Bug Android Version 1.0.10 Bugs

[adenosine]

@Ryan...Can you please update The Pinball Arcade to ICS Android 4.0 to get rid of the black bar menu that appears at the bottom of the screen with apps that have yet to upgrade to ICS. You guys don't use the Menu as it is, so there's no reason for it to be there anyways. Once you upgrade The Pinball Arcade to ICS, the black bar will disappear from the bottom of the screen and the Menu would then be accessed by holding down the soft Home key (if you guys ever implement a need for the Menu). Thanks and hope you can take care of this soon.

Getting rid of the 'action overflow' button that appears on ICS devices is not an easy fix at all. In order to get rid of it and still support gingerbread or lower, you need to set the targetSDK version to ICS or use an actionbar and set the target to honeycomb. If you set the targetSDK to ICS, then some of the API changes which could possibly introduce tons of bugs. There are only a very small number of devices that the action overflow button impacts negatively. If your device has a menu key (like all the gingerbread handsets that were upgrades to ICS), then it doesn't bother you. If your devices doesn't have any hardware keys (like the Atrix HD or the Galaxy Nexus) you have to have that area for the home, back, and task switch keys so it doesn't bother you. It's probably not worth it for them to fix it when so few users are impacted by the issue right now.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Odd, that phone should run it no problem at all honestly. Getting really good reports from users playing that phone. And like Adenosine said its more of a pain than it seems, Google requested this as a nice to have fix but it fell in the priority unforunately.

Ok, after a few days using the Samsung Galaxy S III, I've decided to go back to HTC and got myself the HTC EVO 4G LTE. I must say, the framerate is much more consistent on the EVO LTE than is was on the Galaxy S III, so I'm very satisfied in that regard. Also, as already stated, the sound issue on the EVO LTE has been fixed and is no longer a problem.

@Ryan...Can you please update The Pinball Arcade to ICS Android 4.0 to get rid of the black bar menu that appears at the bottom of the screen with apps that have yet to upgrade to ICS. You guys don't use the Menu as it is, so there's no reason for it to be there anyways. Once you upgrade The Pinball Arcade to ICS, the black bar will disappear from the bottom of the screen and the Menu would then be accessed by holding down the soft Home key (if you guys ever implement a need for the Menu). Thanks and hope you can take care of this soon.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Can the tables be made darker like the console versions or is that not possible? Medieval madness is so busy it's hard to see the ball.

Will we be getting PHoF mode?

Currently no, that would require either a lot of shader work (kills performance) or an entire art overhaul.

Yes eventually we will get this feature.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Quick update, the login is now persistent, fixed a bad link where it was sending the user to the register page instead of reset page. Fixed a bug where when users clicked no to the facebook integration it was causing issues. Also going back and fixing some old bugs, ill keep you updated but I hope to get a beta build out to you guys in the next few days.

I have tried to repro the facebook and can't for the life of me. I will keep trying however ( i get a nexus s to test tomorrow when my wife gets back in town).

 

[Carl Spiby]

Ryan what did you think to the landscape vs portrait performance I mentioned?

 

[Nik Barbour]

Ryan what did you think to the landscape vs portrait performance I mentioned?

I reported a bug earlier in this thread - where now that landscape switch works, if in landscape, occasionally the play speed goes 2x what speed should be. Portrait is fine. Don't know if this is related to the landscape performance boost you mentioned.

 

[Nik Barbour]

Odd, that phone should run it no problem at all honestly. Getting really good reports from users playing that phone. And like Adenosine said its more of a pain than it seems, Google requested this as a nice to have fix but it fell in the priority unforunately.

Back to the phone shop PinWiz?
How did you manage to return the S3? don't think they'd let you do that in the UK.

 

[PiN WiZ]

Back to the phone shop PinWiz?
How did you manage to return the S3? don't think they'd let you do that in the UK.

Actually I went from the Galaxy S III -> HTC EVO LTE -> Galaxy S III. I'll have to wait till I get home from work to setup my Galaxy S III again though. The Galaxy S III blows away the HTC EVO LTE (especially in the quality of the camera, video and screen presentaion), but the UI is going to take some getting used to which I don't mind now considering how disappointed I was with the HTC EVO LTE.

 

[Ryan Routon]

The portrait / landscape issue depends on the device, some have a default rendering mode that is indeed faster. The Galaxy S is also a decently old phone now as far as smart phones go and its certainly on the lower end of what we can support (though I can play it fine on my wife's). Carl what did you mean by when its in portrait its still in landscape? This is technically impossible due to the camera transform math that is required (different aspect ratios compute different viewing windows in the camera matrix math).

 

[Ryan Routon]

Ah Carl I just loaded them up and you are indeed right, they are just rotating every matrix involved (camera, ui, etc). Unfortunately that is not an easy task and all of the popups, web browsers, in-app purchasing screens would be the wrong way up.

 

[Carl Spiby]

Ah Carl I just loaded them up and you are indeed right, they are just rotating every matrix involved (camera, ui, etc). Unfortunately that is not an easy task and all of the popups, web browsers, in-app purchasing screens would be the wrong way up.

Is it something that might be possible in the future? It makes the game so much smoother on my TF101.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Definitely might be possible, this actually came up in January pre-launch but the boss didn't like how it made all the outside popups (including the in app purchasing the biggest part) the wrong orientation. Also might have to check on Google in case they frown upon this for featuring and what not, but I will tinker with it when time for sure. It does seem that Android has an easier time rendering longer lines and less of them, an interesting thing to think about...

 

[PiN WiZ]

The portrait / landscape issue depends on the device, some have a default rendering mode that is indeed faster. The Galaxy S is also a decently old phone now as far as smart phones go and its certainly on the lower end of what we can support (though I can play it fine on my wife's). Carl what did you mean by when its in portrait its still in landscape? This is technically impossible due to the camera transform math that is required (different aspect ratios compute different viewing windows in the camera matrix math).

My comment about the very slight framerate lag on all tables was on the Galaxy S III unless you were referring to someone else.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Actually I went from the Galaxy S III -> HTC EVO LTE -> Galaxy S III. I'll have to wait till I get home from work to setup my Galaxy S III again though. The Galaxy S III blows away the HTC EVO LTE (especially in the quality of the camera, video and screen presentaion), but the UI is going to take some getting used to which I don't mind now considering how disappointed I was with the HTC EVO LTE.

Regarding the UI, just put a 3rd party launcher on it like GoLauncher EX or Nova. Then no matter what device you run, your UXP will always be the same.

I've got GoLauncher EX on the SGS2, and GoLauncher HD on the TF300T. Both are free. Both are awesome.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Actually something Carl mentioned. Hopefully I will have an S III soon, it should run perfectly well, I know the II does we have one here.

My comment about the very slight framerate lag on all tables was on the Galaxy S III unless you were referring to someone else.

 

[Ryan Routon]

also oddly i am not seeing the zen's improvement in framerate on my atrix 4g tegra 2, it actually looks like its running at 30fps in portrait (ball stutters) while ours is at 60...odd hmmm...

 

[McGuirk]

Actually something Carl mentioned. Hopefully I will have an S III soon, it should run perfectly well, I know the II does we have one here.

The SII lags on Bride of Pinbot and Funhouse (I think you were saying the SII runs the game fine), but now with a custom ROM and governor control on my phone, it's running fine. Out of the box though, those two tables go through spots where they are unplayable.

I still sometimes get an issue after logging in & tapping Yes to compare my scores with Facebook friends. The game froze for a couple of minutes, before Android popped up a box and said the game was not responding. I tapped Report, and after that box disappeared nothing happened. Then I got another one saying Market crashed, and I just rebooted my phone anyway.

 

[Ryan Routon]

And, also thank you for all the appreciation you guys, its what keeps me wanting to improve this product =)

 

[jaredmorgs]

Hey Ryan

I'm posting this thread link in here, because Black Knight has some serious discrepancies between the IRL table and the scripted one.

Fuseball's 5 minute demo kind of sums up the visual bugs perfectly (at least for me).

http://digitalpinballfans.com/showthread.php/1353-Black-Knight-first-impression

As I said in that post, would Farsight consider holding back the SS tables until the emulation was ready? Or is the release queue already set and removing SS table releases like this would throw out the work in development?

I'd much prefer to get two correctly emulated tables each month, than one really great modern emulation , and one (frankly) sub-standard script-job.

This is my first (and hopefully last) slightly ranty post since my time on this forum. Overall, I'm really happy with TPA. I just can't see the success of SS releases until emulation is at least ready for release (was going to say perfected, but perfection in software development is a pipe-dream).

 

[Nik Barbour]

Actually I went from the Galaxy S III -> HTC EVO LTE -> Galaxy S III. I'll have to wait till I get home from work to setup my Galaxy S III again though. The Galaxy S III blows away the HTC EVO LTE (especially in the quality of the camera, video and screen presentaion), but the UI is going to take some getting used to which I don't mind now considering how disappointed I was with the HTC EVO LTE.

Have you got a relative that owns a phone shop or something - how are you making all these returns?
As far as I know - you take it out of the shop in the UK and your stuck with it.