Bug Android Version 1.4.2 Bugs

[Jan Duin]

Great update! Apart from the stretched hud FH, BOP and Taxi run very smooth on my SGSII (4.0.3). MB and RBioN multi-ball bugs are solved as well..

Only thing I've noticed is that my HoF score doesn't show up in the leaderboards.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Missed the party - I'd already gone to bed when the download became accessible.

First up - Nice Job Ryan and team!

(Initial impressions after a half hour of play - more later, promised my son a trip to Southport Splash World)
Taxi now plays real nice, massive performance improvements, and camera angles are good now. (Only had a couple of quick go's - but love this table!).
Not noticed any improvement in BOP or FH but these played ok for me before (even with hud on) as long as textures were on normal, so I guess this is device specific.
CFTBL is no longer as easy to get ball trap after a fast loop, so feels more realistic.
Love the new Black Knight Magnasave button position, and that they do something now!

Only initial negatives are...
BK - after plunge, hold right upper flipper out, ball deflects off, rolls up the left upper flipper and hits some invisible stop near the upper left flipper pivot point on the upper level playfield.
BK - multiball hud display doesn't switch back to show score after multiball finish.
HD - still got a lot of lag during multiball. (get a better device I guess).
FH, BOP, Taxi - stretched HUD display.
BK - Would it be possible to have semi-translucent buttons for magnasave? (just being picky)

Taxi - Had one off instance, where on plunging the third ball, camera panned to spinout camera, then didn't pan back and ball drained unseen. I noticed the camera select button was showing locked mode though (padlock), despite not being selected, and was panning around table before the lockup. Unticked lock camera option and not had problem since. Will report if seen again.

Will try out more in depth later today hopefully.
Thanks again Ryan - made up I can play Taxi on my little old droid now!

I've noticed a trend that may be a key to performance issues. It may be total bollocks, but hey, I'm putting it out there for discussion.

==Theory==

I think the in-game performance you're seeing may have something to do with the state your device is in at the time you start the game.

==Evidence==

For example, I had a smooth game last night after the tablet was sitting idle for a while.

At lunchtime today, I powered up the tablet and shortly after seeing the homescreen, I started the game, and a game of TAXI.

Jittery-city in this instance.

So try closing all open apps and turn off GPS (like another poster confirmed).

==Theory==

I think TPA on Android bases gameplay performance and delivery at the time and circumstances it is instantiated on the device. (I am not a developer) It may be allocated threads by Android Dalvik based on device load at the time of starting.

==Evidence==

On the TF300T, you can adjust the device from "Balanced" mode to "Performance" mode from the tray menu. When you do this in-game, it has no effect on GPU performance concerning frame rate.

It's a case of "Ev-ry day I'm Stut-ter-in'" (sorry, long day for me today)

However, when you activate this mode before starting the game, you see butter-smoothness in all Alpha-numeric display games.

Ryan may be able to clarify this, as might other Android devs who are on the boards.

 

[Nik Barbour]

I've noticed a trend that may be a key to performance issues. It may be total bollocks, but hey, I'm putting it out there for discussion.

==Theory==

I think the in-game performance you're seeing may have something to do with the state your device is in at the time you start the game.

==Evidence==

For example, I had a smooth game last night after the tablet was sitting idle for a while.

At lunchtime today, I powered up the tablet and shortly after seeing the homescreen, I started the game, and a game of TAXI.

Jittery-city in this instance.

So try closing all open apps and turn off GPS (like another poster confirmed).

==Theory==

I think TPA on Android bases gameplay performance and delivery at the time and circumstances it is instantiated on the device. (I am not a developer) It may be allocated threads by Android Dalvik based on device load at the time of starting.

==Evidence==

On the TF300T, you can adjust the device from "Balanced" mode to "Performance" mode from the tray menu. When you do this in-game, it has no effect on GPU performance concerning frame rate.

It's a case of "Ev-ry day I'm Stut-ter-in'" (sorry, long day for me today)

However, when you activate this mode before starting the game, you see butter-smoothness in all Alpha-numeric display games.

Ryan may be able to clarify this, as might other Android devs who are on the boards.

My phone performance is always fairly consistent. I always use 'Mobo Task killer Pro' before every TPA fire up (Has a nice 4x1 widget which shows used/avail memory, battery % and a task kill button, it also has a 'shake to kill' function so you can task kill in app). So I always have pretty much the same resources before each Start of TPA.

You do occasionally get marginally smoother games than others, but this will be due to background tasks, like email sync at a 1/2 hour interval ect, but not a problem if you pause, wait a minute, then un-pause.

Tried turning off 'location options' in settings and turning off gps after seeing other posts, but this had no effect for my device. I think from reading the posts, this was specific phones running 4.0.4 which benefited from this.

Tried changing the governor to 'performance' quite a few times in the past, but again this doesn't give me any noticeable benefits on my device, I honestly can't see a difference.

Also tried ICS upgrade in the past, but again, using TPA as the test benchmark, it all ran smoother in Gingerbread for me, which is what I ended up flashing back to.

As a summary - all the tables now run pretty nicely since last beta. 1ghz single core snap-dragon processor, 1Gb Int Mem, running gingerbread 2.3.7. MIUI rom.

I typically task kill before each TPA start, dial in a little overclock to 1.2Ghz (makes BOP play that extra tiny bit nicer), and run all tables in 'Normal Texture' mode always. Only Harley during multiball has any lag now (and i'm not too fussed about that table - i'll play it on xbox maybe).
Any higher overclock beyond 1.2ghz doesn't help on my device as its the GPU not CPU that's hitting its limits I think.

I realised a while back my device is going to suffer compared to the newer multi core ones, but due to contract periods (2yr typ in UK) its what I've got until April 2013. That was the reason I bought my xbox360 purely for TPA (and Netflix - which turned out to be pants), as I accepted I'd probably need something else to play the more demanding tables on (plus Monster screen HD and analogue nudging with that nice 360 controller).

I'll keep buying all the Android tables at each dlc release, simply because next time I do upgrade, I don't want to fork out for all the missing tables at once, but I have really come to expect now that they won't all play as smooth as silk on my older device!
When I bought this phone, I never thought I would be playing virtual recreations of real pinball machines 1yr on from purchase, I just wanted unlimited data at the time as I stream a Lot of music each month, just glad it works in the main pretty well for TPA.

Next phone upgrade, I'll be shopping for a multicore Pinball playing beast of a device though! (Who knows SGS IV may be out by then!)
Recently tried TPA on my kid sisters Samsung Galaxy Note - man that screen is nice and TPA was smooth as silk, but the size of it! I don't know if that thing would fit in my pockets every day. [I won't make any bad jokes about my trouser capacity already being at maximum! ]

 

[esp2000]

Just found a crazy bug. So far I have only done it on BOP.

If you play the game in portrait mode and get a high score it works as expected. If you play the game in landscape mode and get a high score, it will ask you to enter youur initials, but the high score will not take effect.

I have taken pictures and can post them if needed. So far this has happened twice. Have not had time to test this on other machines yet.

 

[trachea]

Just found a crazy bug. So far I have only done it on BOP.

If you play the game in portrait mode and get a high score it works as expected. If you play the game in landscape mode and get a high score, it will ask you to enter youur initials, but the high score will not take effect.

I have taken pictures and can post them if needed. So far this has happened twice. Have not had time to test this on other machines yet.

I too had a high score that didn't get saved... sadly I don't recall the table. I always play in portrait mode, so I don't think that's the issue. After entering my initials I should have bumped the 5th-place score, but did not.

This happened once before, in the non-beta, and I thought perhaps it was because I kept touching the buttons after completing my initials. It never happened again.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Hey guys, was out sick yesterday so let me do my best to catch up to the comments =)

 

[Ryan Routon]

That is one of the few tables Jason couldnt get to due to time constraints but its certainly still on his list.

Is there a serious problem involving the four red flashers towards the top of the playfield on Medieval Madness? These four flashers have never worked on the Android and possibly iOS versions of this table.

 

[Ryan Routon]

First I have heard of this, and I know we didn't change the table file... is it reproducible?

While playing a long session on Monster Bash I've got plunger camera activ
ated during a multiball, only left flipper worked and I quickly lost all the balls. Then it returned back to normal.

 

[Ryan Routon]

@Nik - transparency on the buttons would possible hurt performance on these fillrate bound devices so it was a design decision.

 

[Ryan Routon]

I've noticed a trend that may be a key to performance issues. It may be total bollocks, but hey, I'm putting it out there for discussion.

==Theory==

I think the in-game performance you're seeing may have something to do with the state your device is in at the time you start the game.

==Evidence==

For example, I had a smooth game last night after the tablet was sitting idle for a while.

At lunchtime today, I powered up the tablet and shortly after seeing the homescreen, I started the game, and a game of TAXI.

Jittery-city in this instance.

So try closing all open apps and turn off GPS (like another poster confirmed).

==Theory==

I think TPA on Android bases gameplay performance and delivery at the time and circumstances it is instantiated on the device. (I am not a developer) It may be allocated threads by Android Dalvik based on device load at the time of starting.

==Evidence==

On the TF300T, you can adjust the device from "Balanced" mode to "Performance" mode from the tray menu. When you do this in-game, it has no effect on GPU performance concerning frame rate.

It's a case of "Ev-ry day I'm Stut-ter-in'" (sorry, long day for me today)

However, when you activate this mode before starting the game, you see butter-smoothness in all Alpha-numeric display games.

Ryan may be able to clarify this, as might other Android devs who are on the boards.

It's possible this might be the case on some devices simply due to the way that Android handles its threads.

From our end however we tell the app to give the heaviest thread (gpu) the highest priority. I then sample the fps at several areas to either clamp it to 60 or 30 (has to be one of the two). This is done when the users hits the start button since the overlays prior to hitting it have tons of alpha hence tons of overdraw (fill rate issues) and a lot of devices that can run the table at 60, can't with all that transparency on top of the 3d assets. That is why some devices will see stutter on the camera fly by, this means your device (as most android are unfortunately) is fillrate bound.

PinWiz stated a bug in the past where a table would play at 60 for a while then clamp to 30 until you hit the pause menu, this is because both the start button and pause return logic follow the same path and I was using it for debugging. Generally if it keeps clamping to 30 your device is right along the edge case and keeps getting slower than 60 fps so the logic clamps it down.

All in all I think I have done nearly everything performance wise, the old hud was the last thing, and as you can see its not a clear cut thing and varies quite widely from device to device. That being said, as you well know, I am always on the lookout for more performance tweaks. I want to do my best to support the older phones as we move forward.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Lastly I will forward the highscore thing on, and note that the hud stretchy thing has been fixed. I will post an apk with that fix in place. We plan to launch tomorrow so I will not be making any more bug fixes this round unless they are critical, thanks for all your help guys =) I do really appreciate it.

 

[Nik Barbour]

@Nik - transparency on the buttons would possible hurt performance on these fillrate bound devices so it was a design decision.

No worries, I love it as is!
Hope you're feeling better now. Thanks again!

 

[trachea]

No worries, I love it as is!
Hope you're feeling better now. Thanks again!

Thanks for the awesome work Ryan!

Glad you're feeling better... or at least well enough to come to work.

 

[Ryan Routon]

Thanks guys =)

It does seem there was a stub missing for the HOF database insert, so it would store it on your phone but not on the server, I will fix that before we send it out.

 

[David Storm]

Lower playfield bumper on BH is invisible. Collision detection works though.

 

[esp2000]

Is there any documentation as to how the HOF points are calculated? I am just curious as there does not seem to be any consistency in them. I played HD and 217 points. Playing BOP I played for an equal amount of time, got 1rst place on the high scores and only recieved 4 points for the HOF. Is there something I am doing wrong between tables?

 

[Ryan Routon]

that's more of a bobby question, There is some kind of equation but I am not sure what it is

 

[Ryan Routon]

Lower playfield bumper on BH is invisible. Collision detection works though.

Fixed, thankfully a code change.

 

[CrazyCoder]

First I have heard of this, and I know we didn't change the table file... is it reproducible?

Nope, had it only once in 1.2 billion points play. Probably some rare glitch.

 

[Ryan Routon]

how very odd...