BUFULO's dashboard

A comment on the problem "Leaderboard (minor?) bug." in Tapulous:

Yes, that's basically what I think is happening, but it is a bug & should be easily fixed. Whenever you check your rank after playing a song, it should update first so it displays the correct & current information. Trivial. – bufulo, on August 19, 2009 16:36

A comment on the problem "Leaderboard (minor?) bug." in Tapulous:

Yes, Auto-Submit turned off! :) – bufulo, on August 19, 2009 06:58

bufulo reported a problem in Tapulous on August 19, 2009 06:36:

Leaderboard (minor?) bug.

I've seen this happen at least 3 times. Play a game, check leaderboard for previous high score (since all my scores were erased from the device), Submit, placement goes down compared to what it was with the previously lower score. Must be a bug in how TTR stores that information on the device - not updating the placement until you Submit or something like that.

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

Actually, if Apple offered notification on touchBegin & touchEnd ONLY, it might make life a lot easier for Tapulous. If they already do, TTR is even more poorly designed than I imagined! :)

I think the application is notified of touch events at some rate specified by the application (within whatever range Apple feels is useful). This doesn't necessarily make the software design any more difficult, but it does waste CPU & may create additional latency & timing concerns. – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 21:21

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

Ceegers, Tenderloin pretty much behaves the same for me either way. My fingers aren't as agile as my thumbs though & the darn 3GS is rounded on the sides, so it moves around during testing.

What I do notice is that the last tapper in each sequence of 4 or whatever in the middle lane drops more often than the outside lanes - not by much though.

I have no doubt the contact time is an issue & it makes perfect sense that it would be. I think that Apple could make things a little easier by defining a "tap" but tap & holds still require application notification at some rate so I'm not sure such a change would really help.

The key for Tapulous is to get a handle on all the timing of the relevant OS events. I doubt Apple feels those things are as important as they are to an application like TTR though. Hopefully that is changing as gaming apps on these platforms become a larger source of revenue for them! – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 20:09

A comment on the question "Is TTR3 going to have the tap target notifier like TTR2.5?" in Tapulous:

I suppose there are lots of ways they could do it. The targets could be translucent as you suggest, with no color for perfect hits, & some standard colors for non-perfect hits. They could be rings instead of full spheres, or whatever.

I don't see any problem keeping them unless they have found some technical reason like they are interfering with the real-time recognition of tap events or something like that. That just doesn't seem likely, especially on the faster devices. I bet most of the issues would disappear if Tapulous could bump up the priority of touch events & Apple reduced latencies to a bare minimum. – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 19:51

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

Same here with Tenderloin - another song I usually avoid playing. Used to be able to get thru that side to side stuff without any problem most of the time, but now it just drops like crazy. You can get thru it with a crappy score if you hit them at the same time. Similar to All The Elders. – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 19:32

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

I wouldn't waste your time. I don't even play Garden State because it's so messed up - dropped taps all over the place. These are software problems that Tapulous has to work out.

On the other hand, videos are fun to watch! Especially if you get frustrated & throw your phone or something. :) – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 16:26

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

Omen is a good example. It's also one that if you tap the trouble tappers a little early, as you've suggested in the past, it will work. That sort of thing is really hard to do & not a habit I want to get into for something that is a software problem! – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 16:21

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

I was mostly just kidding, but "same time" is a lot different from the perspective of the device than it is for us. It would be essentially impossible to tap 2 fingers at the same time from the device perspective. The tap events would be tagged with a different timestamp every time. The application most likely has a more relaxed concept of "same time." This is essentially where the problems lie.

I think there were changes in the OS that increased latencies for handling touch events. It could be as simple as extra instrumentation (like debug code) being left in for the first 3.x release or even reduced compiler optimization. Hopefully Apple hasn't made changes that will forever cripple apps like TTR. I sort of doubt it given how popular gaming on these devices has become.

I've seen what you're describing (Lovers in Japan) too. Different song though. I think someone else already reported it but maybe for an earlier version of TTR. Just another example of how the application is messed up.

I've been watching the failures more closely lately & there are definitely patterns to how it fails. They're hard to describe & nearly impossible to repeat at will. A software engineer with a keen eye for details should be able to get to the bottom of this by analyzing the code, not our bug reports. – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 16:05

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

Sorry about the typos - doing too many things at once here.

FWIW, I think the real issue with fingers vs. thumbs is that it's more likely you'll move your thumbs during the tap more than you would your fingers. The fingers will be tapping straight on vs. a little more sideways action with the thumbs only.

Any tiny movement results in more touch-related events for the OS to process & hand off to the application. This could cause additional stutter & missed taps, especially if TTR isn't handling thing properly (which we know it is not on the 3GS at the very least). – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 04:36

A comment on the question "Still Fixing?" in Tapulous:

krohn7master, if Zanadeath is playing on an iPhone 3GS, I would bet it IS dropped taps. Mine is to the point of almost being unplayable, on or offline. It drops taps like crazy now. Definitely has gotten worse with time (or time playing). If you guys aren't testing using a well-used 3GS installation, you probably can't appreciate how bad things have gotten!

Ceegers, define "same time" & "it" in your first sentence. :) – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 04:24

A comment on the question "Is TTR3 going to have the tap target notifier like TTR2.5?" in Tapulous:

The splashes don't expand quickly enough on faster songs & it's not obvious what full-size is. The color change provides more immediate & more useful feedback (theoretically, ignoring the current issues). – bufulo, on August 18, 2009 03:31

A comment on the question "Wut do u do on consecutive shakes?" in Tapulous:

I've seen that trick, but I tap with 2 thumbs only & that won't ever change (long story). When I have tried playing nearly upside-down or whatever, those center shakes do register automatically, but always red anyway.

From a technical standpoint, this points out a flaw in the use of the accelerometer in TTR. TTR should neutralize the position at the start of the game. There are lots of ways to hold the device & other games do a good job with this. – bufulo, on August 17, 2009 23:51

bufulo replied on August 17, 2009 22:45 to the question "Is TTR3 going to have the tap target notifier like TTR2.5?" in Tapulous:

Definitely my favorite feature too. My scores are a lot higher in non-themed songs due to the tap targets. Without them, I tap too early - must be my cat-like reactions. :)

Seems like it would be easy enough to have tap targets on themed songs as well while also giving them another place for "artistic" stuff. The current default Star Wars theme is lame in my opinion & the "Great" for shakes is getting old too.

A comment on the question "Wut do u do on consecutive shakes?" in Tapulous:

You should be able to get mostly green or light blue on a 3GS with practice. It's hard to practice when it's so inconsistent though. There also seems to be inconsistent behavior in different songs. Some songs you have to shake slightly sooner than others to get green. I usually adjust based on how the first few shakes in the song go.

You'll also probably find the arrows sometimes work better if you restart TTR each game & also if you disable as many background tasks as possible (Airplane Mode on, Auto Brightness off, Push notifications off, etc.).

Despite doing all that though, there will still be plenty of times where they just don't work worth a darn for unknown reasons & don't even register at all other times. Sometimes it seems like arrows work better for me with a slightly drained battery (like below about 85%), but then taps don't work as well.

Basically it's a mess right now, so don't worry about it too much. It's not ALL your fault. :) – bufulo, on August 17, 2009 20:10

A comment on the question "Wut do u do on consecutive shakes?" in Tapulous:

Ha ha... don't get sucked into thinking there is some trick. I can get green on arrows most of the time too, but there is a random inconsistency. It's probably due to a combination of higher priority "background" tasks & non-ideal filtering of accelerometer events in TTR.

If you can get any green shakes, you are doing just fine. More practice will probably get you a few more but don't expect any consistency until the bugs are fixed. If you're playing on an iPod Touch 2G with 3.0, don't even give it a second thought - that combination is a waste of time! – bufulo, on August 17, 2009 19:31

bufulo replied on August 16, 2009 20:15 to the question "Online Rooms for Arrows and Non-Arrows?" in Tapulous:

I don't think the Arrows vs. Non-Arrows would be such a big deal IF they actually worked properly like they used to. I normally prefer arrows on all the time & would like them to stay online. I wouldn't be devastated if they disappeared either though.

bufulo replied on August 16, 2009 20:11 to the question "Frozen - No action online" in Tapulous:

I've seen this happen too. Not with any particular song though - just random like most of the most annoying issues right now.

A comment on the problem "TTR 2 Problem on the new iPhone 3GS" in Tapulous:

You could assume that, but there are lots of reasons it could be otherwise & it wouldn't necessarily be "better" disabled. Latency may be more predictable & therefore deemed "better" by someone with the task always running & using a simple software switch in the task itself. There's really no way for us to know. I can imagine lots of ways they may have done this & some of those would probably mess up an application like TTR for sure! – bufulo, on August 16, 2009 19:49