3 replies to this topic

[Memir]

Hi guys, I recently submitted a Lite version of my iPhone Game to the App Store (Turtle Trench Lite - http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/turtle-trench-lite/id447579919?mt=8 ). The game plays pretty well, and I'm working on a full version...

99% of the code is C++, and Open GL ES. The plus side of doing it this way, meant that I didn't really have to learn anything. It was the same as developing for the PC, with a slightly different input interface, and different resolution. Only took a couple days at most to create my graphics library to interface with Open GL ES. The downside of course is that the commercial iPhone industry focuses on Objective C and iPhone specific 2nd/3rd party API's such as Cocos2D. Which would put me at a disadvantage if I seek industry work for the iPhone. (The solution to this, is to create a second 'crap app' that uses Objective C and all the other iPhone specific API's).


Here's a screen shot...



Anyway, reason I'm posting this is because although the game runs perfect on my iPhone 3GS (OS version 4.2). There are some people that have written reviews saying that the game crashes after the first level, without any info explaining what they were doing, what iPhone/iPad/iPod they have etc. Aside from purchasing half a dozen different iPhone/iPad/iPod models, I figured it'd be better to post it here, and if a few people could test it, and shed more light on any bugs that occur, it'll help me narrow down the problem(s).

I used to be quite active on these forums a few years ago, so thought I'd come back to say hi, and show you guys my first iPhone App.

[Ed Welch]

Maybe you simply didn't test enough to find the bugs. I had a nasty intermittent bug in the first version of my game. It took me 8 hours of continous testing before I found it. Also, check the crash logs in iTunes connect.

[Memir]

Maybe you simply didn't test enough to find the bugs. I had a nasty intermittent bug in the first version of my game. It took me 8 hours of continous testing before I found it. Also, check the crash logs in iTunes connect.

Interesting. Regarding the crash log feature. However, I just checked that and there are no crash reports. I've tested the game lots and it's never crashed for me, and obviously didn't crash while being tested by Apple.

Anyway, I'll keep looking and add my own checks, it's possible it's a memory allocation issue, whereby on older iPhone/iPod models they do not have enough graphics/general memory.

I'm not too bothered about the stability of the lite version, as I made it primarily to get a feel for the market, bug test, and as a work example for getting iPhone work.

[Memir]

So anyway, I found out that the bug occurs on the iPhone 3G (not iPhone 3GS/4), and also on the 2nd generation iPod Touch. Fortunately my brother had a 2nd gen. iPod Touch and could easily replicate the bug. So I got that from him a couple days ago, and have fixed the bug. Turns out it was a case of me writing outside of a buffer (forgot to clip -ve x & y coords for a particular section of the "solid-map" rasterization), for the iPhone 3GS, this wasn't a problem, but for the iPhone 3G/iPod Touch 2 it causes it to crash.

So anyway it seems pretty rock-solid now that I've done this fix, I'll alternate development between the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 2 as I create the full version.

I'm thinking now might be a good time to release a bug-fix update for the Lite version. Rather than waiting a few weeks to release a new lite & full version, sinc theres quite a lot of people still with the older iPhone 3G & iPod Touch 2.