Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Dave Report! Progress!

Dave's on his way back from NY today but he took some time out of his vacation to dig into the issues that have been reported.

I guess it was optimistic to think we could continually add to Pocket God without having growing pains. We kept trying to cut down on graphic memory to avoid crashing, but it LOOKS like that our assumption about why it was causing crashes wasn't quite right. Dave updates us on Touch Arcade...
"Crashing, I think I found out what is happening. I didnt know this but there is a limit to the amount of processing you can do before the app officially starts, I have 10 seconds to start everything up and right now that time is being spent connecting to fient, connecting to heartbeat (our crash reporter) loading textures and sounds, and any other initialization. If you have homebrew, or a slow internet connection (wifi or bad reception) the startup time takes longer than 10 seconds and the app automatically shuts down because it thinks it has stalled.

In the meantime, if you have crashes, boot jailbreak in safe mode. turn off wifi. or make sure you have a good connection when you want to do wi fi. fient and heartbeat is trying to see if there is a good connection, if its completely off. it knows its off fast, if its good, it knows its good fast. but if the connection is going in and out. then it takes too long to figure out it is available or not."

>> The rest of his Touch Arcade post here <<

This is good news because now that Dave knows why, he can solve it! He goes on to say that he has to fix the problem before submitting Episode 16. Thanks to everyone for telling us your symptoms! We will hurry out the update ASAP.

32 comments:

  1. Just thought I would let you know that turning off wifi doesn't solve the crashing issue for me. I will try it once I get home and have good access to a wifi connection. Thanks for working on a fix though.

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  2. can you edit the episode 15 so that the villagers can cook the egg or do something to it? like by hitting it with a lighting strike or magnifying glass. becuase it doesnt really make sense to name the episdoe 16 to t-rex strikes back when the villagers didnt really do anything to the egg...just my two cents. cheers for PG (:

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  3. Wow, you guys are already sending in the next update (Until you guys fix the problems, of course)!?

    Nice job with this update so far! But only two little suggestions... Maybe you should add a fruit to the tree on the new island. Maybe a tropic fruit like a mango or something because this seems more like a jungle. And also, maybe add a new skin for the fish in the new island.

    Thanks!

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  4. I already did everything you told us to do here and still it doesn't work. I hope you can fix this soon, I really want to try this game.

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  5. Remove Feint then

    I really think it's uneeded and not a very "loved" feature - please let me know differently if you like Feint.

    It's an unneeded extra.

    (I still haven't crashed though - and I've opened it on slow wifi networks today... )

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  6. I already did everything you told us to do but still doesn't work. :-/ I hope you can fix this soon.

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  7. You guys should totaly take away the drop down iland thing and make a button to take you to a big map thing that be sweet what do you think???????

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  8. I have a great wifi connect and it crashes. Does this mean if I leave the house I can't play? I can't play with it in the house! Why do we need a connection anyway? Can't that be a user option?

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  9. i've tried safe mode and it works !! :)

    well there were many other fixs like i posted tons of them but no one listened :(

    and anyways i cant wait 'till tyranosaures strike back!!

    and i cant wait 'till the future unlockable after the trilogy :)

    keep up the good work XD

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  10. When is the next episode going to come out?

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  11. I have an idea such as
    • werewolves
    • dogs that can come and eat the little dudes
    • spears
    • hair pulling among villagers which causes a fight
    • accidentaly have a villager hook someone with the fishing pole
    • fires

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  12. Omg I Love Pocket god i think im gonna make a review of it on my youtube channel someday even thought i made it for fallout 3 videos pocket god is awesome and how did you make a app like that please tell me

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  13. To Dinosaur2:
    It will be out whenever Apple approves it.
    If it was submitted yesterday, it should be out sometime between Tuesday to Thursday next week.
    But, they can always be late.

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  14. What you should do for the vampire on the new island is when there is a pygmie in the outhouse and a vampire is about, the vampire, after awhile, should go wait in line. then after waiting for a time, instead of exploding, he should tear the door off, and you see a cloud of green stink and the vampire dies. then you can whack the islanders around with the door or put it back on the outhouse.

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  15. To Bulpul
    &
    To Dinosaur2:

    If you read what they wrote; They aren't going to submit the new one until this crashing error gets fixed fully

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  16. Just a quite 2 cents. Not a fan (don't use) the Feint feature. Maybe others do, but can you add it as a setting option to turn it on/off so that if its not wanted we can just turn it off to reduce load time?

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  17. Get rid of Feint. As a user there isn't any need for it at this stage of the application. Once you can apply different needs to a online stage of statistics where it would be that important to the user, then place it. Why can't you build your own network where we can access your server for those types of applications like "Feint".

    You guys are smart I pretty sure if you wanted to solve some of these issues you are having you would do so. If you look back on Pocket God when you started to have issues it was when you placed Feint in to the programming. Your graphics are fine, music and animation. Look at the full picture of the project and see what you can deal without. TAKE IT OUT NOW, and then later on perfect it and place it in again when it is necessary.

    Pocket God is the coolest app that I have ever purchased and played. And I have told my college professors to purchase it and also my peers on campus. As a programmer, graphic artist and animator I see what you want to accomplish and you have done it. Look at your fan base (its freakin' WORLD WIDE!!) Take it easy and start to look at the full project (start perfecting what you started on and move forward.

    Love the outhouse idea! brilliant.

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  18. Go dave!

    anyway here's some ideas:

    werewolves instead of vampire in the second island

    bees instead of ants in the second island

    giant octopus instead of the shark in the second island

    still star wars titles like werewolf menace, attack of the bees and revenge of the octopus...

    able to cook the fish with lens
    other kind of fish in second island
    fire in the tree or outhouse made by lens

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  19. Dear pocket god crew, I thought of a way for you to make more money! If you install google adsense you make money every time someone views or clicks an ad. Its very easy to install on your blog and youll be making money to imrove pocket god to the max! And you can spend some for yourselves! Anyways just an idea hope you consider it

    Magman1996

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  20. Finally got to play with the pygmies after I rebooted my phone in safe mode. No crashes whatsoever! Now I can truly appreciate the update. Sucks though that I have to go on safe mode first. Well, as long as the issue will be fixed when the new episode comes out, then it's all good!

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  21. hey Bolt Creative, please listen to what I have to say:) when I have low wifi connection, the feint takes waayy too long to load, and I don't even use the feint.. there should be a button to cancel the inlogging to feint.. and when you press the feint button, the connection begins again

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  22. What did you use to make Pocket God?

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  23. There are Luke,
    I along with other staff care a Italian Website / Blog on
    mobile phones and all the news that we are behind, we wanted to offer
    collaboration (if interested) together with our staff.
    The collaboration of which I speak and we published the
    review your products with the product and with screenshots
    possibly also with video, we ask from you some licenses
    of various products for test and video
    our site has an average of 5000/7000 daily visits with people from
    around the world, (to check you can go here:
    http://live.feedjit.com/live/allmobileworld.it/ in real time you will see
    our revenue)
    We await your reply.

    Sincerely Allmobileworld

    Visit our website: www.allmobileworld.it

    _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


    Salve sono Luca,
    io insieme ad altri collaboratori curiamo un Sito/Blog riguardante la telefonia mobile e tutte le news che ci sono dietro, volevamo proporvi una collaborazione (se interessati) insieme al nostro Staff.
    La collaborazione di cui parlo e da parte nostra una pubblicazione dei vostri prodotti con recensione del prodotto con screenshot ed eventualmente anche con video, da parte vostra chiediamo alcune licenze dei vari prodotti così da effettuare i vari test.
    il nostro sito ha una media di 5000/7000 visite giornaliere con utenti da tutto il mondo, ( per verificare potete andare quì : http://live.feedjit.com/live/allmobileworld.it/ in tempo reale vedrete le nostre entrate )
    Attendiamo una vostra risposta.

    Cordiali saluti Allmobileworld

    Visita il nostro sito : www.allmobileworld.it

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  24. come on just submit the next update before apple gets overloaded with new apps again!!

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  25. hey I've found a little graphics glitch: in the new island, all the pygmys are in front of the pygmy who fishes...

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  26. There should be a pineapple on the new island which if you throw at the islanders it should should stick to were it hits them.
    ie you throw it at there head, it's stuck in their head until they start eating it or they die!!
    portable snacks!!

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  27. i put my phone on safemode and turned off the wi fi but it still crashes often.

    i have to keep trying for it to finally work to load the app

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  28. WHEN IS THE T REX COMING?!?!?!?!?!???!

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  29. Hay bolt creative. There is a glich where two islanders go into the out house and only one comes out, the other islander disapears and only its name is left!

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  30. Hello dave and whoever else on the bolt team!
    I tried the same thing you did, putting as many winter-board themes on as i could, it didn't make a difference in starting up PG, however i have noticed something that could be making it freeze when the app opens up, when it opens up for me the music starts and then it starts glitching out and stuttering. Maybe if you made the music fade in a couple seconds after the app opens up that might help? Safe mode on springboard makes it work every-time i open up PG, however sometimes i am able to use it without safe mode enabled. I turned on insomnia and made half the apps on my iphone run and opened up PG with my safe mode enabled and it worked:-).... Gosh sometimes people need to chill and stop complaining about when the next update is coming out.. being a beta tester for CYDIA, and have created several themes myself, i have found that updates take time to make them work, its pretty hard to do perfect the first time... so People need to take a Chill pill and be patient if they want an update that doesn't crash... I would love to Beta test your updates before they come out. heres my email if your interested in letting me do that Benbeckett1@gmail.com so far the best way to successfully use pocketgod is to do it in safe mode, my younger brother has a 3g on 2.2.1 and doesn't seem to have a problem with it quitting or crashing on him... I hacked his a little while back so im trying to figure out why it is working so well for him.. 10 out of 10 times it started up without crashing for him... so im playing around with his phone to figure out why it is working so well for him, when I figure that out, I will post another comment ok? Till then keep up the good work!

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