A few eagle-eyed members noticed over the weekend that a “Rovio Account” prompt was added to the original Angry Birds, very similar to the system that was included in Rovio’s newest app, The Croods.
Well, unfortunately, this feature was not ready to be released and has been deactivated for the time being, but don’t worry this is proof that it’s coming soon! If anything, we can view this as a “gamma” release that has been revoked for additional testing and bug squashing. What really matters is, an Angry Birds sync system is in the works!
Preliminaries
Now, let’s quickly run through how this appeared to work. Of course, since the system is still a work in progress, things are likely to change before the final release. Foremost, this appeared to be a pure overwrite style of sync. What this means is that if you have mix-and-match progress between devices, you’ll have to chose which one you want to keep (or create different Rovio Accounts for each device). At this time, the system won’t grab your best score on a per-level basis, but simply push / pull your entire progress. How it exactly handles different progress states across different devices remains to be seen. Anyhow, when it comes down to it, to have a per-level sync would be a very, very slow process and a bit Utopian. Bottom-line, always proceed with caution, as no sync system is perfect. They’re meant to support the most common use-case, not those of us hard core players.
Next, while the system was only seen on iOS (it was noticed on Google Play as well, but we have little information there), in theory, it should work across all platforms, including iOS, Android, PC, Mac, etc. There are a few issues here and there that I foresee (though it’s entirely possible that Rovio had the same vision and is already putting them to rest). The biggest is level discrepancies, namely the Facebook and Twitter levels in “Seasons” that are NOT available for PC and Mac at this time. A second could be Game Center achievements not registering properly if transferring to a new iOS device. A third could be the “full activation” status if transferring to PC. Another may be “concurrent gaming”, such as if you’re playing on your iPad while junior is plays on an iPod Touch.
Preface: Manually backup as well!
As I mentioned above, no sync system is perfect, so take the simple steps to make sure your progress is safe and sound. “Cloud” systems — especially new ones — aren’t always perfect. Before you first login to your Rovio Account, be sure to consult our Ultimate Backup Tutorial. This guide includes comprehensive instructions for most devices and is a must-read for anyone wanting to protect their endless hours of flinging.
Getting Started
OK, let’s get into the good stuff. How does it actually work? Or rather, what will YOU need to do? Thus far, the process is pretty darn simple.
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- Register for your Rovio Account
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- Login to Your Rovio Account
Register or signing into your Rovio Account will be the first REAL step once the system goes live en masse. You will have the option of either signing in or registering. If you made a new Rovio Account when playing, “The Croods”, you should be able to use it here as well. This step is nothing fancy, nor is it rocket science. Just create an account, sign in and move on.
Oh, one thing I should add. Don’t try to fool Rovio by providing a fake email, as you have to confirm your email address within 48-hours of registering.
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- Thanks for Registering
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- Your Progress
Now that you’ve registered or signed in the system will likely (again, speculating here a bit) check your data files to see if your device has “newer” data than what appears in the Cloud. If it does it will overwrite in the cloud. If the cloud is newer, it will pull the progress down. Then, just like that, your most recent progress is now loaded!
If this is your first time logging in then obviously you don’t have anything in the cloud, so it’s probably wise to login from your primary device so that’s the progress that gets pushed up.
Can you still Manually Backup, Restore, and Transfer Progress?
The simple answer is, “Yes”, you can, but how depends on your situation. Once your device is connected to a Rovio Account and your progress has been pulled down there will be two additional “highscores” and “settings” LUA files. These new LUA files contain a hashed string of characters (e.g. ‘highscores_<hash>.lua’ and ‘settings_<hash>.lua’). The “hash” is a long hexadecimal number, likely unique to your Rovio Account.
Okay, With that said, how do you transfer or backup your progress on iOS? Well, it depends. Read on, but I want to first add a disclaimer.
Disclaimer: These our our preliminary tests, so proceed at your own risk. Always backup via iTunes first! We will definitely do some additional digging once the system goes live for good.
If you don’t have a Rovio Account:
You can simply backup, transfer, and restore as normal by following our backup guide. Dead simple as always.
You do have a Rovio Account and have already synced:
To Backup
- Open up DiskAid as your normally would
- Backup the four files: highscores.lua, settings.lua, highscores_<hash>.lua, and settings_<hash>.lua.
To transfer and/or restore your progress:
- Logout of your Rovio Account and completely close the game
- Open up DiskAid (if not already)
- Copy all four files: highscores.lua, settings.lua, highscores_<hash>.lua, and settings_<hash>.lua to your new device
- Launch the game and log back in
- Your new progress should be there and pushed up the cloud.
Questions
I imagine there will be more, but wanted to get some thoughts down nonetheless.
- Will it prompt you to overwrite your progress?
We weren’t the first time we tried, but that might be a nice “just-in-case” feature to add. - What happens if old progress gets loaded onto your device?
I’m not even sure if this is possible, but this is yet another reason to manually backup. - Can I create multiple profiles for different progress?
As far as I can tell, so long as you provide different email addresses this shouldn’t be an issue. - Will it work across platforms?
We don’t know just yet, but would assume that is the ultimate goal. - Will it merge my progress (i.e. just take my highest scores)?
We touched on this above. At this time it doesn’t look like it. I personally don’t think this will ever be supported, but who knows.
More to come…
Yeah… I was just about to post it. Awesome right? I really hope it is also between OS
This looks pretty awesome! I’ll probably do this, but I hope you don’t have to pay for it.
There is no evidence to suggest that this would be a paid system.
On android i have other scores then in PC, if i log in with account on pc, and on android, is it synchronized, and will i lose one of my scores?
Based on what we’ve seen, either
1) You would have to pick one device to overwrite the other completely, or
2) Have two separate accounts.
ok, thanks, does this mean you can log in everywhere in every game, if i have 2 pc’s with ab, can i log in with an account and the game automatically adapts with my scores i saved?or is it not that simple
That’s the idea.
Logging in with the same account will sync Angry Birds on all your platforms.
You got a few highscores while on the subway, those scores will be transfered to your pc in your home office and your ipad in the living room.
yes, and if i log out on my game, can someone else logging in and all scores will be changed to his?
I dunno if that would be possible, I mean it’s pretty much to get your own scores to all your devices, if you’d share devices it would overwrite your scores on all those devices if you logg in with a different account. Maybe it’s possible that your own scores are still saved online and can be put back on your device by overwriting the scores of the other user, but thats kinda risky imo:P would make it possible to do though:P
In theory yes
but you have other score files in data maps, does that mean they changing all the way with last account you logged in?
I don’t know. It would certainly be risky.
Could it possibly sync across Angry Birds and Angry Birds HD?
We already said that this is possible.
If you log in with the same account, you will have the same scores on all devices.
But you can still play without logging in (I guess) and save your data on your device.
YES! I’m so tired of constantly backing up my angry birds data every time i complete an episode.
It was available for a brief time on Android as well.
hell yeah, this is what I’ve been waiting for!:D
I’d be in heaven if it could transfer my progress on PS3 to android, but I think thats highly unlikely:P (I’m working on the first 3 angry birds games on PS3, later 2 games I did on android. But since the PS3 version of the game doesn’t have the bonus levels for getting 60 stars and 10 feathers on each level pack, I’ll have to redo a LOT of levels to unlock those:P)
As @coveleski mentioned, it was available on Android. I have an android phone. I saw it on mine, created an account, confirmed the email, signed in and it backed up my scores. One thing, The total was off by 14 points. It showed my total for AB as : 43,934,536 when my actual total is: 43,934,550
It did show 1252 stars and 408 feathers which is correct.
14 points is a small price to pay for this convenience!
;-)
Yes, it is. Guessing that before they roll it out they will fix that. Hope it comes to all versions. This will make people who want to upgrade thier andriod phones to jelly bean very happy!
Ah, here’s a question for @amslimfordy – I have all my high scores on my ipod except for one which is on my android phone. Will Rovio be able to deduce that my one high score on the android should be the one to keep, when all the other highs are on ios? Riddle me that, oh Riddle McRiddlestein….
As we say in the post, it is unlikely to do a level-by-level analysis. It will likely check Total Score and overwrite the entire data file.
Hrm, that’s weird. 14 makes no sense, since everything in the Angry Birds world is multiples of 10.
except star wars, scores work on multiples of 5 there:P
Score only log in multiples of 10. The early episodes of Space had a glitch that used 5s.
ah you’re right again:P Didn’t know it was due to a glitch though, I just played normally and got scores ending in 5’s:P
Yes it’s very wierd,
here is a screen cap I was able to get after it sync-ed
http://angrybir.de/136axhq
@amslimfordy, Just noticed that one of the pictures posted above, the one showing the sync-ed progress, the total score also ends in 36, same as mine.
Not sure who’s progress these were taken from, but is the difference also 14?
Hrm, I’ll have to ask BL.
Just asking, is this function available across all AB games? Eg AB Seasons, Space, SW etc…
Omega X
Eventually yes.
I guess now I know why it took Rovio over two months to answer my email about this very issue. Since the answer came just right before they were doing their soft launch…
Got lots of hope for this!
I have a question to the person who took the screenshots in the article above: how did you save your points, stars and feathers in your Rovio account? As I mentioned earlier, once I was logged in, I lost all my scores.
@chriss sorry I didn’t understand it well, do you mean that all your scores are lost from your device?
Not from my device. On my iPhone I have everything.
But I created a Rovio account, and when I logged in, I had 0 stars, 0 feathers and 0 points.
When I logged out, everything was back.
How can I save my scores from my device into my Rovio account?
Thanks @chriss that’s such relief, I thought that one might lose all scores once signed into Rovio’s account.
This may sound like a really stupid question, but I’m pretty much everything else but an expert in this kind of stuff so I’ll ask it anyway…
Does this mean that you have to be connected to internet while playing? I was just wondering, ’cause if that account is made for some server, how can you sign in without internet connection? Croods is already using that account thing and you can’t play it without being connected to internet.
If you need to be connected, that could really be an issue, ’cause the server gets so rushed from time to time that it kicks you out. It would be a shame to see that in AB, for example when you’re just about to reach a very nice score and *PUFF* “Check you’re internet connection” and everything is gone.
I would think that you only need to be logged in during the syncing process. If it requires being constantly online and logged in, the system isn’t properly designed, in my opinion.
This whole cloud business is actually a modern take on a very old concept in computing.
@TruckDriver Ok, ’cause while playing croods, you need to be connected the whole time your playing, if you get kicked out it returns you into the beginning screen and says that it’s syncing (sometimes it takes about 5 minutes) and when it’s done it continues the game and several times it hadn’t saved my progress so I had to do stuff again. That’s why this got my bit worried if the same system will land into AB games.
Well, Croods seems to be based on a different style of game play, so perhaps it’s understandable in that instance. For an AB app, I don’t see any useful need to be continually connected. Even with the advent calendar style chapters, once the level downloaded and unlocked, you could play without being connected.
The Cloud for AB Games is for synching progress. You’ll need to be connected as much as for Game Center.
On the other hand, The Croods requires you to be continuously because you can “visit” GC friends and view their progress live. (map layout only, no gameplay involved) Which is interesting imho @lisko @truckdriver
I assume that you wouldn’t need to be connected all time, it would register and sync all your scores every time you sign in to Rovio account.
Since there IS an offline option (I.e., choosing to not sign in) then that should be fine.
I was excited about that and waited syncing high scores feature between devices ever since I start playing on phone and iPad, but…. Well I don’t know how this is going to function, I hope they will distinguish PUs scores and “clean” scores before because I tested PUs on android phone and got some ridculously high scores (even up to 70k higher then top scores on Nest’s leaderboards) while my iPad and Apple’s GC scores (and ones that I entered to ABN) are “clean” ones. Beside, I never completed all levels on phone and with PUs scores exception they are much lower then my iPad’s scores.
God, when I see all those red capitals in your tutorials I completely freeze…
Anyway, guys thank you for posting this article and informing nesters on awesome news.
Okay, it will wouldn’t be syncing level by level as I thought. I am not aware how scores are stored anyway, like total for game, totals for each episiode or some other way, I am total ignorant when it is about these stuff.
I have one question – I downloaded DiskAid yesterday and there was claim to update my iTunes to the newest version but I never update iTunes as I have jailbroken iPad running on iOS 4.3.3. and think if I update iTunes it would ask me to update iOS to. Am I right? Can I update iTunes without need to update iOS? Sorry for asking here, i certainly can google about this somewhere else but I just need simple answer like YES or NO.
It means can I transfer Scores from my PC to Android ?
looks like it:)
Update for AB Free with 6 new levels, new layout and Toons.
@chriss I saw Google Play But there is no new update available. The Latest version is still 3.1 :-D
AB free doesn’t exist on android, we got the full games for free:) (well you have space premium and star wars HD that costs you a couple of bucks:P)
on iOS there is a free version with a selected set of levels. The levels are also in the full version though:)
Seasons and Space got another update today on android though, not sure if they added anything at all, maybe they fixed the glitch that caused you to only see the add in the corner instead of your score… (I thought that was on Rio though…)
@donkey-er Thanks for info. I did not know that :-)
No problem;)
Personally I think Rovio could have done a better job on the android ports, I’d rather have the games paid without the adds… I still have to deal with adds in seasons and rio, coz you can’t buy them away there…
@donkey-er You means Ads! Yip, ads are irritating :-)
lol, yeah, no idea why I said adds insteadXD
This is very good news! I had always saved my scores on my PC, but we were gone for a few months last winter, and I only had my phone. While we were gone, I had to do a factory reset, and had no scores saved. My old phone kept malfunctioning, and I had to keep resetting it until I got a new one.
I finally got a new phone and downloaded all my AB games, then started from scratch because I wasn’t at home where my settings were stored. After numerous updates, I got home, but had a problem figuring out which were my newest saved scores. (I’m a bad book keeper).
If we will be able save in the cloud, it would be great if I could transfer my PC progress over to my phone!
Does anybody know how IAPs will be sync (i.e. ME and DZ in ABSp and MF in ABSW)between devices?
No they won’t. Just your progress.
Edit: Scores – Stars – Feathers
@sal9 what if one has DZ on one device and dosn’t have it on an other and choose device without DZ for primary?
Then you may lose your scores on Danger Zone.
Thanks @amslimfordy. I hope that Rovio’s AB cloud will come out soon so I will be more motivated to play on phone which is more practical to handle in public transport while on way for work and back. Cool, can’t wait to see it in use.
I will speculate by saying you will have to purchase DZ on the other device as well.
@sal9 I will, thanks, that sounds reasonabe.
that would be cool, that you have the possibility to use power-ups in PC games, you bought this in android/ios, save it on your account, and you can use it everywhere you log in
It probably won’t happen. This is why http://angrybir.de/YE4cBq
:O Feature I begged for over the last couple of years!!!
Things do come to those who wait :)))
Now I will finally be able to play AB on my iPad too!
This is no use if an user using outdated platform and need to continue on new platform.
I back up my iPad with Disk Aid to my home computer. When the AB cloud becomes up and running it will be good. Having another back up to the games scores, stars and feathers will not hurt. I cannot image losing the progress in the AB games. It would be very hard to start over again but if ever presented with that reality, I guess I would play again. Looking forward to the cloud to become official.
This is exciting news! I still think “bird brains” was a great idea for the name, but since Rovio has other games, it wouldn’t exactly fit. I am looking forward to this.
I see this as the answer to the power up score differentiation. Per Peter V’s response to @mvnla2 the other day, the limiting factor in “keeping two sets of books” is the Gamecenter limit on leaderboards. This is probably Rovio’s first step away from those Gamecenter limitations. Maybe we can all be back in living color again soon!!
Knock on wood, we could even do away with the ridiculous hacked score totals as well.
When I transferred my progress from android to PC (The PC version was not the full version, only the demo) then a saw all my feathers on the levels and I could play the golden king pig level on the demo version.
I wonder if Rovio will take away that now.
What do you think will there be kind of leaderboard like in GC?
I don’t think Rovio would want to deal with the hackers and maintenance that comes along with leaderboards.
Admin, I read it carefully on this post, this … while the system was only seen on iOS, I saw this on my android tablet device too, but only appear 1 day.
True, but we could not verify if syncing would work across platforms.
Sounds awesome, I’ve been waiting for this for so long. Finally I can start playing on my iPhone too. I’m really really happy with syncing between iOS devices, but if they added support for Mac also, I’d be the happiest person in the world. :D
Can someone help me please? I have the latest version of every AB app from GP but I still don’t see the Ab Toon icon. My friend installed it with ICS and he got it while I’m on Jellybean and I do not have it yet! Restarted phone many times but no good. Also I do not have this new online backup system on my android while I see that a user named sparty83 has already made a backup of his scores. Also new Android OS does not let me manually backup my scores either (following the exact mentioned method on this site) Help..
Re the Backup System: This was pulled by Rovio shortly after the “accidental launch”. A few users got to try it out, but then Rovio realized their mistake and took it down. It’s entirely possible that the “backup” for these users will inevitably be deleted once the true system is released, since their backup may be incompatible with the final version.
Re Toons: You may want to check your version number within the app, or toggle your WiFi/3G settings.
Thank you Mr.AMslimfordy for your quick reply but I want to manually backup as well but the backup system mentioned in this site does not work either due to OS restrictions. Is there any known way around this? None of those other Ab backup apps from GP also work as a matter of fact. Thanks.
There’s a thread in our Forum concerning Jelly Bean. I’m not sure if there are any definitive answers there, but it may be worth a look:
https://www.angrybirdsnest.com/forum/discussion/1457/is-there-an-angry-birds-backup-app-that-works-on-jelly-bean
The icons are available now in all apps, and so is a picture of red bird with slash’s hair-do in the main page above the toons icon(the music note icon is missing by the way)redirecting to a website. Also rather than rooting my new phone I would prefer to wait for Rovio’s backup system since no other option other than rooting is available now. Once again thanks to all.
As I know, there is no backup app work with jellybean, only a way to backup, root your device.
Position for Cloud Arhitect is opened since yesterday. who knows when this will be available. Sounds like they don’t even have staff.
Maybe this will be what the ABF app runs off of?
Where i have to go exactly to register a Rovio Account?
@cc-jolly – When I started playing Croods, I was able to create the account when I opened the game. Not sure if you can do anywhere else yet?
Ok thanks very much @lisko
So it will be maybe come to the furthet Angry Birds Updates also !!
@cc-jolly – No problem :) I tried to find some info about the registering, but so far couldn’t find anything that it would already be available for AB games, but can’t say it for sure :)
Ok thx again!
@cc-jolly I was able to use my account that I created on Rovio’s main page long ago when I sign in for newsletters. You should use same e-mail and password, if you forgot password you can recover it, Rovio will send it to your e-mail.
Thanks for Information @cosmo2503