Users Guide for TPA Android

[jaredmorgs]

Those of you who follow me on social media will have noticed that I have created a Users Guide for TPA Android.

This guide came about for the following reasons:

• There was no central place an Android customer could go to learn more about the game (apart from some buried FAQ posts here)
• There were some features that were too hard to explain in-app, which were causing confusion for customers.
• GPS was not behaving as customers expected it to, which was resulting in data loss.

The Users Guide is hosted on my GitBook site [1]. From here you can make comments against the content so I can fix it. Highlight a section or sentence and a comment box will display.

I've also licensed the guide with a Creative Commons license, so it can be freely distributed with attribution.

For the record, this guide is not official: FarSight have not approached me to write it.

This guide might have been compiled and written by me, but it is our guide. I encourage you to:

• read it
• poke holes in it (by commenting)
• yell at it
• yell at me
• share it (if you think it deserves it).

[1] https://www.gitbook.com/book/jaredmorgs/pinball-arcade-android-users-guide/details

 

[Jeff Strong]

Very well done, Jared!

 

[Baron Rubik]

TPA pffft.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hu.magicpixel.Zaccaria

 

[jaredmorgs]

TPA pffft.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=hu.magicpixel.Zaccaria

I know you don't have much buy-in for TPA anymore. But if you have any feedback about this guide, I'd appreciate it.

 

[TomL]

Jared, regarding the two buttons "Download all" and "update all", I would clarify them to mean "download any tables that you are missing but will not update any out of date tables" and "update any tables you already have downloaded but will not download any missing tables".

Also on the matter of MipMapping, my advice is for the user to try both settings and decide what works "best" for them on their device. Not all Android devices implement anisotropic filtering correctly, so there's no predicting what the effect each settings would have on any given device.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Jared, regarding the two buttons "Download all" and "update all", I would clarify them to mean "download any tables that you are missing but will not update any out of date tables" and "update any tables you already have downloaded but will not download any missing tables".

Also on the matter of MipMapping, my advice is for the user to try both settings and decide what works "best" for them on their device. Not all Android devices implement anisotropic filtering correctly, so there's no predicting what the effect each settings would have on any given device.

Thanks Tom.

I'll incorporate this tomorrow.

 

[Baron Rubik]

I know you don't have much buy-in for TPA anymore. But if you have any feedback about this guide, I'd appreciate it.

Sure thing, might not be today (kids party) but I'll do it this week.
I'm sure it's great though.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Sure thing, might not be today (kids party) but I'll do it this week.
I'm sure it's great though.

No stress, whenever you have a few moments.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Jared, regarding the two buttons "Download all" and "update all", I would clarify them to mean "download any tables that you are missing but will not update any out of date tables" and "update any tables you already have downloaded but will not download any missing tables".

Also on the matter of MipMapping, my advice is for the user to try both settings and decide what works "best" for them on their device. Not all Android devices implement anisotropic filtering correctly, so there's no predicting what the effect each settings would have on any given device.

I have incorporated your feedback Tom. Thanks for reaching out about it. Changes are live at the link in the OP.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Got some free time tonight to add a new section about the Table Options menu. This new section has been positioned before the sections about Controller and Launch Button position because these sections flow naturally after the Table Options menu. I have used anchors to link to the related sections directly.

Any feedback welcome.

 

[xAzatothx]

useful Jared. I learnt what MIP Mapping was

Personally I'd try and keep the tone neutral and not express your opinions around audio latency.

 

[jaredmorgs]

useful Jared. I learnt what MIP Mapping was

Personally I'd try and keep the tone neutral and not express your opinions around audio latency.

Yeah, I had thought that (this section was written early on when I was venting more than documenting).

How do you feel the tone is overall? I went pretty hard in the GPS section, because my feeling is that Save/Load Games is misleading to uninitiated users.

I'll alter the Audio Latency section now.

Update: suggested changes are live.

 

[Baron Rubik]

Got to read it tonight, and as I expected, it's very good.

Things I like...
1 Content page jump links.
2 Your writing style and tone are clear and descriptive.
3 You understand the issues and have explained them well.

Things I'd change...
A I'm a visual person, so I like pics and screen shots. If you can make them interactive (ie click on a menu item, and it takes you to the relevant sub menu) even better. Different fonts, colours, bold for extra emphasis. But this is personal preference.

B I'd go more in depth on the menu items. Things like 'event cam' 'locking cams' 'inverting nudge behaviour' 'turning rumble off' 'display touch zones' 'touch zone schemes' 'hud off' etc. Give examples of what each does, show different touch schemes.
I remember several times on this forum, showing people something on a sub menu, and them having absolutely no idea about it.

C - maybe have a trouble shooting section.
Could mention when table download consistently crashes, you should delete the table using table manager. Used to read a lot of play store reviews with users having that problem.

D - definitely add a performance tuning guide. Ie advising turning down graphics settings and hud off. Explain why older alph numerics eat more resource than later dmd games (seen a lot of users not believe that one, they auto think older = less resource).

E - tips & tricks.
Like using the green ball skin in Funhouse. (so you can see the ball in the outer orbit) etc...

But this is all my personal preferences. It is very nice and concise in its current form. (And a damned site more than Farsight have ever done to explain their own product).

Nice job Jared.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Got to read it tonight, and as I expected, it's very good.

Things I like...
1 Content page jump links.
2 Your writing style and tone are clear and descriptive.
3 You understand the issues and have explained them well.

Things I'd change...
A I'm a visual person, so I like pics and screen shots. If you can make them interactive (ie click on a menu item, and it takes you to the relevant sub menu) even better. Different fonts, colours, bold for extra emphasis. But this is personal preference.

B I'd go more in depth on the menu items. Things like 'event cam' 'locking cams' 'inverting nudge behaviour' 'turning rumble off' 'display touch zones' 'touch zone schemes' 'hud off' etc. Give examples of what each does, show different touch schemes.
I remember several times on this forum, showing people something on a sub menu, and them having absolutely no idea about it.

C - maybe have a trouble shooting section.
Could mention when table download consistently crashes, you should delete the table using table manager. Used to read a lot of play store reviews with users having that problem.

D - definitely add a performance tuning guide. Ie advising turning down graphics settings and hud off. Explain why older alph numerics eat more resource than later dmd games (seen a lot of users not believe that one, they auto think older = less resource).

E - tips & tricks.
Like using the green ball skin in Funhouse. (so you can see the ball in the outer orbit) etc...

But this is all my personal preferences. It is very nice and concise in its current form. (And a damned site more than Farsight have ever done to explain their own product).

Nice job Jared.

These are all great suggestions.

Regarding A:

I definitely need to break up the text with some screen shots. It's on the To Do. I wanted to get feedback before investing effort in capturing screenshots for the sake of it.

I think using animated GIF images created from a 10 sec video would be great to demonstrate things like invert nudge. That way I wouldn't need to embed video in the guide (although AsciiDoc does that really well).

Tesla Motors used Animated GIF really well in their Tesla Docs, and it's something we're experimenting with at Red Hat to enhance the customer experience.

Regarding B:

I hadn't even thought about rumble because the shield tab controller doesn't feature a shaker motor (Earthshaker specific menu item).

This is why we need folks like you reading the guide and raising bugs. I might even try to embed [Send Feedback] links to the GitHub tracker in each section to make feedback easier.

Regarding C:

Good idea about troubleshooting. Will add that to the list.

Regarding D:

Forgot to specifically mention about why A/N tables perform worse than DMDs (need to go hunting for the thread as credence - this is the hardest part now).

Regarding E:

Tips and Tricks would be a great one for folks to contribute to. I'd be happy to credit contributors in this section when they submit a suggestion (let me know if you want credit for that green ball idea).

 

[Baron Rubik]

Nice! - credit on the green ball belongs to another, but I forgot who.

 

[Scumble373]

Awesome work Jared. Thanks for putting this together

 

[jaredmorgs]

Awesome work Jared. Thanks for putting this together

Am I factually incorrect on anything in this guide? If I am, it's important to me that I fix it.

 

[Xanija]

Hey [MENTION=459]jaredmorgs[/MENTION],

a suggestion for the Google Play saved game section:

You can't have more than 3 saved games at any time. If you have 3, you don't get an option to save your game. You will see 3 saved games, but it's not inuitive what to do. Now here comes the dangerous part: Tapping on a saved game doesn't give you the option to overwrite or delete, it will automatically load the saved game. The only way to create a new saved game is to delete one of the 3 existing saved games. And this can only be done by clicking on the menu of a saved game (the 3 dots) and select delete. Only then it's possible to create a new saved game.

Oh, by the way - please make this thread sticky.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Hey [MENTION=459]jaredmorgs[/MENTION],

a suggestion for the Google Play saved game section:

You can't have more than 3 saved games at any time. If you have 3, you don't get an option to save your game. You will see 3 saved games, but it's not inuitive what to do. Now here comes the dangerous part: Tapping on a saved game doesn't give you the option to overwrite or delete, it will automatically load the saved game. The only way to create a new saved game is to delete one of the 3 existing saved games. And this can only be done by clicking on the menu of a saved game (the 3 dots) and select delete. Only then it's possible to create a new saved game.

Oh, by the way - please make this thread sticky.

Oh yeah, that caught me out as well. Definitely one to add. I'll do it today.

I'll sticky this.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Hey [MENTION=459]jaredmorgs[/MENTION],

a suggestion for the Google Play saved game section:

You can't have more than 3 saved games at any time. If you have 3, you don't get an option to save your game. You will see 3 saved games, but it's not inuitive what to do. Now here comes the dangerous part: Tapping on a saved game doesn't give you the option to overwrite or delete, it will automatically load the saved game. The only way to create a new saved game is to delete one of the 3 existing saved games. And this can only be done by clicking on the menu of a saved game (the 3 dots) and select delete. Only then it's possible to create a new saved game.

Oh, by the way - please make this thread sticky.

Changes made: http://jaredmorgs.github.io/Pinball_Arcade_Users_Guide_Android/#deleting_saved_games