Android crash/failure reports
in Tech Support
My game (LEO - Low Earth Orbit) runs fine on iPad, and also on the Android device I bought for testing (Acer Iconia 7in, 4.1.2). I use "letter boxing" in the hope that, despite all the different screen sizes available, the full extent of my game's screen will be visible.
However, I've had some feedback from the jungle... "Doesn't work on my Galaxy S3"... "Loads on my Arnova tablet, 4.0.2, but cuts off the buttons".
I don't know if the overscanning or screen size is an issue for the Galaxy S3 case (not enough info). I subsequently tried to run it in Android SDK with parameters set, as best I can tell, to match that of the S3 and found that yes, indeed, the program crashed once it got to the processor-intensive part of the game. The letterboxing seemed to work on the preliminary screens though.
Don't know if anyone has any thoughts on this, just putting it out there. I have submitted a GS Bug Report but hey, it's Easter!
Noticed something else kind of interesting... when I upload my Android APK directly to the device its around 15MB, but when I BUY a copy from Google (yeah, I know. I'm desperate!) the installed size is around 21MB. They're adding a lot of cargo!
Regards to everyone in the GS community... I'm new to GS, but very impressed with the level of community involvement (and particularly like the Tutorial Videos).
Doug
However, I've had some feedback from the jungle... "Doesn't work on my Galaxy S3"... "Loads on my Arnova tablet, 4.0.2, but cuts off the buttons".
I don't know if the overscanning or screen size is an issue for the Galaxy S3 case (not enough info). I subsequently tried to run it in Android SDK with parameters set, as best I can tell, to match that of the S3 and found that yes, indeed, the program crashed once it got to the processor-intensive part of the game. The letterboxing seemed to work on the preliminary screens though.
Don't know if anyone has any thoughts on this, just putting it out there. I have submitted a GS Bug Report but hey, it's Easter!
Noticed something else kind of interesting... when I upload my Android APK directly to the device its around 15MB, but when I BUY a copy from Google (yeah, I know. I'm desperate!) the installed size is around 21MB. They're adding a lot of cargo!
Regards to everyone in the GS community... I'm new to GS, but very impressed with the level of community involvement (and particularly like the Tutorial Videos).
Doug
Answers
1) Outright crashing when it gets to a page that is quite heavy on computational requirements. Th app just terminates and returns the user to their Android home screen. No information is provided about why.
My son speculated that this might be due to older processors not being able to handle the floating point calks, but the Galaxy S3 seems to have a decent processor and is using the later Arm 7 instruction set, so I don't think that could be the issue.
2) The layering of items is stuffed up... on the screens that DO work on one of his devices the LAYERING of actors appears to be reversed (i.e. the BACKGROUND image is sitting on top, and this effect appears to apply to other actors.) I suspect the ENTIRE image order has been reversed.
I did experiment with turning OFF some IMAGE PRELOAD flags, which I had thought might have caused the problem, but after this was reported I turned all of these flags ON again (actually using Deep Blue's PRELOADER program)... but the same thing occurred.
Very frustrating... especially seeing as though it works perfectly on MY android device (bought specifically so I wouldn't look like an idiot releasing an App that doesn't work!)
To troubleshoot these kinds of issues, create a copy of your project. Now start deleting things, one by one and testing the project afterwards. When your project loads successfully you've then found the culprit and you can start to figure out why it doesnt work. Your going to want to start by deleting the most CPU and RAM intensive actors from the scene in question. Start with large Background image actors. Then things that contain and modify game data (scorekeeping systems, health systems, experience points, etc).
I recently had this issue and decided to do a quick check to see if anyone else had a solution. I've found my culprit though and created a workaround. Good luck to you!