IPhone beta

[GuypronouncedGuy]

Ok. Hope it's ok that I started this thread.

Have tried several campaigns and a skirmish game. Graphics and sound are great!

Game has crashed out in all scenarios now, no apparent rhyme or reason.
Trying to recruit - crashed
moving a unit - crashed
scrolling the map - crashed

find the touch sensitivity when scrolling the map to be 'heavy'

not complaints. Game looks gorgeous on the iPhone!

[GuypronouncedGuy]

Have tried 8 games. All crash out within 3 turns. There is no consistent cause that I can see other than the memory issue.

[Ktalyx]

I have an iPhone 3G : I played 4 scenarios and won all of them
I have noticed that the game goes fast at the beginning but after 5 minutes the speed decrease ( each time ) and then the game crash
Multiplayer and campaigns seem to work with me

[GuypronouncedGuy]

What version of the iPhone software are you running? I have the latest release.

[Sangel]

I'm playing on an iPhone 3GS, OS 3.1.2 (7D11), and Wesnoth has also crashed within 3 turns on the majority of scenarios I've played - the only scenario I've managed to beat is Scenario 1 of the Tutorial. Crashes have been prompted by message boxes, by recruiting, and by general events.

The game pops up a "You have 113MB of free memory" box most times I play; perhaps this is insufficient?

[Kymille]

I tried the Tutorial with my year-old iPod Touch (Software 3.1.2, 16GB.) I had about 40MB memory free when I started the game according to the debug message that popped up. All started well, the graphics looked beautiful and the touch interface was easy to use. But then it slowed down incredibly -- when Delfador left he sort of crawled off. Then the game crashed altogether.

The developer though warns of this, so I don't think it's much of a surprise now.

ps. My first forum post, but I've been playing campaigns since version 0.8. Thanks to everyone who worked on this amazing game.

[Ktalyx]

I have just played on a map called Den of Onis.
I won the battle when I finished my first turn, with no apparent reason, maybe a bug...

I have the version 3.1.2

EDIT: Same problem with many other maps

[AI]

iPhone 3G, firmware 2.2 here, jailbroken.

Starting multiplayer results in my phone crashing. (not just the app, it drops to the apple logo and either doesn't get out by itself, or takes more than 5 minutes to do so)

According to the debug message, I have between 30 and 50 MB free when starting. Successive runs (with out-of-memory quits in between) typically raise the available memory into the high 40s.

Tutorial part 1 can be played fine until delfador leaves, after that, quits become more likely.
Part 2's first turn can be played, but the second turn invariable quits when moving konrad around/recruiting again.

Skirmishes can be played at most 1 turn before the game again becomes unplayable.

[Devas]

You should be thankful that it's just the game that crashed, and not the phone that exploded

[AI]

It's not a 3GS

[KylePoole]

Hi folks, sorry about the memory issues. i am finishing up the next release that fixes this and is much more stable.

For those that are interested in the technical details, I have only just now converted all the animation graphics for the 200+ units into texture atlases for OpenGL rendering. Previously they were kept as individual SDL surfaces for each frame, and also cached as textures, effectively doubling memory requirements once the graphic memory got full after too many units were in play. What made is so much worse is that the images were 72x72 pixels which needs to be increased to a 128x128 texture to be a power of 2. I ended up making an automated program that takes the animation frames, trims out the transparent space, and packs them into a texture. This worked great for terrain, but still a lot of boring data entry to finish the units

Here's an example:



previous SDL surface bytes: 23 frames x 72x72x4 = 476,928 bytes
previous OpenGL texture bytes: 23 frames x 128x128x4 = 1,507,328 bytes
new texture map bytes: 256x256x4 = 262,144 bytes

[Kymille]

Here's a more general playabality issue I noticed.

Playing 3p Morituri against the AI with Fog of War, I move a wolf rider from my castle to a village. Naturally, it stops partway when a new enemy unit is spotted. But, the screen is so small that the enemy is not visible to the me. I need to drag the screen to look for the enemy, but since the wolf rider is "active" the interface thinks I want to move the wolf. This all pretty painful, but I don't know what the solution is.

[GuypronouncedGuy]

This looks excellent Kyle! I hope you are not feeling rushed with all this feedback. I for one don't have a clue how to do the programming you're doing so am just looking forward to the next release.

[KylePoole]

Here's a more general playabality issue I noticed.

Playing 3p Morituri against the AI with Fog of War, I move a wolf rider from my castle to a village. Naturally, it stops partway when a new enemy unit is spotted. But, the screen is so small that the enemy is not visible to the me. I need to drag the screen to look for the enemy, but since the wolf rider is "active" the interface thinks I want to move the wolf. This all pretty painful, but I don't know what the solution is.

That's a good point... how about if it stops your unit movement and scrolls to the enemy unit that was sighted?

Also, I think the map scrolling would be a lot less painful if it had inertia like the iPhone standard scrolling in the photo viewer and stuff... So that way, if you swipe fast with your finger, it will keep scrolling for a bit and slow down over time.

[GuypronouncedGuy]

That's a good point... how about if it stops your unit movement and scrolls to the enemy unit that was sighted?

Also, I think the map scrolling would be a lot less painful if it had inertia like the iPhone standard scrolling in the photo viewer and stuff... So that way, if you swipe fast with your finger, it will keep scrolling for a bit and slow down over time.

Both of these are great ideas IMO.
Would it be possible to 'pinch-zoom' as well on the main screen?