BUFULO's dashboard

A comment on the question "18Days shakes are weird, is it my pod or what?" in Tapulous:

It's a software issue - guaranteed. – bufulo, on September 09, 2009 06:55

A comment on the question "Can there be a broken song?" in Tapulous:

Mine has been a total mess lately. Went from 100% battery to under 60% after playing 3-4 songs! Also lost all my scores again after a failed re-install. Hopefully this will all be over next week. – bufulo, on September 01, 2009 06:36

bufulo replied on August 31, 2009 21:20 to the problem "Questionable online players..." in Tapulous:

I've reported the same problem before although I didn't assume the other player was cheating. I assumed it was bugs with online play & still think that's most likely.

bufulo started following the problem "Questionable online players..." in Tapulous.

A comment on the problem "The Doubles Issue" in Tapulous:

Should we translate that as "Oh crap" or does TTR3 have it covered? :)

If you'd like any more videos, let me know. I'm pretty sure this particular issue is repeatable. – bufulo, on August 26, 2009 07:25

A comment on the problem "The Doubles Issue" in Tapulous:

Maybe you did this, but there are 2 scenarios you'd have to compare with your stopwatch to test the hold scoring. Use the same song, same tap & hold, the longer the hold the better.

Scenario #1 would be to enable as many background tasks as possible & Scenario #2 would be all those things disabled/inactive. The usual stuff comes to mind - Auto Brightness, Push Notification, wifi, Bluetooth, Airplane Mode (for phones), etc.

Really load up the background as much as possible for Scenario #1. Maybe fire off a bunch of e-mails somehow, play under a slow-cycling strobe light, & even shake the device like crazy while holding. :) – bufulo, on August 25, 2009 18:23

A comment on the question "Video tips?" in Tapulous:

Shift-Check for Update will let you pick the ipsw file. So if you have a few versions to choose from, you can pick whichever you want. I've only done this on my 3GS though & only reinstalled 3.0.1. So technically I can't say for sure it will properly reinstall an older version... just that you WILL get to choose the ipsw file & confirm.

I could try this on my iPod Touch to see what happens. I think I have an older version of the OS for that - maybe 2.2.2 or 2.2.1 or whatever was before 3.0. – bufulo, on August 25, 2009 07:01

A comment on the problem "The Doubles Issue" in Tapulous:

You're absolutely right about the middle tap appearing to register in the left lane! The timing fits. I don't see how you caught that in the crappy video though. I had to go back to the raw video frame-by-frame to notice the red target glow brightly TWICE & the middle lane turning orange. It would probably be totally obvious at 120 fps.

What's not so obvious is the exact contact point of my right thumb. It does appear to be left just a little more than normal in the YouTube video, but when viewed frame-by-frame in the original, I'm confident it does not contact the left target. However, it MAY contact the left tap zone if it is a square. It really doesn't look like it though. It appears to be entirely in the middle lane as far as I can tell, so overlapping tap zones seems to be true.

Overlapping tap zones sure seems like a really bad idea to me! If true, I wonder what they were trying to accomplish or maybe work around?

Also, it seems obvious to me that TTR should use the CENTER of the area tapped. I think the OS passes the bounds of the tapped area in a data structure as part of the tap event notification, so calculating the approximate center should be pretty trivial (& doesn't even require a high-level divide). – bufulo, on August 25, 2009 06:55

bufulo replied on August 25, 2009 00:01 to the problem "Stop Playing TTR2.6 Until they fix the Dropped Arrows and Taps and Fix the Lag Issue" in Tapulous:

I captured an example of a drop in Garden State (Extreme). I'm not very good at this song, but it drops pretty consistently. Some crazy cat & camera issues made things a little extra frustrating. We have a new kitten that would prefer I play with her rather than the silly phone!

My ancient digital camera was shutting off after a few seconds every time I tried until I finally caught one - very frustrating. Maybe I'll get a better memory card for it one of these days. It was fast at the time, but I think even faster ones are plenty cheap now. The camera will only record 1 minute no matter though. What a ridiculous arbitrary limitation!

Anyway, the dropped tap is around 17 seconds. I DEFINITELY tapped the center lane accurately & on time yet a miss registers in the left lane. I added a section in slow-motion at the end. Sorry for the poor quality, but it's the best I can do right now.

FWIW, I did a Shift-Check for Upgrade in iTunes this morning (before playing) to reinstall the OS. It does seem to reduce the dropped taps for a few days, especially the doubles. Haven't really tried playing online to see if it helps reduce drops there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JYN3E...

A comment on the problem "The Doubles Issue" in Tapulous:

Using your pink spot at a guide (same song too), I was able to tap outside of the tap target & get them to register! However, I still can't convince myself the valid tap zones truly overlap. It just seems like the tap zones are actually squares, not spheres. – bufulo, on August 24, 2009 23:35

A comment on the question "Video tips?" in Tapulous:

Woah Ceegers... "if I WERE" vs. if I WAS... that's some seriously correct grammar (subjunctive mood)! Awesome! Didn't think anybody taught that these days.

Slow-motion is a good idea! I've only got 60 frames per second at best to work with, so the quality wouldn't be great but probably better than trying to loop it over & over while watching.

Ever tried Shift-Check For Update in iTunes? Apparently it reinstalls the OS without a Backup & Restore or having to set it up as a new device & losing all your settings. It didn't eliminate the problems, but did seem to reduce them for a few days. I haven't been playing much lately but it seems to be degrading again. On the plus side, it was fast & painless, taking maybe 15 minutes. – bufulo, on August 24, 2009 20:54

A comment on the question "8/20 Theme!.... AHH" in Tapulous:

I have the same problem with missing holds for some of the themed songs. – bufulo, on August 23, 2009 20:39

A comment on the question "Video tips?" in Tapulous:

Yeah, no missed taps there. The one I captured with dropped taps is 30 frames per second & a lot more grainy for some reason. I'm not sure a video helps demonstrate the missed taps very well because they're hard to see unless you look at the raw images frame-by-frame. Just thought I'd give it a try. By the time I capture something good enough quality, they'll probably have the problem fixed anyway!

The tap track for Elephant Bones is great! If you like the tap track for Rocket, you'll probably like this one too. – bufulo, on August 23, 2009 19:51

bufulo replied on August 22, 2009 00:45 to the question "Video tips?" in Tapulous:

GIF is a waste of time. Duh. Should have realized that from the start. Looks like YouTube is the best option since that is easily viewed on iDevices too. Just need to work on improving the capture quality.

bufulo replied on August 22, 2009 00:28 to the question "Video tips?" in Tapulous:

YouTube quality is better, but I'm still not sure a dropped tap would be obvious. Take it easy on me, this is my first post to YouTube. I couldn't believe username BUFULO was already taken! :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X82bCO...

bufulo asked a question in Tapulous on August 21, 2009 23:52:

Video tips?

I messed around a little with capturing some video but need some tips on improving the quality. Unfortunately I only have an old Canon digital camera or iPhone. An example is below (maybe?). The original quality is better, but my camera (or memory card) can only do 60 fps for a minute or so.

I realize I can do some post-processing, even add the audio track afterwards for better quality, but all this takes WAY too long on my wimpy computer. I'll be building a new one soon, but I've been saying that for at least a year! :)

Anyway, let me know if this poor quality would be at all useful. On the original uncompressed AVI, dropped taps are pretty obvious, but I'm not sure that's the case after compression & putting it on the web somewhere.

Maybe converting to GIF & posting on tinypic.com is good enough? I'll try that next.

http://tinypic.com/r/30mtide/3

A comment on the question "8/20 Theme!.... AHH" in Tapulous:

I think the themes are usually creative & look great. The current TT Thursday one is fine, but definitely about at the limit with the sharp angle. I don't like that there is usually less feedback for tap accuracy with themes.

Seems like song Themes could maybe be an on/off Option in setup or a question at the start of the song. The latter might mess up online play though. I don't like that there are 2 versions of each song with a Theme in the ever-growing song list. – bufulo, on August 21, 2009 22:21

bufulo replied on August 21, 2009 22:15 to the idea "Resume from Pause Idea" in Tapulous:

Don't like the rewind idea but I do like the 2 second pause idea! Although I do think 2 seconds for this & even when entering Revenge Mode is a bit overkill. One or 1.5 seconds seems like plenty.

A comment on the problem "Epic fail: white background (not white tapper blocks)!" in Tapulous:

Yup, each time into Revenge, maybe 3 or 4 times. When I lost Revenge it would go to the second image. I quit TTR after that game & ran iStat to check free memory. Haven't seen the problem since then. – bufulo, on August 20, 2009 22:27

A comment on the problem "Epic fail: white background (not white tapper blocks)!" in Tapulous:

I can see the images fine on my iPhone. Maybe it's a security issue then. I don't have time to mess with it any more. Mmm... tastykake... – bufulo, on August 20, 2009 20:40