Challenge Mode Beta

http://androidfiles.pinballarcade.com/beta/AndroidPinballActivity_ChallengeA.apk

Hey guys, we have been throwing this around a while privately and I wanted to post it here to give the rest of you guys a look at the Challenge mode, so the Android beta testers will be the first to view this en mass . But with great privilege comes great responsibility! Not really I just need bug reports

Just FYI the target scores are currently set to half of the table's built in replay score. You will notice a small button on the upper left hand corner of the owned tables screen, that is where we have placed the temporary beta button for now. The PC has been tested pretty well but there are still some Mobile menu flow issues I am working on (for example, canceling in challenge mode is causing a funky flow that is causing a crash). Please post any bugs you find, menu, saving/loading, and Challenge related (not tables please) and any feedback at all on the general difficulty of the challenges themselves. Thank you in advance! =)

ps, the rankings are as follows percentage wise out of 2200 total challenge points.
{0.0f, 15.0f}, "Beginner",
{15.0f, 30.0f}, "Pinball Lizard",
{30.0f, 45.0f}, "Tommy Wannabe",
{45.0f, 60.0f}, "Drop Stopper",
{60.0f, 75.0f}, "Arcade Rat",
{75.0f, 90.0f}, "Hall of Fame Crew",
{90.0f, 100.0f}, "Flipper King",
{100.0f, 100.0f}, "Pinball Wizard",

ex. Pinball Lizard is 15%-30% aka (330-660)

Yes! All right! (Even though I'm not a droid tester, that doesn't mean I can't celebrate

It will be rolled out to everything once we iron out some of the bugs, the other platform engineers are busy on other projects so I am hoping that we can catch most of them here and the port will be smooth elsewhere. Most of the bugs have already been caught, and its in a decent state now to hammer on / playtest

Failed to meet the Williams TOTAN challenge first time. Will have to try again when I'm not trying to watch two kids.

I did encounter the exit out bug on the N7 2013. Did you want a logcat on that, or you know what's going on there.

Under "My Tables" its currently just suppose to be a small red box on the top left? This is on a new Nexus 7. I started Season One challenge and passed TOTAN, so far so good.

When I start a Table in challenge mode and exit it does crash the app though.

My Tables, small red rectangle on top left corner, Load to continue challenge, Start Challenge, Continue, Starts Table, Quit, (Are you sure you want to exit table) Yes, I see tables in challenge for a second, app crashes..

If I start a new challenge and exit table same thing.

Jared, since you have same device, can you reproduce?

yeah that exit bug was introduced fixing another bug ><..>< no logcat required, it was just getting late and I didn't have time to hunt that one down.

In the Gottlieb & Stern Challenge: After you have finished the 2nd table challenge you are no longer presented the pre-table screen to tell you what the table challenge score level is. After you have finished ball three you are informed if you have successfully completed the challenge or not, and then you can continue or use a retry. However, if you quit, let it crash, then restart TPA, you can load your challenge where it left off, and then you will get the pre-table screen that gives all the challenge score info. IDK yet if this issue applies to all the challenges of just the Gottlieb & Stern one.


When it comes to retries, there is a limited number which is good. Does that number mean that limited number for that run at the challenge, and if you use up all the re-tries can you re-challenge the "Challenge" again? Will there be a total limit to the challenges, besides the number of times you can retry the tables within the challenge, or am I getting into the new UI and the Tokens idea too soon? Now that I have completed a challenge i see that going back to re-do it shows all the table sores as zero. But I am still curious about the in challenge retries, if you use some, or all, up will you have less, or any, when/if you retry the entire challenge over again?


Completing the final table in the Gottlieb & Stern challenge causes TPA to crash, same as when you pause and quit a game. Is there supposed to be some sort of message or UI screen to show a final score, or to tell you that the challenge is completed in total? After the 3rd ball you get the screen to show you your points for the table, but once you press continue, I didn't retry, that's when it crashes.

After completing the Gottlieb & Stern Challenge the first table in any other Challenge would always be Big Shot, the last table in the Gottlieb & Stern Challenge. This would continue until I exited TPA, went into settings, force stopped TPA and cleared the cache. Now starting any other Challenge the 1st table that loads is the shown on the list.

A+ for effort! Challenges accepted, in a fee months...I AM THE LIZARD KING!

ZenTron said:

My Tables, small red rectangle on top left corner, Load to continue challenge, Start Challenge, Continue, Starts Table, Quit, (Are you sure you want to exit table) Yes, I see tables in challenge for a second, app crashes..

If I start a new challenge and exit table same thing.

Jared, since you have same device, can you reproduce?

Click to expand...

100%, and a known issue per OP

WARNING: DATA LOSS POSSIBLE WITH THIS BUG

==Progress Wiped when using Android Back button at New/Load screen==

=Symptom=

If you tap the Android back button when on the New/Load screen [1], the New button is triggered and all progress is lost!

=Reproducible=

100% I would say, but I'm not going to test it twice...

=Steps to Reproduce=

1. Enter Challenge mode
2. On the New/Load screen [1], tap the Android back arrow to return to the main screen.
3. Observe results (in dismay)

=Actual Results=

All progress is wiped, without a penultimate warning that this is going to happen.

=Expected results=

You are taken back one screen.

=Additional Info=

I know why this is happening. The Android back button triggers the left menu button in all situations. In this case the left menu button is Wipe.

If working around this integration is problematic, at a minimum change the position of the New/Load buttons on [1] to make the back button trigger Load instead of wipe. Ideally add a dedicated Back button to alleviate this bug.

Note that you get in a menu loop as well at [2], and the only way to get out of it is to press continue, start a challenge, exit the game, and then crash out to the home screen.

The loop goes [2], [1], [2], [1] to infinity and beyond.

[1]
[2]

ah good call, that is definitely the back button clicking new, there should be three buttons at that point.

Ryan Routon said:

ah good call, that is definitely the back button clicking new, there should be three buttons at that point.

Click to expand...

Hopefully that will stop irate support emails ;-)

Device/OS:
Nexus 7 - 2012 / Stock KK 4.4.2 Rooted

Bug Description:
If NOT logged into Farsight login, challenge mode allows you to start and play the challenge, you play the table but scores do not register (stay on 0.0), the challenge mode remembers you have played the table and progresses you to the next table in restart of the challenge. It all starts getting a bit broken.
I think you could do with a conditional at start of challenge, 'if not logged in, do not allow challenge to start'.

Steps To Reproduce:
described above

Frequency:
100%

Additional Comments:
None

Edit - turns out this was actually the bug posted under post #17 in this thread.
Logged out play does work.

Report deleted as additional info is in the post #17 of this thread.

I've potentially found an imbalance in the points awarded for the "Easiest Billion in History" in the Williams Challenge.

Do you thing that the points accrued are balanced for BoP, given this somewhat "gimme" billion?



As an aside, notice the table title and points run-in issue there.

I'd be perfectly happy with the response: "these spacing issues will be null when the new UI is pushed out". If that is the case, then don't worry too much about the spacing issues.

But do consider toning down the 2000 points earned for getting the billion.

Fairly major bug

Device/OS:
Nexus 7 2012 / Stock KK 4.4.2 Rooted

Bug Description:
Figured out that on starting a challenge the first or current table is meant to be highlighted orange as shown below.
This is using the bally challenge in example.

At this exact point on this screen, press 'exit'.
Restart the exact same challenge (Bally in this example) and notice that no table is highlighted, as shown below.

Press 'start challenge', it starts the 'Big Shot' table even though this is not in this challenge list. Exiting the table causes TPA to fully crash and exit.

This is 100% reproducible in all 4 challenges but has different results for each challenge, which seem to be consistent per challenge.

The fail per challenge is listed below...
Williams - starts AFM & crash on exit
Bally - starts BS & crash on exit
Gottlieb - starts Genie with no crash on exit
Season 1 - fails to start a game and crashes app


Steps To Reproduce:
As described above.

Frequency: 100%

Additional Comments:
This is with clean, fresh, restarted challenge progress.
Also Reproduced on SGS4 device but with same Farsight login.

At this point in the challenge, if you want to "rage quit" and get out of the challenge mode, there is no way to do it other than continue, and then quit out through the table menu.

I suggest adding a button that takes you back to the challenge main screen.

netizen said:

In the Gottlieb & Stern Challenge: After you have finished the 2nd table challenge you are no longer presented the pre-table screen to tell you what the table challenge score level is. After you have finished ball three you are informed if you have successfully completed the challenge or not, and then you can continue or use a retry. However, if you quit, let it crash, then restart TPA, you can load your challenge where it left off, and then you will get the pre-table screen that gives all the challenge score info. IDK yet if this issue applies to all the challenges of just the Gottlieb & Stern one.

Click to expand...

Yep, this behavior is present on the Williams challenge.

As soon as you tap continue, the next table in sequence loads without the challenge info screen, and goes straight into game mode, without any fly-over animation.

Agree with the scoring imbalance.

Racked up 8000+ on BoP with 3B this score would not even give me 1K HoFpoints. While scoring some 800M on Ripley's gave me a a few 100s and setting a new pb on Creature with just shy of 5,8B rewarded me 143 points.

Edit: Scored 6B on AFM and got zero points in Bally challenge, 2B should have let me pass the table.

Edit2: Drained at 2B plus and it gave me 4 points and let me finish the challenge.