Forums/Flick Fishing
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How to save Flick Fishing's game data?
Sofian
asked this on November 08, 2010 01:13
My flick fishing keep crashing today and now I cannot even enter flick fishing app....it stays on the loading page.....Yesterday I can play until I finish the Quest, and today I did the Fish Race Tournament....suddenly it keep crashing....how can I save the game data? I used apps from Mac such as iPhone Explorer...tried to find the Documents folder...but there is nothing in it.....
Comments
As with most apps, the data is sandboxed and unavailable externally.
If you've recently updated/installed an app, you should always switch off your iPhone and switch it back on again before playing. This frees up memory that the system tends to hog over time (and the installer tends to be a bad one for this).
It's *possible* that the installation download went wrong. In which case you may need to re-download the game and re-sync, but try the power off/power on first.
Unfortunately... I have the same problem as Sofian. Was going along nicely with 1.53, had been playing tournaments (have now won -116!). While playing my last tournament... I notice that Buckles has listed as one of the fish to catch. Nice... seeing as I'd already caught him that day, it's going to be a while before I catch him again. Anyway - got down to Buckles being the last fish to catch to win the tournament - *crash*, tinkle, tinkle. FF can no longer load. iPhone 3G running iOS 3 has been restarted several times since (and was restarted as soon as I'd installed FF 1.53). Have attached a couple of screen dumps - one with Buckles on the list and the failing launch screen.
Guess I will delete FF and re-download, finger crossed.
Thanks Graeme, that loading screen one is potentially handy and yes, Buckles shouldn't be in the FishRace :)
While it's bloody annoying to have a bug like that sneak in, it's *really* useful to have feedback like this. I'm working on it now and assuming I can trace the problem I'll aim to get a new build submitted this week.
Initial tests show that it's likely to be after the prefs load (so possibly a corrupted file). So hopefully your game prefs are still there (just unplayable until the update goes through).
Quick question (hopefully before you delete and re-install). Does it always crash at the same point in the loading screen? and can you try starting up while offline? Thanks :)
having a crap day here... well, I have two screen dumps, with slightly different freeze points. One is at the end of the 'o' and one at the start of the 'a' in Loading. Possibly I didn't wait long enough in the 'o' pic for it to get all the way, but I think it did.
Have downloaded fresh copy. Lost quite a bit of info - forgot about that. All the tournaments, numbers of fish caught, the Quest etc. Pulled down Plus+ info, its terribly out of date! I now have a 145 lb Old Mog when it should be 238 for instance. Up to half the fish records are a fish or two behind... the Barracude shows 648 when my record is 696 made back in August. And I should be on Plus+ every day, very curious. Will take me some time (months) to get back to where I way, but at least it's cake month.
no fish net. Checked plus+ a couple days. Old Mog shown at 235 lbs. Downloaded from PLus + I get 145 lbs. Something pretty screwy there.
yup. if the game hadn't been sending data to Plus+ for a while that could indicate something. It's also possible the Plus+ servers had to roll back to an earlier backup, which I'll check, but it's less likely. Any idea how long ago you caught an Old Mog > 145lbs?
ok, initial reports (ie we actually managed to get it to crash at last) indicate that it's Buckles' fault (well mine ultimately but it's easier to blame the new fish). So in the meantime, don't do any Fish Races
Ok, we have found it, thanks to everyone's sterling efforts and input. Basically it is Buckles fault :) If you get a fish race with Buckles in it on anything other than the first slot, the game will lock up the next time it's loaded or when the OGITL gets to trying to catch him.
I've got a fix in place and we're sorting it all out for a new submission. In the meantime, the more eagle eyed of you may have noticed that this version actually includes both the Private Beach and The Fishing Pro pack for free as they come already unlocked. Technically it's a slight oops on my side (I blame Buckles!) but we decided to let it slide and keep them permanently unlocked as a Flick Fishing 2nd birthday present to you all. (I'll see about coming up with an extra present for players that bought the DLC already in a future update too).
So, enjoy the new stuff, don't use Fish Race and watch out for the 1.5.4 update which will hopefully go through fairly quickly!
update.. The new version will also self-repair any settings where you got the crash from a broken fish race. So if you haven't deleted and re-installed yet and don't mind waiting until the update is out, it will recover your current game settings.
A.F. said... It's also possible the Plus+ servers had to roll back to an earlier backup, which I'll check, but it's less likely. Any idea how long ago you caught an Old Mog > 145lbs?
1 or 2 days. Checking Plus+ last night, I'm #8 on the list with 238 lbs. 71325 only gets me 145 lbs. Same with quite a few other fish & named fish. Buckles has disappeared completely, but he doesn't appear on Plus+ at all yet.
A.F. said... Basically it is Buckles fault :) If you get a fish race with Buckles in it on anything other than the first slot, the game will lock up the next time it's loaded or when the OGITL gets to trying to catch him.
yep - had another Fish Race last night with Buckles on it. Now FF will load all the way but I can't get to play as it will freeze up before getting to a fishing location. Have done the quest for about the 8th time, won the tournaments and got all the way back to full strength, ready to go to work on Cake month & now *smack*. Didn't this happen last October?
So... trash FF & start again with the Quest etc or just wait for 1.54? hmmm. Seeing as the downloaded fish from Plus+ are so crappy am thinking I'll trash it & try again.
Still waiting for the version where tournament wins, the Quest state and number of caught fish are retain across accidents. I suppose there's a limit to what can be stored in Plus+.
So... how about Game Centre?
And is there any chance Australia will get the Ashes back... not looking good for us.
Yes, entirely my fault on this one. We got caught up in a panic state with needing to release the update as soon as possible to cover the memory lost by 4.0 and 4.1 on 3G and 3GS devices and Apple changing a couple of rules on us and rejecting our first submission, so I mistakenly fixed the bit Apple didn't like and pushed it through testing just those bits rather than another 2-3 days of full testing. My wrists have been properly smacked :(
We were actually storing game data on Plus+ for a while but unfortunately it caused more problems than it solved unless players could guarantee they were online 24/7 as Plus+ isn't designed for offline play (or even worse, when you flip online/offline). That's what caused last October's issues. It's something that's being looked at for a more permanent, long term approach. Personally I'm toying with doing a user selected backup feature (like Warpgate does) where you specifically load/save your current game to your Plus+. Potentially it could be used to copy accounts, but I don't think many people are really worried about that now.
Game Centre has its benefits, but it's for iOS 4.0 users only and it doesn't do everything Plus+ does either. So for the moment it's wait and see for us as the Plus+ team look at a good way to integrate it.
Just as long as we get through the Ashes without another betting scandal I'm not fussed who wins (as long as it's England ;) )
have now deleted FF a second time & re-synched to Plus+. Same results... 7 fish with lower, older weights are now in the Photo Album and *all* the Named Fish are between 15 & 30 lbs lighter in Photo Album than what appears in Plus+, with Old Mog being 93 lbs less. Finished the Quest for the 9th time maybe, can fish extreme is all areas. Don't much care about losing the count of fish caught, but the loss of the Named Fish weights really bugs me.
There is some obvious data corruption there in Plus+, but can't think how that could be related to those Named Fish in particular not downloading correctly and more interesting - failing to download in exactly the same way twice. I might pick up the over 7 fish with cake month, but can never get those named fish weights back.
Am thinking I'll have a crack at getting FF back to the non crash state from a time machine backup when I get back to work next week. Worth the effort, especially if the forthcoming update is indeed going to repair the settings. Fingers crossed.
That's quite odd. The 7-1-3-2-5 download function is pulling your scores direct from the Plus+ database so should be what's being shown online. I'll check with the Plus+ guys to see if there's some caching going on.
I was going to document the difference between actual data on Plus+ and what 71325 pulled down - but did the Time Machine restore instead. Have not got FF back to where it was just before the Buckles Fish Race problem, including fish count and correct fish weights.
So I'm sorted and just waiting for 1.54 to arrive before attempting further fish races - my favourite feature. btw, I notice that instead of having won 125 fish races, I've now won negative 125, -124, up to -116 whereupon I encountered Buckles. Changed the signed integer for recording that?
And as part of the iPhone restore I now seem to be running iOS 4.1. This will be interesting. Oh well, not going back now & am enjoying creating groups of apps anyway.
Ha, yes, signed char for the number of fish races won. Didn't expect players to win *that* many :) Rule 1 of game data design: Expect players to do crazy stuff :)
The 1.54 update will be a specific fix update to cure the Buckles crash bug and sort out an oddity that'll cause players who tend to hold the phone flat in a specific position before casting to have the rod 'stall' but I'll add expanding the fish race wins data size (and a fix for any negative values) to the update after that, which will hopefully be a nice big one with lots of funky stuff that we've been working on and no bugs :)
correction - Have *now* got FF back to where it was. Very happy.
In case anyone wants to know - how to restore Flick Fishing (along with everything else) via Time Machine (or other backup) with a Macintosh computer.
Caution - by following the information below, you will be deleting *everything* on your iPhone and restoring information from a previous time. You will therefore *permanently* lose information gathered in the intervening time. Do not continue if this is a problem for you - you have been warned. /Caveat emptor/
When your iPhone syncs to the Mac, a backup is made to your home folder > Library > Application Support > MobileSync > Backup folder. Inside that folder is at least one & probably more with various long winded names, each of which is a backup of the apps & info held on the iPhone - in my case, around 250 MB of data. Thanks to Time Machine, I have multiple copies of this going back a couple of months. I put all those backups into a new folder and moved them out of the way. With the empty "Backup" folder open & in front, I invoked Time Machine, selected a day & time close to & preceeding the time it all went wrong & clicked the restore button. My Backup folder was then replete with a good copy of Flick Fishing and its' data along with EVERYTHING ELSE from that time. Depending on the use of your iPhone, if you continue, you may lose data in other apps, so think very carefully about this. My e-mail is on an Exchange server & can be pulled down again. Same deal with IMAP servers. POP - not so lucky, though if you POP the same mail on an app on your Mac, no big drama.
Back in iTunes, I restored the iPhone to original settings (this installed iOS 4 for me plus the original Apple apps). Then a right click on the iPhone in the Devices section of the iTunes sidebar gives me the option to "Restore from Backup"... do so. You'll likely then need to go to the "Apps" section of the iPhone in iTunes & reselect the apps to sync (a good opportunity to weed out the apps you no longer use) as well as to re-arrange them and sort them out into the groups/folders you want. The next sync will get your apps & data back on to the iPhone. All should be well.
If not all well, consult someone local with more knowledge than yourself that can look at it for you. So long as you kept those folders in the Backup folder & did not permanently Trash them, all is recoverable.
Hope this helps.
--
gkc
That's a very handy tip Graeme (even I get confused with the iTunes sync/Backup and what it actually stores).
My son has an itouch and has played Flick Fishing for several months. Currently the game welcomes him and the load bar reaches about 60% and stops. I have attempted to clear the RAM as described but holding the sleep button (square button on bottom of screen) after powering off (with home button – top left of device) does not power on his itouch - not sure if we've cleared the RAM or not. I have also updated the OS from itunes (last night) and this has not resolved the problem - still stalls on loading.
This is likely to be the same bug as reported above. If he's started a fish race at some point since the 1.53 update it's likely to have caused the glitch which will crash the game at a random point during loading or just after.
An update of the game with a fix for this is just about to be submitted to Apple after testing over the tail end of last week and the weekend. Depending on whether your son is worried about keeping his current scores, fish catches, quest status etc. or not, you have two options.
One is to wait until Apple approves the update and apply it before playing again. This may take a week or so to go through Apple, but the update should repair any player settings that have glitched from the Fish Race so he can continue where he left off.
Option two is to delete and re-install the game. This will lose all his settings and scores for the game (Graeme's tip above might be a viable way to restore them in this case, depending on his other apps on the iPod Touch) but will clear the glitch and allow him to play again immediately but of course he'd have to start again from scratch. Just avoid the Fish Race game mode until the update is out.
The update has been through QA at Freeverse and should be winging its way through Apple approval at the moment. Hopefully thanksgiving and the rush to christmas won't slow them down too much.
In the meantime avoid the fish race game.
Fish of the Day have their own leaderboard on Plus+. For now, it's primarily about seeing if you can catch more than anyone else, but there are new game modes coming that also use Fish of the Day.
AF said> Fish of the Day have their own leaderboard on Plus+. For now, it's primarily about seeing if you can catch more than anyone else, but there are new game modes coming that also use Fish of the Day.
interesting to hear, but hopefully the corrupt data current on the FOTD leaderboard on Plus+ is cleared out before then. At the moment, that leaderboard may as well not even exist. As I think I said on the old forum, I'd like to see the FOTD leaderboard become a *daily* total rather than a career total, tho' there would be room for both. I'm sure you'll surprise us all with someone even better.
GC said on Nov 10> And is there any chance Australia will get the Ashes back... not looking good for us.
just goes to show, all the comment in the world makes no difference, it's what happens on the field that counts. As for Siddle - he's a Victorian too!
We're just letting you have a bit of a head start ;)
I'd like to see the option of daily/weekly leaderboards on Plus+ too. Currently we don't have that option, but it's something I've been requesting for a while. In the meantime, we work to see if there are ways around it :)
Yay for speedy Apple approval. Flick Fishing 1.5.4 is showing on the App Store. This fixes the Fish Race related startup crash and we've kept the In App Purchases free. (Future updates are going to have some extra secret content for players who've already bought the two previous packs or who buy the new ones that will be added on).
I love a secret and have bought the two packs. Care to share a hint?
no details as yet, but there'll be plenty of info when I've done that update.
i downloaded the new software for the iphone n now flick fishing will not load gutted
Ian, have you got the latest version of Flick Fishing (1.5.4 of the paid version, 1.2 for the Free version). Normally doing an iOS update shouldn't cause any problems, but sometimes things can get shuffled around. Normally your apps will restore from the backup, but if not, you can usually just re-install them.
Which version of Flick Fishing (paid/Free?) have you got installed and what version of iOS? Also jailbroken or not?
i have the paid version of flick fishing and the last update i downloaded was 4.2.1 and no it isnt jailbroken thankyou for the speedy response
i am on plus+ if i restore my iphone will i lose my fish recoreds???
You shouldn't need to restore your iPhone, just re-install flick fishing. That will lose your current game data, but you can restore your fish records through the 7-1-3-2-5 trick.
First though, make absolutely sure you've got the latest (1.5.4) update to Flick Fishing. The 1.5.3 version had a bug that could cause it to lock up while loading (or just after) and if you've got that version, updating will fix the bug and won't lose you any game data.
ok whats the 7-1-3-2-5 trick how do i tell if it is up to date ooo dont fancy losing my records lol
First make sure you're logged in to Plus+.
Then go to the photo album and you'll notice the panel at the bottom has 7 rivets along it.
If you tap them in the sequence 7 - 1 - 3 - 2 - 5 (counting from left to right), you should get a message after the 4th tap and on the 5th it will attempt to recover your fish weights from your Plus+ leaderboard scores.
Unfortunately this won't recover your quest data or anything like that.
had to reinstall but the trick isnt working now
it comes up with press the last button to download from pass plus press it and nothing happens
it can be a bit fiddly. Definitely make sure you're logged in to Plus+ first (it can sometimes take a while to register) and you may have to quit (and fully stop the app with the multitask bar) and start again.
Right. that means it's working but it's down to whether it's able to get the data from Plus+. That means either you're not actually logged in to Plus+ yet, Plus+ isn't responding (depending on general internettiness) or you've not got any of your scores recorded on Plus+ leaderboards.
just cant get it to work tryed n stopped it on multitask still doesnt work
my scores are on the leaderboards n i am logged in but still nothing
Right. that means Plus+ is possibly not responding at the moment (probably lots of people online with their new iPhones). Probably best to try again later (your scores are still online and it'll merge them with whatever new ones you've caught).
A few people have mentioned getting older scores back from Plus+ too with this trick, which I'm still investigating.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to get much info back on the server side until the new year when everyone's back at work.
The best bet is to keep trying once in a while and carry on fishing as normal. Your previous fish are out there somewhere, so it's just a matter of what new ones you're adding to them ;)
I'd like to update to iphone4 but want to make sure all my fish move to the new phone. Not all of them are in plus;I just recently started using it. Can I move all my fish to plus and then restore from there or can I restore from an itunes backup of the old phone. I'd really like to move all my fish to plus.
The iTunes backup *should* copy your prefs over, assuming it's a full backup.
Assuming you're talking about Flick Fishing and not Flick Fishing Free, the 7-1-3-2-5 trick now has a new reverse version (5-2-3-1-7) that attempts to resubmit all the fish you have scored on your iPhone to the Plus+ leaderboards. So you can upload the scores from your old phone and use the 7-1-3-2-5 trick to download them on the new one if the iTunes backup doesn't work.
I have been trying the 5-2-3-1-7 but it hasn't worked yet. I've tried turning off/on my phone but nothing. Is there something i'm missing
Are you getting the warning message after tapping the 4th rivet? Also are you playing Flick Fishing (paid)? Flick Fishing Free doesn't have the feature.
I was getting the warning message. I'm using FF paid. However now FF won't load at all. I have an iphone 3g using ios4. I've tried turning the phone off/on but no help. Is was working great. Don't know what changed
if Flick Fishing isn't loading at all it's either because you're still on the old 1.5.3 version that has an annoying bug that will cause it to lock up on loading after a certain sequence of in-game events (in which case, update to the 1.5.4 version, which will fix it and keep your old data) or something really nasty's happened to either your game save data or the app file itself that's broken it. If the later is the case, you'll need to delete and re-install unfortunately.
First I'd check with the App Store update to see if the 1.5.4 update is available for Flick Fishing on that phone. If it is, you were still on 1.5.3 and should update. If not, there's a remote (very remote) possibility that it's stalling on loading due to an obscure network error. In which case try switching to Airplane mode and launching the game so it skips trying to check anything online. If that works, it should be ok after you quit.
Another thing to try before the worst case scenario of deleting and re-installing is to make sure it's stopped on the multi-task bar. Tap the home button twice to get your list of running apps, hold your finger down on the Flick Fishing icon and when the X button pops up, tap it to stop the app. Then see if re-launching works.
Hello, I have 1.5.4 version and it is not loading. I have 3GS version. It was working until last night and it suddenly shutdown. I tried to reload it, it shows the opening screen with no loading icon at the bottom right. After almost 30 seconds, it shuts down.
Shutting down internet connection (airplane mode) works, but when I turn the internet connection back same result.
I'm having the same problem
Were you logged into a FishNet game by any chance? As you might have noticed, the Freeverse main site is currently down due to a server fault and FishNet is run from the same server, which unfortunately could be blocking the startup of your game (it shouldn't, but that looks like something I need to add as a fix to the 1.5.5 update :/ ). It should be temporary, but if you do want to disable your fishnet, you should be able to use Create FishNet again while in airplane mode (again, shouldn't actually, but this time the bug is useful to us) and that'll blank out the current one and you *should* be able to restart the game again while online.
I disabled fishnet and now it works. Thanks for the help Aaron
My game data was lost not long ago, I have FF(paid) version and I did the 7-1-3-2-5 trick in an attempt to get my high scores in Plus+, but it just won't work after trying for 2 days. I have tried reinstalling the game, the score is not loaded also, I am also not in any FishNet. I m using iPhone 3GS on iOS 4.3.4. Any idea why it does not work? Thanks.
Firstly make sure you're logged in to Plus+ before trying the trick (it can take a while for Plus+ to sign you in sometimes) and check that you have highscores on the Plus+ leaderboards. You may also want to exit the app and restart it just to be sure.
my highscores are in Plus+ leader boards and I am logged in to Plus+, I normally don't have problem connecting to Plus+, every time the game starts to run, it will show me that I am logged in to Plus+, I can check highscores on leaderboard without problem. The 7-1-3-2-5 trick also returns warning message after pressing the 4th rivet in the photo album, I press the last code to complete it, but it is just not loading my highscores from Plus+. I have tried the exit the app and restart it, without any other app multi-tasking, it still does not work. I would be grateful if this problem could be solved.
Right, sounds like everything's set up correctly on your side. By the sounds of it the data's simply not getting from the server, which could just be a temporary issue with Plus+. I'll mention it to the relevant people.
Aaron, thank you very much for your prompt assistance. Now that I am fishing from the beginning with just a few fishes in photo album, will the total numbers of fish still be updated and continued from my last score registered in Plus+ server?
No problem. I've just confirmed that it's something odd happening on the server (tried it with my current 'live' account and it just returned zero scores), so I've forwarded the info to the Plus+ guys.
Thank you very much, I guess I have to be patient and wait until Plus+ does something about this. I will try download the high scores everyday to see if it is back to normal.
I have created another new account and noticed that the scores can be updated in Plus+ but the scores with the old account just will not update. I hope Plus+ will solve the issue of high scores download.
I am still unable to download my highscores from Plus+, any feedback yet? have to play long long time to get to top 3 again.
My iPod had to be restored and all of the data was wiped out. How do I restore what you had on the servers? Can it be ADDED to whatever I've accomplished in the meantime?
Thanks