz (or whatever) folder, but Steam still has her game saved somewhere?

Has she played since the GOTY update? That sounds like exactly what happened to mine after the update.

So this is on sale for $3.40 on Steam for the mid-week deal.

And there's 2 TF2 hats now, for anyone who owns the Steam version.

Also I had the game previously, not from Steam, I forget what deal I got it from. But I can't seem to get my save files transferred.

Tried copying to the ProgramData folder, but it didn't pick them up. Tried copying to the userdata folder for the game in Steam as well, where it appears the cloud saves are... but no dice there either.

Seems I'm going to have to replay from the start.

Although I guess it might be nice to get Steam achievements...

Stele wrote:

Seems I get to have awesome fun replaying from the start. :D

FTFY.

BlackSabre wrote:
Stele wrote:

Seems I get to have awesome fun replaying from the start. :D

FTFY.

I too found that out buying it from Steam in the past. A shame because I had already played the game a good amount.

I finally got back to playing a little PvZ after a long time away. My game updated properly to the GOTY edition and off I went.

Thing is, I noticed some weird slowdown when playing the game. For the most part it worked just fine, but every 10 minutes or so it would visibly hitch for a second. I opened up task manager and had a look around. The game itself only takes up 20mb of ram. But there was a second process called popcapgame1.exe that ate up a constant 15% CPU and a whopping 350mb! of ram. That is more than 10x the amount of disk space my entire PvZ installation occupies.

This is apparently the popcap DRM program. But they must be very bad programmers for it to eat up that much of my computers resources...

Does anyone know if this was added with the GOTY patch?

Tamren wrote:

Does anyone know if this was added with the GOTY patch?

Avoid mods that brings MJ back?

Hobbes2099 wrote:
Tamren wrote:

Does anyone know if this was added with the GOTY patch?

Avoid mods that brings MJ back?

Probably really to avoid the MJ Hot Coffee mod that was making the rounds on the forums.

PvZ 2 announced for 2013

I'm pretty sure sequel announcements are supposed to happen during Gamescom, not three days later...

shoptroll wrote:

PvZ 2 announced for 2013

I'm pretty sure sequel announcements are supposed to happen during Gamescom, not three days later...

Is it sad that I'm more excited for this than nearly every single upcoming triple AAA release? I played so much PvZ between PC, iPhone, and iPad that I've probably beaten then game 15-20 times.

Dyni wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

PvZ 2 announced for 2013

I'm pretty sure sequel announcements are supposed to happen during Gamescom, not three days later...

Is it sad that I'm more excited for this than nearly every single upcoming triple AAA release? I played so much PvZ between PC, iPhone, and iPad that I've probably beaten then game 15-20 times.

Amen. This is one of the first apps I bought for my iPad and I still think it's the best game ever released for iOS.

I should probably get around to finishing original PvZ, then.

PvZ: My third-most played game on Steam. Can't wait for more!

I love PvZ, but c'mon PopCap, WHERE THE f*ck IS PEGGLE 2!?!?!

Evidence:

Oh, whoops, wrong one.

Peggle Nights didn't count?

Instabuy! Hell, I'm buying 2 copies. 1 for me and 1 for WhiteSabre.

cyrax wrote:

<3

More Laura Shigahara!

And then there's this... http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=...

PopCap and the American Dental Association are giving away coupons for a free copy of PvZ (in the US) as a Halloween tie-in.

http://www.stopzombiemouth.com/

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time coming in July

I'm guessing something about time travel?

Awesome. PvZ is still the perfect iOS app afaic.