iPad Game Rejected

beefy_clyro

Hi. I had my Cod HD game for ipad rejected due to a crash. When they launch, it gets to the menu they hit story and it crashes. When i use web preview it doesnt crash and functions how it should. Apple have sent me a crash report but i have no idea what it means, can anyone help or suggest anything? Thanks

guru-at-zidware

Hi...I have been testing on a real iphone (just change screen size).....I can test some nav, look at colors, sounds, etc.....not an ipad but OK. Maybe try that?

Photics

Did you use .caf for sounds? I had a corrupted sound file crash my iPod, even though the game worked in the GameSalad viewer.

I mentioned this in my "Sound Notes" thread...
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=4890

butterbean

I noticed that the viewer or the app will crash when the program won't crash a game

For example, I left a behavior in one screen to "play music: file 1" when file 1 had been removed

It didn't crash on GS on the MAC, but on the viewer it did

Check your rules and make sure there are no missing behaviors or missing files that you have enabled in a rule..... otherwise it could be a number of things...

Chaser

Fix and resubmit fast it may still go through. Mine did

beefy_clyro

thanks for the info. i am not using any .caf files and i have checked my rules on where they report the crash and i can see nothing wrong with it. Basically its crashing on a story scene, it checks what attributes you have unlocked, displays an actor to show the mission, you touch that actor and it takes you to the 1s level. Unfortunately, it is crashing on that 1st touch. They have sent me a crash log but i dont understand what it is telling me, can anyone take a look at it and maybe shed some light? im desperate to release this. thanks

firemaplegames

When you make a development build of your game, does it work fine on your device?

Have you tested it on an iPhone 2G, an iPhone 3G, and/or a Touch 1st gen?

Does it crash the GS Viewer for you? How much RAM is it using?

The things that can cause a crash are the following:

Bad logic Rule. This is the easiest to catch, as it should break everywhere.
Missing images. Make sure your image folder does not contain missing/extra graphics.
Corrupt sound files. This is tougher to spot, but if the game always breaks in the same exact spot when a sound is called, that might be the culprit.

Running out of RAM. I actually suspect this might be the cause of the crash. When you run GS Viewer, how much RAM does it say it is using? An older device like a 3G will crash if the RAM usage hits about 50MB...

beefy_clyro

Hey FMG. It is my ipad build, basically i have created and submitted a game intended for 3GS only that i have made an adhoc build and it plays fine (it would crash a 3G but i have built with the armv7 to limit to 3GS). I then 'blew up' all my graphics and used the same game to made the ipad version. Basically it loads a menu, you go to story, it brings up the controls, displays the 1st mission and says touch to continue, this is just a rule that says when touch is pressed change scene. This all works fine on the 3GS but i have no way to test on a ipad, it also works fine on the web preview. It was a 20mb game for iphone and was 68mb for the ipad, i have cut some animation images out now and have it down to 60mb. The crash report from apple is tiled 'lowmemory', unfortunately, looking at the report i have no idea what it means. I wouldnt suspect the sound files are corrupted as it was a build from the working iphone version, i have removed a few images but ones i thought were definitely not in use. Thanks Joe for any help you can provide

firemaplegames

lowmemory is a RAM issue. Basically you are running out of RAM...

Your game is just too intense for the iPad!

You have to make sure all your graphics are compressed as much as possible, sounds too. Be careful of the number of Actors you are using. Each one adds to the total RAM usage.

60MB seems awfully high to me.
The iPad version of Stunt Squirrels only weighed in at 16MB.

And that has 75 Scenes, 200 images, and three 3-minute audio tracks.

There's not as much going on as there is in your game, but your numbers still seem very high to me.

I would make sure your graphics are all 8-bit pngs if they don't have transparency, Mono sounds, etc.

And try to reuse as many actors as possible.

I believe Tshirtbooth said you can actually test the iPad version on your 3GS with the GameSalad Viewer... might be worth a shot.

CatOnAKeyboard

My game currently uses over 50 MB of "other". If the iPad has such low memory requirements, does anyone know how to cut that down, or what it means? I think it would help everyone out if we knew...

firemaplegames

I believe that "other" refers to the amount of actors you are using. That is what will specifially make that number go up. I think JGary or somebody else made a test recently...

CatOnAKeyboard

Is that number of actors total, or numbers of actors on screen? Because those are two very different values...

firemaplegames

total actors in the library.

i'm pretty sure that they are all counted all the time.

design219

@ firemaplegames

"And that has 75 Scenes, 200 images, and three 3-minute audio tracks."

So how many actors in total? This number of actors memory hit is something I would like to understand better.

firemaplegames

Stunt Squirrels has 83 Actors

JohnGreenArt

I would like to know as well. I have a game that uses 1 actor for a wall, but that actor is reproduced on a level over a hundred times to create a maze. The actor has no rules, no image (other than it's solid color as defined by Game Salad) and doesn't animate, so the actor itself has very little "weight" and the game file size is small, but I'm worried how taxing having the actor reproduced that many times can be on memory.

firemaplegames

@JGA: That is the correct way to do that. The incorrect way would be to have 100 different actors, one for each piece.

The trick is to use one prototype for many instances.

Let's say you have a bunch of background elements: some trees, rocks, clouds, buildings, etc...

Well, those could all be instances of the same exact "backgroundObject" actor. Just simply change each instance's image in the Scene.

You can even change each instance's physics, size, color, etc...

Reusing actors like that is one key to get your game as small as possible.

P.S I am very excited about Stitch in Time! I've also played Emerald City as well as Nearly Departed! Very Cool! Great artwork!

JohnGreenArt

Thanks, FMG!

I've been trying to figure out a way to do a Point & Click on iPad with Game Salad and yet not have it be too graphically intensive. I should probably start out a little simpler, though.