Archive for the ‘Testing’ Category
Now We Wait
Monday, February 9th, 2009
There was a bit of a hitch that came up Friday night after I had submitted to Apple. I went out with my wife and one of her friends for a drink after dinner. I was showing Dapple to my wife’s friend, and after 5 minutes of playing the 2 Player mode, he found a bug that no one had found before! Zounds!
Saturday morning I dug into the code (I know, I said I wasn’t going to work on the weekend, but that was assuming I didn’t find a bug like this). The bug looked minor: the mixing guide wasn’t rotating for player 2 (so it was rendering upside down from their point of view). However, as I dug into the bug I realised there was a bigger issue: player 2′s mixing guide was rendering for player 1′s current colour. This meant if player 2 started the 2 Player game and hit the mixing guide, a bunch of empty textures would render because player 1 didn’t have a colour yet. Yuck. The fix was pretty simple and localized (i.e. it was all inside one function in the code), so it was pretty low risk.
I ended up pulling my submission Saturday morning and re-uploading the build to Apple. I don’t think they review on the weekends, so I think it probably cost me a half-day off my submission. I haven’t found any more issues since, so the build should stand as it is now.
People keep asking me how long it will take before the game shows up in the App Store. The short answer is: I don’t know. The longer answer is: I don’t know, because there’s no set turn-around time. I’ve heard of some developers having apps approved in under 48 hours, but others who take over a week. Then, if the app gets rejected, I’ve heard it can take even longer to hear back. Apple will email me when the game is either accepted or rejected, so at least I don’t have to keep clicking ‘reload’ on the app store submission page.
This morning I sent out some emails to various iPhone review/news sites letting them know the game had been submitted, and telling them where to find the latest gameplay video I did last week. I figure it’s not likely any of them will write about it, but at least they’ll know they can expect another press release from me when the game launches…hopefully soon.
Speaking of the press release, I’m about to start working on that so that it’s ready to go out as soon as the game goes live. I also have to start working on my presentation for 360|iDev. I’ve got a rough idea of how I want to structure the talk, but now I need to start writing stuff down.
Owen
New Walk-Through Video, etc
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
I spent all day yesterday creating a new gameplay walk-through video for Dapple. It was a fun process, but also frustrating. I really enjoy movie making, especially editing. The frustration came from learning the limitations and foibles of iMovie. I’m used to editing software that offers a lot more control over things, so iMovie takes some getting used to.
However, by the end of the day, I had my movie ready to release. I dropped it on YouTube this morning. You can see it on the Dapple page (www.dapplegame.com) or right here:
It was fun to actually shoot the video with my video camera and get to use my shotgun mic. My previous Dapple video was a screen-grab of the simulator running the game, but I really wanted to show the game running on the device this time.
I was Tweeting about the process while I was working on it and I got a few requests from people to share my experiences. I wrote up a quick tutorial on the steps I took, which you can find via the Tutorials page located in the left side-nav.
In Beta news, Dapple is getting very close to submission. I made one change to the game yesterday (just updating the copyright notices). If no new bugs have been logged by my testers (or by myself) by noon tomorrow, I’m going to submit. Wish me luck!
Owen
My First Tutorial and Other News
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
I spent most of yesterday working on a tutorial on tracking down memory leaks on the iPhone using the Instruments tool. You can find it here:
- Streaming Colour Tutorials Page (www.streamingcolour.com)
Or by hitting the “Tutorials” link in the left-hand sidebar navigation (if you’re reading this on the site).
It was really fun to write this up for some reason. Learning how to track mem leaks on the iPhone was fun, but kind of frustrating, so I wanted to help other people just experience the fun parts without all the frustration. Yes kids, tracking down memory leaks can be fun!
I’m preparing a new build this morning for my testers. I’ve gotten some great feedback from some of the new beta testers and I’m trying to incorporate changes where I feel they make sense. Most of the changes are around how the game communicates with new players.
Speaking of tester feedback, I’m kind of torn about something I’ve done. Late last week I put a pop-up into the game that comes up whenever your iPhone or iPod touch generates a “low memory” warning. This usually happens because other programs have been leaking memory and then someone boots up your game and the device doesn’t have much RAM left. This generates an event in your app and you can handle it however you want. In my experience, most apps ignore it, then crash a few minutes later when the device runs out of RAM. I didn’t want this to happen, so I bring up a pop-up saying “Your device is running low on memory. It is recommended that you reboot your device or the game may quit unexpectedly.”
The problem is this: several of my testers have mentioned to me that the message came up during their first few sessions of play. Virtually all of them have said something like this “I don’t know if it was your game’s fault, or if I just hadn’t rebooted my iPhone in a while.” This worries me because I’ve measured my game’s memory footprint; it’s not that big. It maxes out around 15-17MB of RAM used. My concern is that people will see this pop-up, and instead of seeing it as helpful, they’ll assume my game is the problem.
On the other hand, I don’t just want to do nothing, have the game crash, and then have people blame my game for crashing.
Anyone have any thoughts on that?
Finally, I just wanted to mention one aesthetic change I made to the site over the weekend: if you’re viewing the actual site (and not reading this is an RSS reader) then you’ll notice that all of the content text is now bigger. I had gotten a lot of feedback that the font was too small and too difficult to read. Well, I listened to you, my dear readers, and I have made it bigger!
Owen
Still Looking for Testers
Monday, January 26th, 2009
I’m still looking for Beta Testers, if you’re interested in playing some Dapple before it gets released on the app store. I’m going to keep accepting new testers right up until I prepare to make the beta build; that will probably be sometime Wednesday or Thursday.
I fixed a whole bunch of bugs on the weekend and I was feeling good starting work today. Then one of my current testers sent me an email on a crash he’d experienced. So far I’ve been unable to reproduce the bug. Luckily he was able to send me crash logs, so I can see the sequence of events that led to the crash, I just can’t repro them.
So then I decided, instead of bug fixing, I’d put in a simple loading screen system. It should have been really simple, but for some reason it turned into a real nightmare. Somehow adding in a couple of animations, or triggering my game mode changes from an animation callback, is causing a memory stomp somewhere. The problem is, I haven’t been able to figure out where yet. It’s been incredibly frustrating.
I’m really feeling the stress now. I’m working too much and too many hours. I’m torn between wanting to slow things down a bit and wanting to get the game done. Right now my desire to get the game done is winning. I need to find some way to stop thinking about work when I’m not working. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m listening.
Owen