Game Crashes

I used to have the "non" author's edition and then purchased the "Authors" edition. Both of these games eventually began crashing, returning an error "Unhandled exception: Wrong save file!" At that point I uninstalled the software, downloaded the latest version. The latest version was working fine but felt that I liked the older game better because it was not so darn easy to score. In other words, the older game was more challenging and I liked that!

I uninstalled the new version and re-installed the older version.
It did not play even once and returned the same error.. "Unhandled exception: Wrong save file!"

Is there any way to correct this error?

Thanks for your time.

Hi Brian,

It's quite surprising to hear you preferred scoring from the old game :) I was programming the new version and to be honest, it shouldn't be THAT different. The major change was that bonus meter now falls down about 10% slower and there's about 10% more time to find cards in bonus levels. This should make it easier to get higher score, but I never thought this could be even noticeable, let alone annoying :)

I'd love to learn more about your impressions. Which parts of the game specifically do you think are less challenging in the new version?

Also, with your experience, I think you'd make a perfect tester for our upcoming sequel to Heartwild Solitaire. Would you like to participate in that and share your impressions on the test version, when it becomes available?

As for your problems with the old version -- one of the reasons for the new version was to get rid of some issues we were experiencing in the past. So I'd of course recommend to stick with the most recent game.

However, if you want, I believe you should be able to "resurrect" the old version. The reason for the error you mentioned is that the game probably crashed when saving your progress and corrupted your game profile in the process. That's why it now fails to load it at start.

The solution would be to wipe your progress and profile data. To do that:

1. If you have Windows Vista go to: C:\Users\Your username\
Or for Windows XP: C:\Documents & Settings\All Users\Application Data\

2. Then, if you have Heartwild Solitaire Author's Edition continue to: Orchid Games\Heartwild Solitaire
If you have the regular, portal version go to: Sandlot Games\Heartwild Solitaire

3. Delete all files and subdirectories in this directory. Please be careful with this operation and make sure you are in the right place (there should be subdirectories like "profiles" and "thumbnails"), so you won't accidentaly delete wrong data.

After this clean up you should be able to start the game. Hopefully that helps! :) Do let me know if you have any other questions.