Need help tracking down suspected Rev B issue

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1

Hi everyone,

I suspect that due to a performance drop in Rev B my latest version of "Red Terror" crashes on startup.
The Playdate has some set time out when the game needs to respond to the OS to indicate that its alive and previously I had some problems with loading and transforming graphics because the operation simply took to much time. I solved that by splitting the loading up in smaller chunks and it works fine on my playdate (which is of Rev A).

After I updated my game and added in some more graphical assets to load, it now seems like the crash is back - but not on Rev A. I have'nt gotten it confirmed that the user has a Rev B machine, but I dont see any other realisitic reason why this would happen otherwise (as it works fine on my playdate of Rev A).

I've attached two zip files, one that should reproduce the crash (RedTerror_RevBError.pdx.zip) and another one that might fix it (RedTerror_RevBFix.pdx.zip). The games have been stripped of the game play logic and such so it wont let you run the game but it should startup, load the graphics and present you with the main menu.

I'd be super grateful if someone who has a Rev B machine would try these out and see if:

  1. They can indeed recreate the crash
  2. Test if my fix version resolves the crash.

If your unsure if you have hardware revision A or B, you can use this app (that you install as any other playdate game) from here: Hardware revision checker

Here is the version that should crash Red Terror crash on Rev B
And here is the version that might fix it Red Terror fixed on Rev B

If so, I can go ahead and implement the fix in the game and put out a new version of it.

Cheers,
/J

2

Both versions crash when selecting a difficulty or "continue".

3

Hi,

Thanks for testing it out.

Your results are expected, but Im expecting only one of them (the fix version) will show the main menu.
None of them will let you start the game.

Do you have a Rev B playdate? Because both of them will load and let you enter the main menu fine on a Rev A playdate.

4

I can load the main menu with the unfixed version too. I was in Group 5, and needed to compile Playnote Studio myself to be able to run it, so I assume I have a Rev. B.

5

There is an app for checking which version you got, you can use this link and check it out:

Hardware revision checker

6

It's Rev. B. indeed.

7

Ahh, I see... Well I guess the only way to try out then is with an actual live version of the full game and see if someone gets the same issue or if its something weird just happening to one user.

Your not on any of the discords where we can exchange information? Or if you got a gmail I can share a private google drive link with you of the full game and see if you can run it?

I did remove the loading of music tracks in these examples, just because the audio is so large and I expect that it does'nt actually load the music when calling "load" anyways...
But I can put that back in and update this and see if it happens then as well

8

It seems the full live game version 1.8 does run fine on both rev A and rev B, this most be some special issue that one user has for some other reason. No need for anyone to try this out more, I will consider this resolved for now

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