RC 2019-07-22: 64-bit Android and Google Play Fixes.
adent42
Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PRO Posts: 3,172
A new RC has been released.
It fixes a problem with Google Play Game Service, but most importantly it includes 64-bit engine binaries, which is a requirement of the Google Play Store in August.
Many of you have asked about this issue as a warning has popped up as you submitted you apps. This is Google's official post about the issue: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/01/get-your-apps-ready-for-64-bit.html
In order to support a 64-bit build you will need to set the minimum SDK version to 21 (the first SDK to support 64-bit).
Thank you for your patience as we worked on this issue. We have not submitted an app to the store yet, so we aren't 100% certain that this APK will meet their requirements, but we have tested the app on both 64-bit and 32-bit devices and games are running smoothly.
Please report problems to this thread and we'll keep an eye here. When reporting issues, please remember to include your device type, OS version, and if you know, whether the devices is running 64 or 32 bit Android. (You can use an app like AnTuTu benchmark to find details about your device).
The goal is to promote the RC to mainline by the end of the week.
Cheers!
Comments
cheers @adent42
i’ll submit an update in an hour or so when i’m home from work, and let you know if there’s any issues.
edit: just updated an app. no issues with a 64 bit warning, but got warnings saying the new sdk would wipe about 900 devices from the list of ones that it would work on.
@adent42 - so i just did a test build of my current project on my iphone and samsung tablet.
still works right on the iphone.
but on the tablet, it seemed to stuff up when referencing/reading table values. in game it uses tables for a three star score system, but always recognises 3 stars. i am guessing it is reading table values of 0, even though there are integers in there.
i’ll double check tomorrow, but thought i would flag it as a potential bug.
On the 900 devices that's to be expected with the change in SDK level.
If you have an older device, Android 4 or lower, you could try setting the minimum SDK and seeing if it will run.
The android build system wouldn't compile with the lower minimum target, but it may have enough stuff built in to the android compatibility libraries that it could work on at least some of the newer old devices. I will need to dig through our device library to test on our side (we're testing against some more up-to-date devices ATM).
Also @bob loblaw, could you PM me your project that's seeing the table issue. I'm trying a few things with tables, but not seeing any the issue yet.
All, if you're reporting bugs here, please provide the device and Android OS version you are running on. Thanks!
Looks like Google Play are expecting us to submit 2 apps. One that supports 32bit the other 64bit?
so it seems the problem only happened when i did the 64 bit build and over-wrote/updated the previous build, so maybe an issue updating 32bit to 64 bit in how tables are read?
i uninstalled and re-installed the project with the new build, and it works fine.
not sure how/if this will affect currently published projects updating from 32 bit.
Any chance in the future you can spit out the .aab file also?
@adriangomez beyond the scope of this build but something we do want to do.
@bob loblaw you're likely right. I need to look into the code to double check, but my guess is that we store table data in the "in memory" format. Which means when you were running 32-bit, stored tables would store 32-bit integers. When the 64-bit engine started running, it stored the data as 64-bit integers. So this issue should only affect people that use the Save Table action. I'm about to start looking at it now, but wanted to get the info out there.
Hey @adent42, do you think @strag is right?
The apk being produced by GameSalad already has a 32 and a 64 bit version. I confirmed this morning.
I'm not sure about @strag 's reading. My reading is that 32-bit only APKs will no longer be accepted, just APKs that support both 32-bit and 64-bit APKs. We'll look into it further though, since you can submit multiple APKs for a given app.
Also, I can't reproduce @bob loblaw table error, so it may be something else. It turns out we store the tables as text, which means we're not affected by my hypothesized culprit.
Before launching, I would make sure you test your game's upgrade from a previous version to a new version. Table issues can affect you even without the 32/64 bit thing.
Since switching to 64-bit, none of the rotation rules in my game work any more. What makes it worse is that I published the 64-bit update to Google Play without testing it first, silly me.
Is there a fix coming soon for this issue? Because I don't really want any new players loading up a half-broken game.
My phone is a Huawei P Smart, Android version 9.
Get Screaming Loaf on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1813910/Screaming_Loaf/
FYI: My app works great on all the devices I have tested. Even ironsource is working as expected.
Ad Colony iron source seems to be broken on 64bit:
Expecting libadcolony.so in libs folder but it was not found. Disabling AdColony until next launch.
@AshumBesher I downloaded the cheese app again and didn't see a problem.
@adriangomez Oh, so you didn't notice any rotation issues after picking up the ketchup?
Get Screaming Loaf on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1813910/Screaming_Loaf/
was it a clean install. or did you overwrite/update an existing install?
i ask because the issues i had came from an overwrite but vanished on a fresh install.
on mine there was also a few actors that didn’t constrain properly, like they had been skipped, as code sometimes is.
no issue with the ketchup for me. the broom broke. the rats ate the ketchup and raided the fridge. raged quit!
new install
How do you get access to RC versions?
what about you @AshumBesher ? did you just update/overwrite the app with the 64bit build, or was it a fresh install?
if it was an update to an existing install, then maybe it helps @adent42 look in the right place.
like i said above, mine worked fine on the fresh install, but stuffed up when overwriting.
@bob loblaw I first tried updating/overwriting, and I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling. I'm still getting the issue with rotation behaviours... strange.
It works as it should in the Windows Creator native preview, and in the GameSalad Viewer app. I just get problems when the app is built.
Get Screaming Loaf on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1813910/Screaming_Loaf/
Edit: Issue resolved itself.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
@AshumBesher could you PM me your project link and a description of what's going wrong so we can take a look?
Thanks.
Is publishing down? I'm getting an error: Something went wrong configuring your app. Please check your configuration and try again. If the problem persists contact us and reference publish request [3bc5c3a1-574d-4c47-a1a2-dde458ca5884].
@adent42
Trying to use both the RC and standard APK build generation. Same error.
Scratch that - my bad. I was trying to be a complete savage and using a 4K image as my loading image.
Sometimes you just have to know when to stop.
I may have found the source of some of the bugs. Its compiler related, so testing and tweaking will take annoyingly long, as now every recompile takes twice as long (for 64-bit and 32-bit). Hopefully we'll have an update ready by tomorrow for everyone.
Potential fixes for 64-bit Android have been pushed. If you saw an issue with calculations involving floating point numbers, please update AND TEST before deploying to the store.
if you are using “buzz” on your project, you should check to see if it still works on 64 bit updates. my live game crashed whenever the buzz behaviour was activated after updating. this was on a samsung galaxy tab a6.
Thanks, will try and revert if any issues