Very Dissatisfied Game Crashes on Open, Looks terrible, and Runs Terrible on Android...
ghermans1
Member Posts: 23
So... I got an email from the GS support team 2 days ago telling me to republish because there was a hot fix for my game crashing on open on a few devices. I don't have any ads in my game and these devices were connected to the internet. I am mentioning they are connected to the internet because there is another bug where the game will crash in airplane mode, not related to ads. I re-published and wake up the next morning to a crash report from Google and another incident from a customer with a Sony Experia running 4.4.2 emailing me that ever since the update I just put out NOW my app is crashing on his phone. No one got back to me on this after 2 days and 3 emails! I am losing sales and credibility with my customers here and I all I hear is silence on GS's end! 5 out of my last 6 sales on Google Play since the "hotfix" were refunded so whats up?
Besides that... on most Android devices the game runs poorly. Its a super simple 1 scene quiz game with barely any graphics... side by side on a Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5s the Android game runs terribly. This happened with the last game I put out too, a simple ball moving across the screen looks like it is running at half the frame rate of the iPhone version, this is on a S5. I put ads in that game, the one with the ball, and then took them out because the ads would make the game crash if the device lost connection to the internet. Why did I pay to promote a game that is incapable of making income?
But never the less I decided to give you guys another chance. I figured maybe the first game I made was too complex, a simple little niche quiz game should work fine on Android right? Apparently not. The main selling point for me here was that GS could make a game for both Android and iOS...What GS really makes is a game that can work on a specific device on iOS, because resizing the screen to fit different devices is basically impossible because of another glitch where if you change the camera width and height when you touch the screen it will actually register the touch about an inch and a half to the left of where you touched. This is on both iOS and Android, although site support said it was an android issue...Letterbox is a joke aesthetically, and the site support told me to use stretch. I tried using stretch, and it does just that, warps your graphics to stretch the screen... again terrible. I found that out by having it rejected from the iOS app store after waiting 8 days because the buttons won't press on a 6+ and my beta testers on Android telling me that the buttons in my game won't work also. AND when the game adjusts to different screen sizes, using the only available option of letterbox, the graphics look "jaggy" - that was feedback from one customer. SO you basically get half a game for Android... and a game for what ever device you originally built the game for on iOS. I can't market my games to Android users because even if they do convert I'll probably lose the sale due to the game not working on their device or it running too poorly for them to actually use it. What is the point of an app that I can't put ads in or sell? Has anyone actually made any money on Android devices with GameSalad? Please send me a link to one that runs smooth enough for me not to get motion sickness from.
And working with Gamesalad, the actual program... I have to restart the program every 10 minutes because the game starts to run too slow for me work on anything. After 10 minutes I click on an actor and I get the beachball for 2 minutes before it opens. After quitting and opening GS up again it works fine until another 10 minutes goes by.
So far my experience after a year is that I wasted a lot of my time and money with a glitchy program that I have to find a workaround for the simplest tasks and email support daily with new problems that they don't fix.
What are you going to do to rectify this situation?
Sincerely,
A pissed off user
Comments
You can try a free game we published for android that we originally made for ios https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.utopian.blockybird I tested on nexus 5, galaxy s4 and hudl2 and it ran smooth for me.
If you want to take a look at the code search red bird on DBA (not allowed to post link)
Hey @DeepBlueApps I'll check it out on a friend's phone. Out of curiosity, do you have ads in your game being that it is free?
@ghermans1 Is your game only out for Android? I have an iPhone 4s and wouldn't mind testing out your game to see how it runs...What is your game called?
Respectfully, could it possibly be the way you've designed your game? How many MB's is your project file and have you tried any ways to optimize your game?
Hi @asoflatte the game works fine on 4s, its Android that is the problem. The choppy animation could be the way I designed the game... however its a very simple quiz game so I don't see how that is really possible. Is there a way to PM people on this forum? I'll send you a promo code to download for iOS.
Also, the optimizing has nothing to do with the crashing issues or resizing issues.
Also, @DeepBlueApps why did you decide to make the game only for Android, just curious?
@ghermans1 Hmmm, I'm not too familiar with Android. I believe you can just click my name "As Of Latte" and send me a message with your promo code.
If it's a simple quiz game, I can't think of a way to optimize. Maybe, changing the graphics size before uploading the images into the game...?
My project is 37MB, (which I know is fairly large) but it runs smoothly on my Mac. I have yet to test it on mobile devices, however.
Also, I took a look at some of your other game's reviews @DeepBlueApps and it seems like you have a similar issue. One person's comment on Agro Birds is
"Terrible The graphics are totally gabbled.... The background doesn't show.. No menus... Nothing....it should be removed"
@asoflatte I sent you the promo code. My app size on android is 12mb on iOS its 19...
I don't update free games I'm sure if agro birds was updated it would be fine and the reason its not on iOS is I let my license expire but it was on iOS a few months ago.
Is Blocky Bird ok for you its an oldish release but I just redownloaded on hudl 2 and it seems fine for me.
Project size is not equal to performance in any way. 37Mb is actually fairly small. I have tried my 700mb game on nexus 5/note 3 with no crash issues.
Could it just be that they have poor performing devices or just certain ones having issues?
As for creator performance you are not alone @ghermans1 . But the good news is, were getting close to a new stable: http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/84681/state-of-gamesalad-on-4-10-2015#latest
Also, the touch offset bug... may not actually be a bug, although hard to say in your case. because I have no idea how it's coded. Hud/GUI elements on a non-scrollable layer should be fine, things that are constraining to touch just need the an offset hardcoded.
Stretch can also be manipulated to work universally, it's not magic though and takes some work.
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@DeepBlueApps I'll let you know when I get on one of my friend's phones. It would be hard to tell without a comparison to an iOS version though. I'll make a video comparison of my app post it so that everyone can see what I'm talking about.
@AlchimiaStudios the two phones I personally tested them on were both galaxy S5s. I was told by support that the touch thing was a bug, so not sure if its true or not but I was never provided a solution.
@AlchimiaStudios Great to know! I'm not a GameSalad expert, so I was just assuming the project size could hinder the performance...
@ghermans1 Got your message and replied back! Not sure how much help I can provide...I'm just making my best possible educated guess
The game I'm working on now uses overscan to fit multiple screen sizes and there is no problem registering touches correctly. Granted, you have to make sure that you design it as universal from the beginning and are conscious of the location of objects on the screen, but I've never run into any problems like you've described.
Do you have a UI on a separate layer that moves independently of the rest of the game?
Hopefully your video will shed some more light on this.
@Spalding004 I have a next button that moves the camera to the right to show the next set of levels. Also, have you actually tried an adhoc version of your game? It worked fine in the viewer, and on multiple sizes in the viewer, it wasn't until it got to the app store and it got rejected on iOS and when I sent it to my beta testers through google play that the issue arose.
FYI this is what @asoflatte wrote back in the PM:
"Unfortunately, I couldn't load past the Splash screen...It just said "loading" and then crashed after 5 seconds. I tried opening the app several times too."
So great! my game doesn't work on the 4s either!
and @asoflatte I have no ads
I can't wait for all the 1 star reviews from people that can't even open my app
I have a 4s at home, I'll download it on that. I havn't put an actually verson it yet just the viewer which worked fine...
Also @asoflatte thank you for taking the time to download and attempt to try the game
@ghermans1 You're welcome! Yeah, I was definitely able to download your game easily.
I just wasn't able to get past the splash/loading screen on my iPhone 4s. After several attempts, just leading to the app crashing.
I'm at a loss here... I wish I could provide you with a solution or a direction to go in on how to fix this issue, but I'm stumped! I know how frustrating it must be when you're potentially losing revenue and positive customer reviews.
@asoflatte I actually remember now, someone reached out to me saying it didn't work on their 4s, they were running iOS 8. Are you running iOS 8? also can you try playing another gamesalad app from the App Store and let me know if it works?
I test everything on adHoc.
This bug was killing me last year. It was only on Android devices with smaller screens, that down scaled the graphics. I'm not sure if it's the same one. I will need to dig out my old Galaxy S2 to check.
The way it worked was games worked fine on newer, larger screen (and larger resolution) phones. The touch area of actors would be to the right (and slightly down I think) of them, more and more the further to the left of the screen you got. This was not related to constraining touch or offset. I sent a detailed bug report to GameSalad and kept getting the answer that they could not replicate the problem. I gave up but some time later they seem to have figured out that "the problem was only on devices that resized the graphics down". Despite explaining that a few times to them I was just happy that got fixed. Hope it's not here again.
@ghermans1 I have iOS 8.2 and I've played a few Gamesalad games on my phone and never had any issues with them
They all worked great.
Hmm I wonder if it's just for newer released games @asoflatte my game says it's not optimized for 4s in the app store
So an update... I just tried my app from the App Store on my 4s on iOS 7 and it did work, but then it quits after a minute or two of playing. I updated to iOS 8.3 and it improved stability but still quits sometimes. The size interpolations are buggy, causing the animations to either not work... meaning something is supposed to shrink to nothing just disappears, or it interpolates in jagged steps, about 50% of the time the interpolations work correctly... but being this is a quiz game every time you answer the buttons shrink and then reappear with a different answer... so thats an issue. I downloaded two other gamesalad games that were released recently on the game of the month, the first one is a little buggy in the beginning then seems to work ok, that one quit after about two minutes. It has rare crashing issues. The other seems to work ok, sometimes the touch becomes unresponsive for a second but then it is generally ok... I would appreciate any feedback from Gamesalad as I have not heard anything on their end since Tuesday. I am getting more angry at the terrible customer service. Why would my game work 100% great on on the 5s and then have all of these performance and crashing issues with the 4s and android? Shouldn't it work the same? Also, I want to try these other two games on Android when I get my hands on one. Hopefully some time this weekend.
@ghermans1 do you have a support ticket with us? Before i respond i would like to get all the information i can.
@BlackCloakGS #11714 is my most recent one regarding Android crashing issues
@BlackCloakGS do you want the other ones too?
11714 Game crashes on android 4.2.2
11513 Looks like the game won't open on android with no internet connection
11515 App Rejected...
11408 Nothing works on Android
I am sorry to here you are having issue with our product. I ,QA and CS have spent all morning trying to reproduced your issue and we have almost exhausted all of our android devices in the office with out any luck. We have also tried iOS and no luck reproducing the issue. I have a sony Xperia M2 D2306 on order but it will be a few weeks before it makes it to our office.
Do you know how much ram the devices have that you are seeing the crash on?