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By Flipline Matt, October 4, 2012 6:28 am

One of the biggest problems with Flash gaming today is how easily your saved games can get erased. The most common reason is that one of your web browsers is set to delete cookies when it closes (even if it’s not the same browser you use to play games), and we have a few other causes listed on our Forum here. It’s especially frustrating when this happens for one of our games, since you may lose hours, days, or months of progress without knowing why it happened!

To help players who frequently have their progress erased, we added a new feature in our latest game Jacksmith that lets you save a backup of your saved game somewhere on your computer, which you can load in the future if your saved game goes missing. We’re also adding this feature to some of our previous games, and you should soon see it appear in Papa’s Wingeria (version 1.2) and Papa’s Pancakeria (version 1.4) on our site. Here’s how to use the new Backup system:

Saving a Backup

When you start a game and get to the “Choose a Slot” screen, you’ll see a “Save a Backup” button on each of your save slots.

Click the “Save a Backup” button, and choose a place somewhere on your computer to save this file.

Your backup is saved as a special “.papa” backup file on your computer.  Don’t forget where you saved the file!

One thing to keep in mind is that your backup file will ONLY have your progress up until this point when you created the backup!  It won’t update as you play, so you’ll need to save more backups as you make progress if you want it to be up-to-date.

Loading a Backup

You can load one of your backup files onto any empty Save Slot by clicking the “Load Backup!” button.

Find the location on your computer where you saved the Backup file to load it into your game.  It will only accept files with “.papa” in the name, so make sure it’s named correctly!  You can only use a backup from the same game (so you can’t use a Wingeria backup in your Pancakeria game), but it will warn you if you make a mistake.

After you load the backup, it will appear as a regular saved game again, and you can continue where you left off!

It’s not a perfect solution — it would be even better if saved games couldn’t be erased so easily! — but for players who frequently find their saved games erased, it should help so you don’t always have to start over from scratch. We hope the new Backup system is useful!

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By Flipline Matt, October 3, 2012 7:15 am

Question 1: How come Rita, Roy, Mitch, and Maggie walk around with their uniforms on?

Answer 1: After working all day in the Burgeria, Rita doesn’t have time to stop home and change, she heads straight to the Wingeria for dinner! Actually, sometimes we think a customer looks more interesting wearing their uniform than wearing their normal clothes (like Maggie), so they keep that clothing in the other games. Mitch is actually wearing his normal shirt, it just looks a lot like his uniform!

Question 2: Why is there no chocolate sauce in Papa’s Pancakeria?

Answer 2: We’ve never seen chocolate sauce on breakfast before! Usually you find chocolate chips for pancakes and waffles, so we added those as a topping and a mixable. Figuring out what ingredients to include in Papa’s restaurants can be a challenge though. Since the games are played all around the world, sometimes the foods that we’re used to seeing in the United States may seem strange to people in other countries (we’ve gotten emails from people who hadn’t heard of tacos until playing Papa’s Taco Mia!). We do try to choose toppings that are well-known worldwide, though sometimes we just make things up, like Sarge Fan’s favorite “Wild Onion” sauce.

Question 3: Do you plan to create any more restaurant games?

Answer 3: We’re always looking for new ideas for Papa’s next restaurant, and we’ll have another one coming soon — the weekly “Papa’s Next Chefs” competition here on the blog lets you vote on the employees for the new restaurant. We have a list of ideas for other foods we’d like to do, but if there’s a restaurant you’re dying to see, feel free to share your suggestion on the Flipline Forum!

If you have any other questions, click the “Ask a Question!” button at the bottom of the blog!

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By Flipline Matt, September 13, 2012 9:04 am

Time for more Q&A!

Question 1
How long does it take to make one of your games?

Answer 1
It really varies for each game, and depends on how many new things we’re adding and if it’s a brand-new title — though sequels can also take a long time! For one of Papa’s Gamerias, it generally takes anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks of working full-time on the game before it’s ready to release. Some elements of gameplay don’t take long since they stay pretty similar (like taking orders and handling tickets), but we spend a lot of time working on how to turn the food’s preparation into something fun to play. We also try to keep adding new elements to the series like mini-games, decorating, and custom workers, so each of these add some extra time for development.

When we develop brand-new games for a new series there is some extra work involved, so they may take around 3 or 4 months! The first Cactus McCoy game took over 3 months to develop, and even though we could use some code and level editors from our previous games, the game had a brand new way of fighting and exploring that took some time to fine-tune until it was ready. We thought the second Cactus McCoy game would go a lot faster since it was similar to the first game, but we added so many new elements that it took just as long as the first!

We’d love to release games quicker so everyone didn’t have to wait long for our next game, but there are only two of us here at Flipline, so we can only go so fast!

Question 2
Where are the Pizzeria and Taco Mia! located?

Answer 2
Our newer Gamerias always mention what town you’re in, but we didn’t really say where the earlier restaurants were located. For the record, Papa’s Pizzeria is located in the city of Tastyville, the Burgeria is located in the suburb of Burgerburgh, and Papa’s Taco Mia! is located in the nearby town of Tacodale.

Question 3
What happened to the apartment above the Pizzeria?

Answer 3
The apartments are still there, but you only see the Pizzeria storefront during the game’s intro. Many of Papa’s loyal customers like Wally and James still live in the apartments despite being captured by Sarge and his Pizza Monsters during “When Pizzas Attack” — the food is just too good to leave! Big Pauly also still has his headquarters for Pauly’s Pepper right next door.