Transparent PNG has become solid black

Studycat · November 19, 2012, 12:10am

The main menu on my app is seen through a hole in a transparent PNG. However, the hole has been replaced by solid black, so you can’t see through it to the menu underneath.

I released my app built with CoronaSDK2012.945.

It works fine on simulator, XCode simulator, and device builds on iPad/iPhone and iPod Touch.

I can’t recreate the behaviour with any builds that I directly upload to device.

I’ve seen some pngcrush related changes in the Corona builds of late. Could this be a problem with the type of png I’m using?

Anyone have an idea what may cause this?

Thanks
Mateo

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Omnigeek_Media · November 19, 2012, 6:41am

Your png isn’t being used as a mask is it?
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Studycat · November 19, 2012, 9:26am

No mask. The png is an overlay with a transparent hole in it.

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ignis075 · November 19, 2012, 9:50am

Hello,
See point #1 here… could this be the issue? It seems that “pngcrush” isn’t used for “developer” builds.

http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2012/10/24/faq-wednesday-display-objects/

Also, did you try building with the most recent Official build, versus a daily build?

Brent
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Omnigeek_Media · November 19, 2012, 6:41am

Your png isn’t being used as a mask is it?
[import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 131580[/import]

Studycat · November 19, 2012, 9:26am

No mask. The png is an overlay with a transparent hole in it.

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Studycat · November 19, 2012, 6:47pm

That’s what I thought - that changes in the way Corona handled PNGs could mean the release version behaves differently to a development version. I tried an Ad Hoc distribution using Test Flight and it worked fine.

I didn’t use the official build as it does not yet support iPhone 5. I’ve reverted to Corona SDK2012.894 and resubmitted the previous version of the app. This is hopefully a temporary step backward, but I still need to get the new version working.

The difficulty I have is that there’s no way to reproduce the problem without releasing to the app store! I’ve submitted a second, identical app under a different name to see if that also has the problem. This way I can verify that the problem still exists without affecting my user base.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Mateo

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ignis075 · November 19, 2012, 9:50am

Hello,
See point #1 here… could this be the issue? It seems that “pngcrush” isn’t used for “developer” builds.

http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2012/10/24/faq-wednesday-display-objects/

Also, did you try building with the most recent Official build, versus a daily build?

Brent
[import]uid: 9747 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 131613[/import]

Studycat · November 19, 2012, 6:47pm

That’s what I thought - that changes in the way Corona handled PNGs could mean the release version behaves differently to a development version. I tried an Ad Hoc distribution using Test Flight and it worked fine.

I didn’t use the official build as it does not yet support iPhone 5. I’ve reverted to Corona SDK2012.894 and resubmitted the previous version of the app. This is hopefully a temporary step backward, but I still need to get the new version working.

The difficulty I have is that there’s no way to reproduce the problem without releasing to the app store! I’ve submitted a second, identical app under a different name to see if that also has the problem. This way I can verify that the problem still exists without affecting my user base.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Mateo

[import]uid: 36578 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 131677[/import]

ignis075 · November 20, 2012, 9:01am

Hi Mateo,
The latest Corona official build was released yesterday (#971) and it supports iPhone5. Perhaps try it using that version. It might not, however, be an issue with the build process… but see what happens.

Brent
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ignis075 · November 20, 2012, 9:01am

Hi Mateo,
The latest Corona official build was released yesterday (#971) and it supports iPhone5. Perhaps try it using that version. It might not, however, be an issue with the build process… but see what happens.

Brent
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Studycat · November 21, 2012, 12:40am

I used #971 for the second test app I submitted.

My system is Lion 10.7.5, with XCode 4.5.1. Previously I had released with XCode 4.3.x

I wonder if that could affect it?

Thanks for your help, Brent.

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Studycat · November 21, 2012, 12:40am

I used #971 for the second test app I submitted.

My system is Lion 10.7.5, with XCode 4.5.1. Previously I had released with XCode 4.3.x

I wonder if that could affect it?

Thanks for your help, Brent.

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roaminggamer · November 21, 2012, 10:06pm

@mateosolares,

Three questions:

What is the bit-depth of your image? i.e. is it 8-bits per channel? (I have on occasion converted my images to a lower bit encoding and this causes issues on some devices.)
Do you have antialias set to true in config.lua? (Sometimes causes problems for me.)
Have you tried displaying just the problem image in an otherwise empty app? (To rule out interactions with the rest of your game/app).

If you like, you could send me the image and I’ll take a look:

PS - I may have missed this, but is this a customer complaint. If so, do you have any idea what device, generation, and OS version this is failing on.

I also read the line where you said you can’t reproduce this. so suggestion/question #3 above probably won’t be useful.

I have an older device I could try to reproduce this on, what is the can you tell us the app or post a link to the store page? [import]uid: 110228 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 132027[/import]

Studycat · November 21, 2012, 10:10pm

emaurina,

8 bits per channel, same as all other graphics in my app.
antialias is true. I need this as I do quite a lot of scaling.
No. I can’t even reproduce the error in any build. It’s only the version that I released to the app store that exhibits the black pixels. It works fine in simulator, on several devices, and with testflightapp distributor builds.

I suspect some data corruption, but where it occurs ( Corona project - > Corona SDK 2012.945 -> Xcode 4.5.1 -> Application Loader ) , is a mystery to me.

thanks
Mateo

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Studycat · November 21, 2012, 10:12pm

PS

It’s many customer complaints. I’ve tried on iPad3, iPhone4, iPod5 with iOS5 and 6 - all broken.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id428920239 [import]uid: 36578 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 132029[/import]

roaminggamer · November 21, 2012, 11:02pm

I wonder if there is some way to specify ‘no PNG optimization’ during the build process?

http://imageoptim.com/xcode.html

COMPRESS_PNG_FILES = NO;
I wonder if there is a build.settings flag for this? [import]uid: 110228 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 132035[/import]

roaminggamer · November 21, 2012, 11:25pm

Your app works fine on my gen 3 iPod Touch. BTW, nice looking app. [import]uid: 110228 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 132041[/import]

Studycat · November 21, 2012, 11:34pm

Corona Enterprise might have this capability, but I think compression is fixed ON for distribution builds, and OFF for dev builds.

re: Fun English

Did you install version 6.5?

iPod touch 3rd gen is 480x320 like 3GS. Maybe the small PNGs are ok, but the @2x are not…

Thanks for testing, and for the compliment!

Mateo

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roaminggamer · November 22, 2012, 12:28am

Yes. I installed version 6.5.

I’ll test it on a gen 4 ipod touch and write back with results in the morning. i.e. I can answer the @2x question with that. [import]uid: 110228 topic_id: 33133 reply_id: 132047[/import]