To all that are worried about losing your town if you delete the app. Your town isn't on you're device. It's on origins servers and that's why you have a login. When you login it syncs down your town data. Every time you click on something in your town it sends that data to origins servers. This is why you have to have Internet connection to play the game. The only thing local on your device is the program itself, no actual user (town) data.
It just puzzles me that so many people have had this issue for so long and fortunate for me I didn't have the issue. But then after the same number and sizes of updates that were received yesterday suddenly happened AGAIN today I too have the harp of death.
So the puzzling thing is why are they still pushing the bug out after soooo many people have the issue and have received updates to fix. Just delete the updates Witt the bad code so they simply don't go out any more.
Sorry for the soap box but since I can't tap in the game I have to tap on the keypad.
Soap box is fine since what you say is valid. I didn't have this problem before today's (repeat?) update; now I have.
Same with me, I didn't realize I had the same harp noise problem until I turned my sound on. I got the Ralph update just fine but then the mini update today seemed to cause all the problems. I reinstalled the game and still doesn't work. I will try to close the game a few times from the menu screen. It's very annoying, first major problem I've had since june
Solution above does not work. in a possibly related note, I have found other crashes have been triggered by an excess of 200 friend invites that are waiting to be dispositioned (accepted, rejected, etc). This would explain why you can log in as a guest and the crash will occur again once you log in with your user name even after reinstalling the app.
Another crash seems to occur if you log out of origin at the startup screen, then log in again and try to view your open invites. The server loses connection, and your invites fail to load. My next step in solving this crash for everyone involved would be to figure out a way to reject open invites and lower it to a smaller number (or removing them completely) WITHOUT having to log into the app. Possibly by logging into the origin website?
If anyone has any ideas how to complete this next step, please let us know.
I'm having the same issue. It happened just after I built the wiggam house. What a waste of 12 donuts to rush the building, only to be unable to play anymore
The wiggam's house built and then the crash and forever the harp.
If you are having this problem, please leave a reply so we can an idea how many are being affected by this bug.
Got The German version, at level 26, lots of deco, all buildings, almost all characters, harp freeze here too...killed and restarted app at least 20 times, signed in and out of Origin account, reinstalled app - no luck, cannot play - it's not enjoyable at all. Get your players proper software EA! I paid a lot of $$$ for this...and expect you to earn your money with well-working games, really worth the money.
Got The German version, at level 26, lots of deco, all buildings, almost all characters, harp freeze here too...killed and restarted app at least 20 times, signed in and out of Origin account, reinstalled app - no luck, cannot play - it's not enjoyable at all. Get your players proper software EA! I paid a lot of $$$ for this...and expect you to earn your money with well-working games, really worth the money.
The german version? Does it have the land of chocolate? Panzer tanks?
maybe we can see if the issues are within a single device, i play solely on my ipad and have had my first issue of being locked out from the game after the update yesterday.
i've got a maxed out, all premium items town that is 13x10, i had built ralph's house and was finishing up homer coming out of lard lad's that is when the game quit out by itself and hasn't let me back in since.
i figure we aren't going to get a solution till after the weekend since they don't bother to update while they are in the offices. they'll come back to find 10,000+ complaints and wonder what's up.
The german version? Does it have the land of chocolate? Panzer tanks?
Indeed, and lots of sauerkraut deco that is stuffed in all people's mouths who can only speak one language and have no idea where the real land of chocolate is....
I built the Wiggum house yesterday, but I didn't assign Ralph a task - was in and out of my Springfield multiple times with no issue. I assigned Ralph a task and then the next time I went to go into my town, I got the "harp freeze" - as good a description as any.
I tried all the standard stuff, and even tried loading it my Springfield on my iPhone instead of my iPad and the same problem. My other Springfield loads just fine on both devices so it is NOTHING specific to either of my iOS devices. My Springfield has never been loaded on my iPhone before so there isn't anything that could have been cached on it - whatever the problem is, it exists with my Springfield as it is stored on the Origin servers
Yes I have deleted the app and reinstalled multiple times on all devices so I could monitor and track exactly what the app and its communication to the Internet were doing. I did not go as far as others I have seen in other posts that actually reset their device to factory default and their issue still persists. In following the chain of events this has nothing to do with what you have built or what task just completed. The point this is occurring for everyone is when you are hitting the origin server to download your town.
When you tap the screen when it says "tap to continue" the application is using your origin user name and password to connect to origin servers and download your application data (your town). In case you were wondering what the spinning donut is actually doing at this point it is downloading your town and depending on how fast your connection is is why it may take longer than other times. Thus since this is the point the app hangs and the harp sounds we know it is starting to download the town but fails and hits a download loop.
Their is no local fix to this as we can test and use the app flawlessly by not loging into origin. As Dom also points out that if you have too many friend requests can cause strange issues. Which is another testament this is an issue with your origin account on their server where your account (town) is stored and not the local install of the app itself. Also like with the great crash of the Xmas update when origin couldnt handle all the friend activity. We have to wait for origin to fix the problem.
While its very frustrating to us I'm sure we all think that if there is an issue it should affect everyone and not just a select few. The reason behind this is that players are not on a single server. Accounts are spread out over clusters of data centers across the world. In these clusters are multiple databases of user accounts. So you can see there are many specific fail points in which origin has to track down to find a root cause and fix. But still there is no reason it should take this long to fix an issue like this. I have designed installed and managed these types of services for apps in the private sector for years and have had issues like this before. But if it took me as long as origin does to tack down and fix then my clients would have dropped me a long time ago.
For myself I have gotten past the withdrawal pains as I have only been down 18 hours. I think I could deal with 24 to 48 hours being down. I am active in my town to where that wouldn't make a huge impact on my valentines theme progress. But some people have posted being down for weeks with this issue which is where my concern lies. I don't think I can keep the tapping jitters at bay that long without losing it a little. Haha
Sorry for the rambling as I am substituting my tapping for tapping on the keyboard.
Everyone with the issue keep reporting it here so there is documentation and hopefully ea sees this and cracks some skulls on their origin division to get this fixed.
Replies
That's exactly when it happened to me - wiggum house built, game froze then on opening it again harp freeze ever since :evil:
Another crash seems to occur if you log out of origin at the startup screen, then log in again and try to view your open invites. The server loses connection, and your invites fail to load. My next step in solving this crash for everyone involved would be to figure out a way to reject open invites and lower it to a smaller number (or removing them completely) WITHOUT having to log into the app. Possibly by logging into the origin website?
If anyone has any ideas how to complete this next step, please let us know.
If you are having this problem, please leave a reply so we can an idea how many are being affected by this bug.
The german version? Does it have the land of chocolate? Panzer tanks?
i've got a maxed out, all premium items town that is 13x10, i had built ralph's house and was finishing up homer coming out of lard lad's that is when the game quit out by itself and hasn't let me back in since.
i figure we aren't going to get a solution till after the weekend since they don't bother to update while they are in the offices. they'll come back to find 10,000+ complaints and wonder what's up.
Indeed, and lots of sauerkraut deco that is stuffed in all people's mouths who can only speak one language and have no idea where the real land of chocolate is....
I built the Wiggum house yesterday, but I didn't assign Ralph a task - was in and out of my Springfield multiple times with no issue. I assigned Ralph a task and then the next time I went to go into my town, I got the "harp freeze" - as good a description as any.
I tried all the standard stuff, and even tried loading it my Springfield on my iPhone instead of my iPad and the same problem. My other Springfield loads just fine on both devices so it is NOTHING specific to either of my iOS devices. My Springfield has never been loaded on my iPhone before so there isn't anything that could have been cached on it - whatever the problem is, it exists with my Springfield as it is stored on the Origin servers
When you tap the screen when it says "tap to continue" the application is using your origin user name and password to connect to origin servers and download your application data (your town). In case you were wondering what the spinning donut is actually doing at this point it is downloading your town and depending on how fast your connection is is why it may take longer than other times. Thus since this is the point the app hangs and the harp sounds we know it is starting to download the town but fails and hits a download loop.
Their is no local fix to this as we can test and use the app flawlessly by not loging into origin. As Dom also points out that if you have too many friend requests can cause strange issues. Which is another testament this is an issue with your origin account on their server where your account (town) is stored and not the local install of the app itself. Also like with the great crash of the Xmas update when origin couldnt handle all the friend activity. We have to wait for origin to fix the problem.
While its very frustrating to us I'm sure we all think that if there is an issue it should affect everyone and not just a select few. The reason behind this is that players are not on a single server. Accounts are spread out over clusters of data centers across the world. In these clusters are multiple databases of user accounts. So you can see there are many specific fail points in which origin has to track down to find a root cause and fix. But still there is no reason it should take this long to fix an issue like this. I have designed installed and managed these types of services for apps in the private sector for years and have had issues like this before. But if it took me as long as origin does to tack down and fix then my clients would have dropped me a long time ago.
For myself I have gotten past the withdrawal pains as I have only been down 18 hours. I think I could deal with 24 to 48 hours being down. I am active in my town to where that wouldn't make a huge impact on my valentines theme progress. But some people have posted being down for weeks with this issue which is where my concern lies. I don't think I can keep the tapping jitters at bay that long without losing it a little. Haha
Sorry for the rambling as I am substituting my tapping for tapping on the keyboard.
Everyone with the issue keep reporting it here so there is documentation and hopefully ea sees this and cracks some skulls on their origin division to get this fixed.