TPA Extremely Unstable in iPad 1

[VanceFox]

Before I start, let me say that I LOVE the tables in TPA. They are recreated with such detail and while I haven't played most of them in a real arcade, I feel like I'm getting a great recreation and a great experience. The tables are rendered beautifully and the physics seem, for the most part, spot on.

The TPA program itself, outside of the tables, however, is a different story. My version of TPA crashes constantly upon making selections on the main screen and on the table select screen on a regular basis. There are several tables (CftBL, BK, CV, and others) that I have not been able to play for months now because they crash the program 100% of the time. And now... Class of 1812 is apparently on that list! It seems like for the past few updates, my experience has gotten worse each time tables have come out.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app numerous times on my iPad 1. I have deleted the table and redownloaded numerous times. At this point, I don't know what to do and it's frustrating me. I bought the second season pass even though I was an XBox 360 customer who got burned. Now I'm an iOS customer who is getting burned by a very buggy/unstable TPA. I'm not sure if I'll be getting a season three pass if every update makes the program even more unstable.

What do I do? I genuinely love the tables released in TPA. I open this app nearly daily and well more than any other app on my first generation iPad. But the experiences I've been having the past two months are really taking their toll on this loyal player. Honestly, I'm hoping the problem is on MY end, that there's some easy fix I haven't tried. So I'm coming here for help. What should I do? You know, other than buy a new iPad because that is not going to happen any time soon.

 

[Mark W**a]

Is your device jail broken?

 

[Kolchak357]

Those kind of issues are what made me upgrade to an ipad 4. An easy, effective, but very expensive solution. I fear the ipad 1 is being slowly left behind. The crashes and stuttering were driving me mad. I feel your pain. Wish I had some constructive advice for you. Maybe one of the tech wizards around here can help in some way.

 

[canuck]

Realistically, the graphic horsepower, CPU, and RAM of the newest iPads is magnitudes higher than the first gen iPad. A cheaper solution would be buying a discounted iPad4, which would also run TPA great.

I'm on an ipad 3 which is now also obsolete, but luckily runs TPA perfectly.

 

[VanceFox]

No, my device is not jail broken, it doesn't have a single thing on it's criminal record.

As for the iPad 1 being left behind... I was afraid of that, though I can't really say I'm surprised.

 

[Fungi]

Hate to tell ya, but it may be time to move on. Good news is, the new one is super fast, super light, super sharp, super thin, and now you have a good excuse to get it!

 

[heddhunter]

Before I start, let me say that I LOVE the tables in TPA. They are recreated with such detail and while I haven't played most of them in a real arcade, I feel like I'm getting a great recreation and a great experience. The tables are rendered beautifully and the physics seem, for the most part, spot on.

The TPA program itself, outside of the tables, however, is a different story. My version of TPA crashes constantly upon making selections on the main screen and on the table select screen on a regular basis. There are several tables (CftBL, BK, CV, and others) that I have not been able to play for months now because they crash the program 100% of the time. And now... Class of 1812 is apparently on that list! It seems like for the past few updates, my experience has gotten worse each time tables have come out.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app numerous times on my iPad 1. I have deleted the table and redownloaded numerous times. At this point, I don't know what to do and it's frustrating me. I bought the second season pass even though I was an XBox 360 customer who got burned. Now I'm an iOS customer who is getting burned by a very buggy/unstable TPA. I'm not sure if I'll be getting a season three pass if every update makes the program even more unstable.

What do I do? I genuinely love the tables released in TPA. I open this app nearly daily and well more than any other app on my first generation iPad. But the experiences I've been having the past two months are really taking their toll on this loyal player. Honestly, I'm hoping the problem is on MY end, that there's some easy fix I haven't tried. So I'm coming here for help. What should I do? You know, other than buy a new iPad because that is not going to happen any time soon.

As an iOS developer I can tell you there's probably nothing to be done about it. The iPad 1 has a ridiculously small amount of memory compared to anything else in the iOS lineup. Your best bet is to reboot the iPad before playing TPA just to make sure it has the most RAM free, but even that I fear is not going to be 100% effective.

I would buy a new one personally. (I'm gonna be first in line for the iPad Air, that thing looks sick.) Once the new generation comes out you should be able to pick up an iPad 4 used for a good price. I wouldn't get an iPad 3 - that's what I have now and, while it's miles better than the 1, it's still just a little slow and stuttery every once in a while. Might as well make a real upgrade. If you can afford it, the latest iPad Air or iPad Mini (retina) will be great choices, as they have the 64 bit A7 processor, which is a real beast.

 

[Kratos3]

It's because you have an iPad 1. You won't believe the difference in everything you do with a newer model.

 

[Guitarpik]

Just replaced my 1 with an air and it's night and day. Can't wait for the dmd to be fixed and I'll be golden.

Time to bust out those iTunes gift cards I've been hoarding for this day and buy some tables!

 

[VanceFox]

It's a bit late and I thought the issue done but... after the Fish Tales update, everything is working fine again! Not sure what that was all about. I'm still intending to get a new iPad, of course, but now I have a little time.

Just my luck, though. I started on the XBox 360 and that's pretty much dead, switched to my iPad1 and that's dying...

 

[Storm Chaser]

I run on iPad1 and I make sure TPA is the only app running when I play. It still crashes sometimes but never during gameplay or game selection (rather during Leaderboards). I had a hard crash while on a Super Run on No Good Gofers (up to 1.8B with three balls remaining) when I had to pause the game and when I came back it had crashed.

 

[Buzz1126]

I have an iPad first gen, but w/64GB of memory. I don't have a problem with running TPA. I'm certain the Air will be like night & day between it and my 1st Gen. Ah, maybe someday...

 

[superballs]

The first iPad is getting to a point where it won't be able to keep up with even basic software needs.

As a rule of thumb, if you buy a brand new tablet that is part of the high end lines, expect no more than 2 good years out of it.
After the first year it will start to show it's age but after two, it's really going to start to feel it's age, and an upgrade will be the only option to improve performance.
I find Apple products seem to have a bit better longevity due to OS optimization for the platform, and Android devices to have a bit lower longevity overall.

For instance, the iPhone 4, to me, felt like a competent device longer than the Galaxy S3 did, on the other hand, my Note2 still feels pretty good, but I'm starting to wish for a bit more power

 

[TheDane]

Vance - I'm on an iPad 1 also and the NEWEST UPDATE does the same thing for me -the update with the Black Knight app Icon.
BUT...the older FREE version plays all season 1 tables with no problems! It's the version with the Pirate picture Icon - from Black Rose I guess.
I had originally installed only the free app...then I bought the 1.99 paid app but as far as I can tell they were identical. Both had the Black Rose Pirate Icon.
Then I updates the PAID version and now I get the same behavior as you do.
BUT.. I still had the FREE version on my iPad and I DIDN'T update it..and when I bought all the Season 1 tables they appear and play in that version of the app just fine.

So, if you can find a way to get the previous free version with the Black Rose Icon installed on your iPad then hopefully it will work as well for you as it does for me.

~Cheers.

 

[pezpunk]

I have an iPad first gen, but w/64GB of memory. I don't have a problem with running TPA. I'm certain the Air will be like night & day between it and my 1st Gen. Ah, maybe someday...

64GB is the amount of hard drive space, not the amount of RAM your device has. Disk space doesn't impact performance. All first gen iPads have the same amount of RAM.

 

[Kratos3]

The iPad 1 probably doesn't run most programs very well.

 

[W1LDD ONE]

Wow folks still own iPad 1.

 

[PinballLizard (Mark Wyda)]

I have an iPad first gen, but w/64GB of memory. I don't have a problem with running TPA. I'm certain the Air will be like night & day between it and my 1st Gen. Ah, maybe someday...

That's disc space, IE space to save files, not RAM or anything, whether your iPad 1 has 64 gigs of space or 16 gigs, makes no difference to performance.

As others have stated, it's the age of the device. Pinball Arcade is a 2012 game and the original iPad was released in 2010... Early adopters always get screwed in the electronics game, unfortunately, and if you ask me it's a real shame devices only 4 years old become obsolete...

 

[PinballLizard (Mark Wyda)]

If you do plan to upgrade, anybody know the best pad for him to get? Because IIRC there was one, maybe the 2 or 3, where it first got the resolution bump, but the processors have trouble handling all that res, which was fixed in the next years model. I wanna say iPad 3 which was just called "iPad" IIRC but I could be wrong.l..

 

[Stuart Webster]

iPad 1 - suffers from limited RAM and VM space, making our app likely to get terminated due to memory pressure. Also limited by CPU and GPU. We use the lower level of detail model set for performance reasons.
iPad 2 / iPad Mini - the problem of the iPad 1's memory pressure gets resolved, but the CPU and GPU remain a limitation on performance. We use the lower level of detail model set for performance reasons.
iPad 3 - CPU and GPU had a spike in performance. This and all newer iPads use a retina display. However, our app doesn't utilize the retina display and instead we scale our view to the new resolution (this is why we sometimes have issues with device scaling and the user interface; when the iPad Air first launched, we UI wasn't set to scale up). We use the higher level of detail model set on this and all newer iPads.
iPad 4 - CPU and GPU had another spike in performance. We added post processing options, but they were later removed due to unexpected issues surfacing.
iPad Air / iPad Mini Retina - Not as dramatic of a change in CPU and GPU (at least not that benefits our app), but the dual-band WiFi increases networking performance (table downloads, posting to leaderboards, etc.) and battery efficiency is greatly improved. These also support OpenGL ES 3.0 but we haven't updated our engine to utilize it yet.