Suspend Mode Needs Attention

Runningwild

I am hoping the app's suspend mode can be looked and tweaked for iOS devices. Not sure about Android but it is hit and miss on iPhone. For example, I was in a PVP battle and the phone went to sleep. Unlocked phone and MPQ restarted with me copping the loss penalty in hit points.

Same if you get a phone call while playing.

Other times it has been really good. I might have to step away during a battle so I'll pause it and put the phone to sleep. I unlock it later and the game is in the same state.

Is it at all possible to have MPQ 'remember' where you were at? An obvious time out time for tournaments etc is fair but right now, its busted. Atleast don't slug characters with a health loss.

famousfoxking

You know that has nothing to do with MPQ itself and everything to do with iOS's memory management, right? And slugging characters with health loss is to prevent people from killing the app when they realize they can't win a match, then not suffering for it.

CrookedKnight

Yeah, this is not something D3 can control without constantly writing the state of the battle to storage so you can resume where you left off if the app gets killed at the OS level. Which would be very bad from a performance standpoint.

Pwuz_

I don't buy that reasoning as to why I can't stop my game, look at a text message and come back to the game without losing what progress I've made in a single match.

I think this has more to do with how the game treats these interruptions. IF the game were to do more to save the state of the game if the phone is using other resources, this could be rectified.

Basically as long as you don't close the app, turn off your phone, or hit retreat; you should be able to pick up where you left off. If the app is closed, your phone is turned off (or dies), or you retreat; then you should get the usual penalty. But if none of those happened, the game should not just forget what it was doing and reset as if I just closed the app.

I can't think of any other apps I use that reset like this if I use another function on my phone.

FierceKiwi

Pwuz_ wrote:

I don't buy that reasoning as to why I can't stop my game, look at a text message and come back to the game without losing what progress I've made in a single match.

I think this has more to do with how the game treats these interruptions. IF the game were to do more to save the state of the game if the phone is using other resources, this could be rectified.

Basically as long as you don't close the app, turn off your phone, or hit retreat; you should be able to pick up where you left off. If the app is closed, your phone is turned off (or dies), or you retreat; then you should get the usual penalty. But if none of those happened, the game should not just forget what it was doing and reset as if I just closed the app.

I can't think of any other apps I use that reset like this if I use another function on my phone.

Except it is very much a phone issue your phone will often kill aps when it decides it needs more memory and the OS killing the app looks exactly the same as the user killing the app.

Unknown

What's your device? As I understand it you'll see it more often on say an iPhone 4S with iOS 6+ than if you're using newer hardware or an older (more "lightweight") iOS. But yes, it does seem there are limitations to swapping out of the app or killing it so as to prevent player abuse.

Pwuz_

Riggy wrote:

What's your device? As I understand it you'll see it more often on say an iPhone 4S with iOS 6+ than if you're using newer hardware or an older (more "lightweight") iOS. But yes, it does seem there are limitations to swapping out of the app or killing it so as to prevent player abuse.

Interesting, I am on a 4s. So this will happen less on a newer device?

Zen808

The iPhone 4S runs 512 MB of RAM. Every other more current IOS device, including the brand-spanking new iPhone 6 Plus, runs 1GB. So upgrading might help a little. But Apple is notoriously stingy on RAM - most other premium phones run 2-4 GB.

It also helps to make sure you close all other background apps (double-tap Home, and either press the small "x" or flick upward, depending on which version of IOS you're on.)

atomzed

Pwuz_ wrote:

I don't buy that reasoning as to why I can't stop my game, look at a text message and come back to the game without losing what progress I've made in a single match.

I think this has more to do with how the game treats these interruptions. IF the game were to do more to save the state of the game if the phone is using other resources, this could be rectified.

Basically as long as you don't close the app, turn off your phone, or hit retreat; you should be able to pick up where you left off. If the app is closed, your phone is turned off (or dies), or you retreat; then you should get the usual penalty. But if none of those happened, the game should not just forget what it was doing and reset as if I just closed the app.

I can't think of any other apps I use that reset like this if I use another function on my phone.

I'm playing this on an Android samsung S4. I'm able to "pause" the game, and get out to take a call or to check some mail, and get back to the game again.

No issues for android.

Dayv

CrookedKnight wrote:

Yeah, this is not something D3 can control without constantly writing the state of the battle to storage so you can resume where you left off if the app gets killed at the OS level. Which would be very bad from a performance standpoint.

Some games manage to do exactly this.

The other option is to stop supporting older models with less than a gig of RAM, but that will anger the same people who most frequently hit this issue.

My iPhone 6 and previous iPhone 5, both with 1 gig of RAM (2 gig woulda been nice on the 6, guys), never have this problem, but I have to be careful not to interrupt it with other apps on my first gen (512 meg) iPad Mini.

SunCrusher

This is an interesting discussion.

I have a newish iPod Touch 5th Generation and have been playing MPQ on it since pre-R47 back when my iPod still had 20someodd Gigs of space left in it. Now it only has 1 Gig of space left.

In either case, I have -always- had problems swapping to another app (LINE, iMessage, iPod, etc) and it's approximately 75%+ chance that even for a very brief swap, my game will restart itself and I seldom - if ever - run other apps at the same time as I run MPQ (or any other game) as I long ago got used to having to close all my apps before opening new ones.

That said, I don't think it's how much space or RAM you have when it comes to iOS devices. It's just the way it is and likely from an iOS point of view. I suspect, though, that auto-close is something more controlled from the game-side than it is from the iOS-side and the reason I say this is because I have another game app which allows swapping to another window without losing the screen contents or progress and it works perfectly fine on my device regardless of what I'm doing AND the screen swap can last definitely longer than a few seconds.

What iOS version are you on? I know that iOS 7 allowed something called 'Background Refresh'; I'm not sure if that is something that would be applied to MPQ or not in terms of the contents of the window staying where it is... or not.

I have Background Refreshes off to preserve battery, but this 'I Can't Suspend My Game' problem has been ongoing for me since iOS 6.0. I'm running iOS 7.X right now and MPQ hates suspending correctly, still, while the other game suspends just fine.

Dayv

SunCrusher wrote:

This is an interesting discussion.

I have a newish iPod Touch 5th Generation and have been playing MPQ on it since pre-R47 back when my iPod still had 20someodd Gigs of space left in it. Now it only has 1 Gig of space left.

In either case, I have -always- had problems swapping to another app (LINE, iMessage, iPod, etc) and it's approximately 75%+ chance that even for a very brief swap, my game will restart itself and I seldom - if ever - run other apps at the same time as I run MPQ (or any other game) as I long ago got used to having to close all my apps before opening new ones.

That said, I don't think it's how much space or RAM you have when it comes to iOS devices. It's just the way it is and likely from an iOS point of view.

It's all about the RAM. Storage space has nothing to do with it. Like my non-retina iPad Mini, even the newest (i.e. fifth generation, like yours) iPod Touch has only 512 megs of RAM. On my iPhone 5 or 6 with 1 gig of RAM, I can multitask easily and go back to my game in progress, as long as I don't launch three or four different apps before returning to the game. On the iPad Mini, I don't dare leave a game in progress.

Yes, iOS decides when to drop backgrounded apps from RAM, but it does so based on how much RAM is needed for other tasks. The more memory it has to work with, the less often it drops apps.

Some people question why Apple still has only one gig of memory in their most high end mobile devices, but even at the amounts they're putting in now, they're already using a massive share of DRAM supplies: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/10/06/apple-dram

That said, Apple needs to start putting 1 gig minimum in all their devices -- less than that presents an impact to user experience.

Unknown

Someone said before this could be abused, so that's why the game acts like that but I don't remember the details. On PC version, if the game or your PC crashes during a fight, it counts as if you forfeited the match and your team is either downed or took damage amounting a third of their total health.

Runningwild

Sorry to revive an old topic, but it seems by upgrading my phone from an iPhone 4S to a 5S completely solved the problem. So long as I am not launching apps left right and centre, I can be 90% confident the game will continue where I left off if I simply power the screen down.

blinktag

Pwuz_ wrote:

Interesting, I am on a 4s. So this will happen less on a newer device?

Yep. I'm on an iPhone 6, and regularly switch between Line app and/or text msgs without an issue. Phone calls don't present a problem either. Opening a web browser will kill most other apps, including MPQ, though.

It's definitely a phone memory issue. Newer hardware is better.

Unknown

The whole'crash vs. closedown' area could do with some attention, though I doubt it will ever get far enough up the priority list. When an operating system like Windows closes down, it first asks any running app to close. I don't know about Android & iOS but I guess it's the same. There's a world of difference between that and a sudden crash or spontaneous restart of an app, and MPQ out to be able to distinguish between them.
The obvious counter-argument is that people can cheat - but how? Find me a phone or tablet where you can now just remove the battery - they're all integral. Doing anything else will trigger an orderly closedown - a clear sign of retreat. I guess for a PC you could pull the plug out or wait a few hours for your tablet/phone battery to die but are people really going to start wholesale cheating using advanced techniques? Anyone that determined has probably already found other ways to hack the system ...

Unknown

Runningwild wrote:

Is it at all possible to have MPQ 'remember' where you were at? An obvious time out time for tournaments etc is fair but right now, its busted. At least don't slug characters with a health loss.

Just a suggestion to try that may help you have better odds of not losing your game. Clear your running apps before opening MPQ each time.

I run Android 4.4.2 and usually have everything open in the background and never lose a game. I have been mid match and come back an hour later and it is still there.

Apple Devices:
Double tap the home button and close all other open apps. That will free up memory being used and give you a better chance of your game remaining active in the background.

For most Android devices:
Push and hold your home button to open the list of all running apps and swipe them out to close them and free up memory.

_RiO_

Oh_Him_again wrote:

The whole'crash vs. closedown' area could do with some attention, though I doubt it will ever get far enough up the priority list. When an operating system like Windows closes down, it first asks any running app to close. I don't know about Android & iOS but I guess it's the same.

iOS offers the applicationWillResignActive delegate for apps, which is executed when an app transitions from foreground to background state. iOS will, iirc, only kill background apps when it has to attempt to free system resources. So this is the perfect place to add any logic that needs to be done to 'suspend state' and later resume.

Android has the Activity.onStop and Activity.onRestart delegates to allow you to detect when an activity (which is basically the life-cycle component of an app) is halted or restarted by the OS. This bit of knowledge is even part of the basic Getting Started training and pretty much requisite material for anyone writing an Android app.

So yeah; the MPQ devs have just never bothered implementing this correctly.
(Given the amount of ridiculous bugs we've seen over time, I don't hold their abilities in terribly high esteem any longer. I would, for instance, not be surprised at all if they never even knew about these things in the first place.)

Pwuz_

blinktag wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

Interesting, I am on a 4s. So this will happen less on a newer device?

Yep. I'm on an iPhone 6, and regularly switch between Line app and/or text msgs without an issue. Phone calls don't present a problem either. Opening a web browser will kill most other apps, including MPQ, though.

It's definitely a phone memory issue. Newer hardware is better.

Since we are necroing this thread. Yeah, I found this has become a non-issue for me when I got my iPhone 6. I can even go as far now as make a phone call and swap back over to MPQ while continuing the call on speaker or through my head set all over 4G.

Considering this is an issue that increasingly affects older phones, I'm not sure that there is ever going to be a large enough reason to push resources in this direction. How many people would use Google Maps on the Famicom?