BUFULO's dashboard

Yeah, 41 or something like that, but most people that know me are dyslexic & say I'm 14. Or are they trying to tell me something? – bufulo, on September 12, 2009 20:05

I really thought I was onto something today. I was trying to record some video of dropped taps playing 37 Stitches (Extreme). It was dropping taps every single game in easy parts of the song - VERY obvious & visible. Always in the middle lane too.

I tried to capture video 3 times & it NEVER dropped! Then I realized what the variable was - lighting. I had closed up the room & turned off the lights to help with the video quality! Sure enough, I played a few more games, actually more than 10, & FC'd it every single time. Turned the lights on & opened the curtains & it dropped 2-3 times every single time I played. I repeated these tests with the exact same results probably at least a dozen more times. Pretty sick of that song now!

Anyway, during all this, I had Auto Brightness off, Airplane Mode on, Notifications off, the e-mail Fetch stuff off, & WIFI on. These are the settings I almost always use when playing TTR at home. So I ran some more tests with Auto Brightness on & that's when the consistency fell apart. I even tried putting black electrical tape over the light sensor (top left of display, correct?). It still dropped.

Then I turned Airplane Mode off & played a few more games with no drops. WTF? Turned the lights back on & it dropped. Got a phone call & then it stopped dropping. Free Memory, according to iStat, was always over 135 MB. I restarted TTR & checked iStat every single time. Now my battery is low, so it's not worth messing with. Not that it wasn't a total waste of time in the first place!

Bear in mind that I can do pretty well on this song, scoring over 830k pretty much every time - that's about a dozen or less light blue & all the rest green. I give up trying to make sense of this... it's almost as addictive as TTR!

My conclusion already is that 3.1 is actually worse overall than 3.0.1. I'm seeing MORE dropped taps, often in songs where it was never a problem before.

The display is smoother for longer between restarts, but that improvement doesn't seem to have had any positive impact on tap recognition. In fact, it might even be more frustrating because I can VERY CLEARLY see TTR drop taps now!

I meant to type that I think Gaga drops taps sometimes (very rarely though). The imported Gaga songs also seem to play better than most others in TTR. Something like that but I think there was more in the middle that I must have deleted too.

Tried playing online a little this morning & it's still the same mess. Lost about 50 points in 3 games due to dropped taps. It's dropping even more than usual for me already! – bufulo, on September 11, 2009 18:14

I agree that Gaga usually works quite a bit better than regular TTR. I think it does drop taps sometimes (very rarely though) imported Gaga songs also seem to play better than most others in TTR.

Is that Pomeranian a cougar? – bufulo, on September 11, 2009 15:33

I think it already does what you are asking for, as Daniel says. In fact, I usually get every challenge twice. I've noticed the challenges generate an error message sometimes lately but they seem to go thru anyway.

Did you get notified when I played your Elephant Bones challenge 3 or 4 times the other day? It took that many tries before I got a game without a dropped tap! I'm seeing dropped taps on songs I never did before with 3.1. :( – bufulo, on September 11, 2009 06:45

Yes, A Fact of Life still drops taps. – bufulo, on September 10, 2009 18:39

I saw this the other day too & didn't play online as a result. I haven't been playing much online at all anyway due to all the other issues. I did take a screenshot - pretty much the same as those already posted.

If those are similar to the original iPhone, stay away from this update. My original iPhone with OS 3.1 is almost unplayable. Pretty much impossible to get more than about 50% green taps.

Assuming TTR3 will be "tweaked" for OS 3.1, I'd wait for that unless you hear otherwise. – bufulo, on September 10, 2009 07:12

Nope. It still drops taps & teh bad arrow behavior is unchanged. Try 18 Days & Garden State.

Also, WIFI speed is still pathetic compared to the original iPhone.

The graphics performance might be better, but I think it's too early to say for sure. It could just be improved performance (lower latency) of background tasks. I do think it is probably a little better but give it a few days to be sure it "sticks." :) – bufulo, on September 10, 2009 07:11

I agree with everything you wrote. Interesting - I also noticed some of the first few taps drop the first time I played most songs after the update. Weird.

It still drops taps & the bad arrow behavior is unchanged. Try 18 Days & Garden State.

I hope the changes are more permanent, but I'm not holding my breath either - just enjoying it while it lasts. Hopefully TTR3 addresses the remaining issues in a few weeks!

PS. I played a few games online tonite & it seemed OK. Go for it! – bufulo, on September 10, 2009 07:08

No idea what the difference is, but I noticed the same thing. iPhone 3GS & original iPhone got OS 3.1 but iPod Touch 2G got OS 3.1.1. I haven't played on the Touch yet to see if anything changed for the better, but the improvements to the 3GS are minor at best. – bufulo, on September 10, 2009 07:04

Not jailbroken, no hacks, modifications, etc. - just plain old 3GS with OS 3.1 & TTR2.6 all installed via iTunes 9. – bufulo, on September 10, 2009 07:01

I played quite a bit tonite on my 3GS & feel comfortable saying the display performance is slightly better. I noticed only very minor stutter after playing quite a few games in a row & quite a bit less when holding a tap & hold. If I restart every game, it is very smooth.

However, I did have to reinstall the OS along with all my applications again after iTunes 9 or something crashed my phone. Why does this happen with every update? Anyway, in the past, whenever I reinstalled OS 3.0.1, the performance was better for a few days too. Hopefully the (minor) improvements stick this time!

PS. The update did nothing for the arrow performance or WIFI speed (4x slower than original iPhone), so it didn't help everything. – bufulo, on September 10, 2009 06:59

Well I installed OS 3.1 on my original iPhone. I didn't install any apps after installing 3.0 on this device, so I can only compare to the previous version (2.2.1?). No improvement in graphics performance, but it definitely drops a lot of double taps now.

Out of curiousity, I reinstalled TTR2 on my original iPhone, which was wiped clean in preparation for selling it.

WIFI performance is MUCH better on the original iPhone than on my 3GS. It downloaded 49 Medium songs in TTR2 before my 3GS had completed downloading 10!!! What a joke!

That's because you didn't play Garden State right after installing 3.1, miss the 3rd tapper, watch lots of taps float by as you tap them, etc. :) – bufulo, on September 09, 2009 23:38

Apparently it takes 2 reboots?

After installing, I didn't reboot (although the installation does a few times) & TTR worked for the 1 game I played. I tried Garden State & it dropped taps like usual, so I quit & rebooted. After the reboot, none of the Tap Tap apps recognized any shakes whatsoever. I didn't try any other app before rebooting again.

After the second reboot, it seems to be working normally. Still has the same issues with arrows in 18 Days & drops in Garden State though. Graphics performance may be improved as I haven't seen any stutter/lags yet.