Important Notes:
These articles are planned to be as detailed as possible for those less technical. Although I will use this section to highlight things I think are really important please read it all thoroughly.
There’s more than one public server out there, but AFIK one of those had a catastrophic snafu a couple of weeks ago and isn’t running right now.
Credits:
These articles, with the kind permission of TeamTSTO, may contain content reposted from their Website or Discord.
These will show in “double-quotes”, preceded by (source name in brackets)
If you’re technically minded, don’t mind using Discord and don’t want to wait for my articles to go up then the Website has instructions with more info on Discord.
In This Article:
● Intro
● Series Index
● On Questions
● Private Servers
● Public Servers
• Project Springfield
• Tapped Out Reborn
Intro:
I plan to do a series of step-by-step articles as listed below. Once written I’ll edit the Series Index with a link to that article to help you find them.
These are intended to help guide you, one step at a time. If you need help then you’ll probably need to read all the articles once they are posted.
Series Index:
● Server FYIs
● Find Your Town
● Prep the Town File
● Create an Account
● Install The Game
● First Time Tapping
● TeamTSTO Q+A
On Questions:
If you have questions consider the following first:
• If it’s about the article you’re reading please re-read before asking.
• If it’s about an older article please re-read that then ask on there.
• If it’s about an article yet to come please wait and then read that first.
• If it’s for TeamTSTO please wait for the Q+A post.
Private Servers:
This was the early offering, but wasn’t easy.
You needed:
• a lot of technical knowledge
• a laptop, PC or your own actual server
• at least 30 gigabytes of game files
• to hack an APK to use your home network or server IP
It’s still an option, but now there are public servers. Alissa still calls these private because they are run by people not connected to the original game – not naming to prevent possible legal issues or other problems but you know who.
Public Servers:
As mentioned there’s at least 2, but only one seems to be online at the moment.
It’s easy to get mixed up, I actually messaged TeamTSTO from the Discord for the alternate server – ooops !!
• Project Springfield.
This is the one commonly known as TeamTSTO that I’ll be using, and as I write is online.
It is actually funded and coded by BodNJenie.
If you follow my instructions this is the one you’ll be using.
Please note:
(TeamTSTO Discord) ” **🚨 This is a beta server. There will be bugs and downtime. Your participation helps us identify and fix bugs to ensure a smooth experience.** ”
• Tapped Out Reborn
This is apparently offline as I write.
EDIT – Reported as back online 13th June
If you were set up on this server and can’t play right now then following my instructions will change you over to the one from TeamTSTO.
NOTE: If you’d been on that other server a while and downloaded a more recent copy of your town file then wait until I write Create An Account instead of going back to how your game was when spAnser grabbed those files.
Up Next: Find Your Town
And on Discord I’ve been blocked with my account. Perhaps I tried too many times to register or log in…
Hello,
I have a huge prob. If I wanna login on Town Manager it says teh following: ‘Email may already be in use’. Then I try to register it says ‘invalid mail or password’. When I try to reset the password things go smooth until I wanna log in and again ‘invalid mail/password’… I can’t log in and upload my town and play. Can anybody help me with this. I am not so good in tech!
Something similar happened to my friend, they just used a different email and made a new account
Can someone please share a new discord link? The one in the chat has expired and i would love to join the group.
Project Springfield ( from the TeamTSTO website ) …
https://discord.com/invite/8w9AF5fpmq
Oddly it seems you need Discord permissions to access an invite link that I don’t have, so I copied the one from over there instead.
I want to give a HUGE thank you for everyone that made this possible! I was able to get back to my town today and I didn’t think that would ever happen again. I’ve put so many hours into this game and words cannot describe how I feel right now..
Project springfield
I am planning when I see a reasonable UK hour not only to partake of this trial of a reconstituted TSTO but also to find the music of Jethro Tull confirming I’m thick as a brick …
So it isn’t just me living in the past, then? 🙂
Any further forward with your planned articles graham, is Allisa still going to do a post and some videos
Why?? No responce, no feedback, nothing, zero, zilch… have the addict giving up, let me know and I will give up!!!
It’s after 2am here and I’m not quite awake after yet another stupidly short nap.
I can hear my idiot noisy neighbour and wouldn’t bet on them shutting up anytime soon.
My left eye is aggravated, stinging and watering so my vision is all blurred.
The exhaustion is giving me a stinking headache and the feeling I want to vomit.
I recently heard of the death of one of the nicest people I’ve ever come across.
There’s more, but do you get the idea yet ?
Life isn’t just getting in the way right now, it’s really taking the … mickey.
Sorry for the rough times Graham. I hope for better days for you.
I have heard of the passing recently and have been feeling quite blue over it. Very sad news
Been watching out for you to post so I could tell you about Big Phil, wasn’t sure how to let you know.
Can’t just email unless you give me permission and the old forums are gone for DMs.
Hoping to spot a post from Sandra soon, to make sure she knows too
Thanks Graham. You can email me anytime buddy. Take care
Cheers.
I am sorry to hear that, apologies for my stupid post
No worries.
Sometimes I do just get busy, sidetracked or forgetful. Calling me out to make sure I’ve not forgotten is fine.
Other times I’m in chaos, incapable of writing a good clear post. When that happens I’d rather wait than post something bad or confusing – like now – but don’t ever think it’s because I no longer care.
I’m fighting to get right so I can get on and write as soon as I’m able.
So sorry to hear everything you’re going through, Graham. Thanks for continuing to hold down the fort here to the best of your ability and try not let any entitled whiners bug you! 💜
Just saw this….so sad! 😢 I’ll pop over to the UK site to send my condolences.
Sorry I’ve been so quiet…just haven’t wanted to deal with the zombie version of TSTO (at least yet), so I haven’t had much to say.
(Also, you’re more than welcome to email me anytime…I think you have my email address, but, if not, tell Alissa that I’ve given her my permission to share it with you.)
Sent a Hiya email to test – check spam if you didn’t get it yet
I respect you for apologizing and didn’t see that before I posted my response to Graham. So, sorry for saying what I did.
I do find that, as I get older and people in my age cohort have to deal with more and more serious issues in life (like illnesses and death) for themselves or their loved ones, I’ve learned to be a little better at considering that there may be a good reason why they’re not living up to my expectations communication-wise. But I’m still not perfect at that…I spent a year being upset that someone who I thought was a good friend hadn’t reached out to me (even though we had explicitly left that ball in her court the last time we had spoken), only to later find out that she had been dealing with some serious cancer issues. It was my own insecurities that kept me from reaching out to her earlier or I would have known. (I very much regret that.) Once I did hear about it (through a Facebook post) I decided to go ahead and reach out, only to find out that she’s now dealing with a second, unrelated serious cancer issue. I’m glad I reached out when I did, so I can be there for her as she deals with this one, at least.
Joined discord to see what was going on with the game and there’s loads of information, chats and instructions on how to get the game up and running, even recognised a few names on it, hopefully find some past friends from my town to rejoin my friends list now that’s up and running again.
I was very excited to try this and it worked fine, but after the game started the game it all came back to me on why I stopped playing: the game is super zoomed in on my Pixel 8a and it super annoying to play like that. Shame.
That’s down to the device and it’s screen and graphics resolution settings.
I’ve got a fairly new 8″ Kindle that didn’t cost much and a more expensive 11″ Samsung tablet.
When the game starts with no zoom on the Kindle it looks like it does when fully zoomed out on the bigger tablet. Zoom out on the Kindle and it shows much more of the town at a time.
Well, sort of. It’s most due to EA’s incompetence for not having graphic options. The device could supersede that and create the options (my previous Samsung did that), but that’s only needed because of the poor game programming.
Really ??
Good luck trying to tell them that about a game they’ve discontinued.
You could also try asking the device maker why they don’t offer display settings. More reasonable but still a long shot
Yes, really. What kind of question is that?
Of course a developer should offer graphical settings – exactly because of the myriad of devices out there. That is the reason!
Never heard of a device maker that didn’t offer that, what a weird and irrelevant comment. Display settings of a device are, of course, not for individual apps.
Who said anything about “telling them”? Where on Earth did that come from? Of course we can’t complain about a discountinued game – complaining before would of course all be useless, EA’s incompetence was so big they couldn’t even fix that bug that didn’t allow to select characters.
Do you mean the bug that could be easily fixed by asking them to take your game back to how it was the day before you were hacked if you were intelligent enough to ask as soon as you realised there was a problem ?
To put it another way …
Should a game writer be realistically expected to test their game on every possible device or should a device maker be expected to make devices that work well for any app ??
My view…
A device should work with any app that works on at least one similar device.
If it doesn’t it’s the fault of the device not the app.
Android actually provides a service for that exact purpose… it’s on the apps, according to google. Apps not testing on all devices is why so many good apps on play are rated so low… including tapped out.
That app doesn’t exist – believe me, I looked for it lol Google seems to like to make stuff up on help pages (Microsoft is the same). Samsung has such an app, and it works on some devices from other brands. But it is also very old.
How do we reach Team Springfield? I have run in to some troubles. Here is what is going on. 1) . I have lose all my doughnuts. We are talking about over 2500 doughnut gone. 2). I have am some tech issues as well. I can log in and I tapped the Team Springfield id. Than I am booted off of the site with tech issues screen pops up. So my big question is who do we talk to to help with bugs?
Go to teamtsto.org and follow the instructions, your donut count can be set in town manager link.
I would suggest going to the discord and chat with anyone, including Bodnjenie who coded the entire project!
Here’s the link:
https://discord.gg/gR5mbNBJ
Do you have a timescale for the next posts and will project springfield be taken part?
It’s all me, and I thought it’d be all checked out, written up and posted by now but life keeps gettin’ in the way
Life will do that, noticed a meet the team segment added to teamtsto.org, good to know 😀
Thank you everyone involved who brought this game back I’ve been playing since it started and have missed it. Hopefully down the line I can figure out how to get it on my iPad I’ve been playing on my android for now though and am so happy to be back in my Springfield
TeamTSO is an individual, not a team.
The actual team is called Project Springfield, and I’m the developer.
So, the correct way to refer to us as a team is “Project Springfield.”
I want to say a massive THANK YOU for doing all this
Thank you for saving the game and setting up a new server for all us Tappers. Followed all the instructions and very straightforward and now uploaded my town, so happy to be back. Thank you 😊
Hi nice article but tbh you left out BodNJenie the creator of the server that we use! If this could be edited so he is credited that would be much appreciated! Thanks
For now, to keep it simple, I’m referring to TeamTSTO as a group.
EDIT – I’ve edited in a heads-up
I’ll further credit spAnser when I cover the Town Archive and BodNJenie when I cover bits relating to the actual server, as well as anything clearly attributed to them that I repost.
BTW, the one who deserves the credit for coding the entire ProjectSpringfield…is Bodnjenie! Wanted to make sure everyone was aware of all his hard work!
For now, to keep it simple, I’m referring to TeamTSTO as a group.
EDIT – I’ve edited in a heads-up
I’ll further credit spAnser when I cover the Town Archive and BodNJenie when I cover bits relating to the actual server, as well as anything clearly attributed to them that I repost.