updating my game & now testing. what went wrong?
So I make a few changes to my game iFore!
1) Made it with 2 difficulty levels - Amateur and Pro
2) Added another actor / enemy
3) Added a landing pages, about screen, instructions screens, etc
4) Made the high score visible during game play (it was only visible at the end of the game in the past). It has text that says "high score" and loads / displays the score.
5) A few other small tweaks like changed some images of actors.
I hit Publish and first tried updating the game. Got thru to dragging the icon to iTunes and everything to this point was working fine. The landing page, instructions, about, etc., everything worked. When I selected one of the two difficulty levels the high score text is screwy (its fine when I hit preview in GS), the actual score is fine and once the character dies a "play again" actor is supposed to pop up (this is one of the images I changed) but it isn't visible at all (again, it works fine in the preview). I can touch the area where the actor is supposed to be to play again and the game resets like it should.
I thought that maybe I should upload it as a new game so I tried that and got the same results. I also tried deleting the app from the iPhone, power cycling it, deleting the file from iTunes and in Finder and I get the same results every time.
Anyone have a clue as to why this would work in Preview but not after it gets to a device? I can imagine small tweaks but this is seriously f'd up.
1) Made it with 2 difficulty levels - Amateur and Pro
2) Added another actor / enemy
3) Added a landing pages, about screen, instructions screens, etc
4) Made the high score visible during game play (it was only visible at the end of the game in the past). It has text that says "high score" and loads / displays the score.
5) A few other small tweaks like changed some images of actors.
I hit Publish and first tried updating the game. Got thru to dragging the icon to iTunes and everything to this point was working fine. The landing page, instructions, about, etc., everything worked. When I selected one of the two difficulty levels the high score text is screwy (its fine when I hit preview in GS), the actual score is fine and once the character dies a "play again" actor is supposed to pop up (this is one of the images I changed) but it isn't visible at all (again, it works fine in the preview). I can touch the area where the actor is supposed to be to play again and the game resets like it should.
I thought that maybe I should upload it as a new game so I tried that and got the same results. I also tried deleting the app from the iPhone, power cycling it, deleting the file from iTunes and in Finder and I get the same results every time.
Anyone have a clue as to why this would work in Preview but not after it gets to a device? I can imagine small tweaks but this is seriously f'd up.
Comments
Well, I introduces testing my app on an actual device pretty late in my development cycle and ran into the funky nuance issues you are experiencing. Therefore, I now do test runs on a device to establish a baseline, tweak it to work there, and then note any oddities (in my head) of how it runs in GS app or web preview (so I know it is likely not an issue on the actual device).
One thing I found is things appear to be a little more consistent on the device UNLESS your app is struggling performance wise on the device in which case all sorts of timing issues can erupt (like spawning of actors or dependency of actions between actors). What I found is the app I am working on is pretty intense actor wise and it works fine performance wise on the Mac and the 3GS. It will run on 1st gen but due to boggy performance, the timing I rely on introduces all sorts of inappropriate sequences and produces buggy looking performance (despite working fine on 3GS and the Mac).
Also, the positioning of elements in the scene can vary a bit too between the two environments.
Ok.... This is weird.... I went into the scene editor and removed the actor that says "high score" and when I preview in GS there isn't anything there but the value, no text. When I publish that game and play it on my iPhone, it says high score and it has the value. Very weird. I must have messed with something I forgot about when I tweaked the game. Blame it on an IDTenT error. Still haven't figured out the "play again" actor not being visible on the iphone but visible in preview.