Weird layering issue - possibly Samsung hardware related

Audio and Graphics
#1

Hi, I’ve asked this before but got no answer so here goes…  at random intervals my layers reshuffle and move relate to each other.  This is best shown via a set of images

This is what it should look like

1.png

The “layers” are display groups that are stacked logically for rendering: water, land, road, buildings, overlays.  They are inserted into a master group (on create scene) so they all move as one.

When it goes wrong, the land group jumps to the top of the stack and they layers change their anchor points relative the the master display group

2.png

Here you can see the offset

3.png

and it gets worse (there is now a massive offset in X and 64px offset in Y, each tile is 128x64px)

4.png

This last shot shows an overlay drawn in one of the overlay layers

5.png

This is running with a debug key and with error handling switched off.  No error is raised (or no trappable error) so I can only conclude this is happening outside the scope of my code.  After all why would I ever code for land to be above buildings?  Also a low memory event isn’t triggered.

I’ve personally had this on my Galaxy tab 4, S4 and S5 but never on my an LG G3.  I have had a few customers complain about it too and they all seem to have a Samsung device.  So there maybe something right there?

Without having an error raised that I can handle (and close the app) I am at a loss as to what I can do… could someone please help me?

Thank you

Adrian

#2

Hi guys… How do I get assistance with this?? Do I submit a 60mb zip file of my project? I can’t reduce it to a simple use case but I can tell you it’s been happening for the past month or so. I compile with latest builds.

I’ve tried various releases and all experience the same random issues. Some help would really be appreciated… My customers are unhappy that their game sometimes randomly screwed up for no valid reason.

I don’t even know if it’s possible to change the order of display groups within a parent display group???

#3

Hey… It is hard to tell what is going on from screenshots. Does it happens only on android? Have you tried to build for iOS, Windows or Mac?

Also, how hard is to get your game into this inconsistent state? If it is not too hard, can you try debugging values of you objects positions? You can also try compressing & uploading your project to dropbox and PM me a link (also, localizing bug in big existing codebase can be tricky and unproductive).

P.S. Your game looks great!

#4

Hi vlads, it is hard to tell… I’ve only had reports from Android players but android players outnumber iOS by at least 15 to 1.

I  appreciate this is the “needle in a haystack bug” but seen as no errors are raised and it seems really random (reported b y around 3% of players).  i’ve personally seen it in dev on a couple of devices but not all and I’ve not seen it on iPad yet.

There is nothing in my code to move the ground layer above the buildings layer because that would nonsensical in the context of my game.  The screen shots I showed are very basic of a low level city - i.e. minimal runtime code.

I’m more than happy to send full source, hard-coded to a large city and yes I do appreciate that tens of thousands of lines of code is really difficult to debug (this is my life after all!). especially when I can play on an LG device for hours bug free but a Samsung device not so.

I wish I could narrow a use case for this but I just can’t and that infuriates me!  My email is adrian@spheregamestudios.com. I’d love to discuss this further there.

#5

Hi guys… How do I get assistance with this?? Do I submit a 60mb zip file of my project? I can’t reduce it to a simple use case but I can tell you it’s been happening for the past month or so. I compile with latest builds.

I’ve tried various releases and all experience the same random issues. Some help would really be appreciated… My customers are unhappy that their game sometimes randomly screwed up for no valid reason.

I don’t even know if it’s possible to change the order of display groups within a parent display group???

#6

Hey… It is hard to tell what is going on from screenshots. Does it happens only on android? Have you tried to build for iOS, Windows or Mac?

Also, how hard is to get your game into this inconsistent state? If it is not too hard, can you try debugging values of you objects positions? You can also try compressing & uploading your project to dropbox and PM me a link (also, localizing bug in big existing codebase can be tricky and unproductive).

P.S. Your game looks great!

#7

Hi vlads, it is hard to tell… I’ve only had reports from Android players but android players outnumber iOS by at least 15 to 1.

I  appreciate this is the “needle in a haystack bug” but seen as no errors are raised and it seems really random (reported b y around 3% of players).  i’ve personally seen it in dev on a couple of devices but not all and I’ve not seen it on iPad yet.

There is nothing in my code to move the ground layer above the buildings layer because that would nonsensical in the context of my game.  The screen shots I showed are very basic of a low level city - i.e. minimal runtime code.

I’m more than happy to send full source, hard-coded to a large city and yes I do appreciate that tens of thousands of lines of code is really difficult to debug (this is my life after all!). especially when I can play on an LG device for hours bug free but a Samsung device not so.

I wish I could narrow a use case for this but I just can’t and that infuriates me!  My email is adrian@spheregamestudios.com. I’d love to discuss this further there.