iOS user woes

I know many of iOS users are complaining about the clothes durability. This is a balancing issue that has been since fixed on all other platforms. Unfortunately, Apple review process is very slow these days, and I did not manage to sneak in a fix before Christmas.

Please rest assured that the update fixing the issue has been submitted to Apple for review and is sitting somewhere in their queue, there’s nothing we can do to speed it up.

In the meantime you can use creative mode “cheat” to give yourselves a bunch of clothes to survive during this difficult Christmas :-)

iOS is out

Apple have finally approved 1.26, just as I started to think it will not come out before Christmas (their cut-off date is today).

The problem is that this is a fairly early version of 1.26, which has a few bugs which have since been fixed on other platforms. Among these bugs is the infamous disappearing world names bug.

Therefore I will very soon release a bugfix release for iOS. Unfortunately there is no chance it will be approved before Christmas or even before New Year. You’ll only see it sometime in early January. The good news is that the bugs in iOS version of 1.26 are not too serious – a few AI and clothing tweaks, and the disappearing world names :-)

Have a great Christmas!

More updates submitted

I finally fixed the disappearing world names bug as described in the last update. This allows me to submit (hopefully) the last round of updates in 1.26 series. 1.26.6 for Windows Phone, 1.26.7 for Google Play and 1.26.8 for Amazon.

Here’s the changelist (since 1.26.2):

• Fixed disappearing world names bug
• Increased chasing range of predators (to balance the fact that they now avoid player during the day)
• Reduced player avoidance range
• Defaulting to 128 blocks visibility range
• Fixed typos in help text

We are still waiting for Apple to approve 1.26. Once they do it, I will release the update for iOS as well. They might also reject it – iOS 8 introduced many breaking changes that required subtle modifications, let’s hope I got everything right.

I know what the problem is!

I am talking about the disappearing world names problem. It’s unbelievable. If you think of something long enough, eventually you’ll find the answer.

I could not reproduce it. The reports I had were scarce (massive thanks to everyone who took time to give me info, some of you even made videos – you know who you are). On the surface, nothing tied the reports together. It was hopeless. I tried it again and again on all my test devices (and I have a large box full of them) – could not reproduce it on anything, from ancient 2010-vintage phones to Nexus 5. The only difference my 1.26 changes made were to load world information on a separate thread, to let the UI display the “scanning worlds” dialog.

The screenshots and videos of the problem you sent me showed that sizes and dates of the worlds are determined correctly. Only names and game modes were screwed. This was some lead. I looked through the code and located a likely place where it must be going wrong to produce this exact effect.

The problem is, it had no right to go wrong in that place, or anywhere else. It was the same code as in 1.25.

Then it dawned on me, literally just minutes ago. For those of you who have no idea about programming, the below explanation will make no sense, but I have to write it anyway. Sorry :-)

It’s the thread locale. Old enemy. When creating the thread I forgot to set the locale to invariant. All string operations (e.g. parsing of numbers) are then done using the system’s locale. In some countries they use a comma (,) instead of a dot to separate fractional part of a number. Because all numbers in the project file are saved with dots, the parsing of numbers will fail. This will only happen if your device language is set to non-english, and your country uses commas.

I confirmed it by changing system language on my test phone. Immediately got blank names. Lovely :-)

Trivial to fix. Obviously, after the fact you can see that all the bug reports are from non-english people…

If anytime again I have a bug that I cannot fix, please remind me of thread locales. Lest we forget.

 

iOS still waiting for review

Apple are the last of the bunch this time. Amazon and Microsoft have long ago reviewed 1.26 and put it in the stores, but Apple only has this to say:

 

Nothing to do but wait.

In the meantime I will soon release quick updates for Windows Phone and Amazon to bring their versions up to date with Google Play (which contains some important last-minute tweaks).

The only thing that holds me back from doing so now is the unresolved problem with those disappearing world names. Has anyone seen that problem on Windows Phone or Amazon Kindle?

Disappearing World Names

I am really baffled by this one.

To be fair, in 1.26 I made a change to the way singleplayer worlds list gets populated (you may have noticed the “scanning worlds” box). But for the life of me I don’t see a way this could have screwed things up. And I looked long and hard.

Anyway, I have reverted to the old method just for testing purposes and made a new apk:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zq7m5oqme05bbz2/com.candyrufusgames.survivalcrafttrial-Signed.apk?dl=1

This is an APK of Survivalcraft Demo 1.26.2.0, with the old method restored.

If you are experiencing the blank world names problem, could you please download and install this APK, and see if the problem goes away? Thanks!

All platforms submitted

Fixes since 1.26.0.0 release:

• Tweaked animals avoidance of player to be less dramatic
• Made the messages about getting wet/dry less obtrusive
• Massively increased durability of clothes
• Increased cotton production from a single plant
• Reduced volume of squelching sounds when wet

A couple of people are reporting worrying symptoms of all their world names going blank on the SinglePlayer list. If you are experiencing that, can you please tell me exactly what you are doing, and what happens when you open one of the blank worlds?

Trailer

Check this out:

What say you?

Move pad it stays then

The split is 60 to 40 in favor of Move Pad after about a 1000 votes. I’ll keep the pad as a default then.

I’m now working on a new movie showcasing features of the game, to replace the current crappy video on Google Play. There’s so much stuff to show, I actually forgot how much fun riding a horse and shooting arrows from a bow at random animals is :-)

I have fixed some of the issues reported by you in 1.26, nothing is really serious. Will let you know later.

I will be publishing iOS, Amazon and Windows Phone versions soon.

Move buttons or move pad?

 

I am considering changing the default movement controls from pad to buttons. I personally prefer the pad, as it gives you more control (moving slowly, moving diagonally, etc.), and takes less screen space to boot. But if overwhelming majority thinks different…

Note: this is only to change the default, you will still be able to select your preferred control in the settings.

Please cast your votes!

Pad (left) vs Buttons (right) – so that you know what I am talking about!