Previously released game, new Gideros version, crashes on Android device

Comments

• ar2rsawseen Maintainer

  October 2013

  There must be an error in log cat, sometimes when nothing appears there, I disconnect the device, close eclipse, open it again and connect device, relaunch the app, and it shows something in there

  http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile

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• PaulH Member

  October 2013

  I expected to see something, but I've restarted Eclipse, restarted the phone, tried numerous times, and the last thing from the LogCat is a list of libraries loaded, then MediaCmdReceiver saying "Thread started". Here's the LogCat from debugging:
  
  10-23 08:50:51.906: I/dalvikvm(1753): Debugger is active
  10-23 08:50:51.913: I/System.out(1753): Debugger has connected
  10-23 08:50:51.913: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:52.121: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:52.320: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:52.515: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:52.718: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:52.924: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:53.124: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:53.326: I/System.out(1753): waiting for debugger to settle...
  10-23 08:50:53.527: I/System.out(1753): debugger has settled (1446)
  10-23 08:50:53.804: D/dalvikvm(1753): Trying to load lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libgideros.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.913: D/dalvikvm(1753): Added shared lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libgideros.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.913: D/dalvikvm(1753): No JNI_OnLoad found in /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libgideros.so 0x40517578, skipping init
  10-23 08:50:53.913: D/dalvikvm(1753): Trying to load lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libluasocket.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.929: D/dalvikvm(1753): Added shared lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libluasocket.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.929: D/dalvikvm(1753): Trying to load lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/liblfs.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.937: D/dalvikvm(1753): Added shared lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/liblfs.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.937: D/dalvikvm(1753): Trying to load lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libggooglebilling.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.953: D/dalvikvm(1753): Added shared lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libggooglebilling.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.953: D/dalvikvm(1753): Trying to load lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/liblsqlite3.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.960: D/dalvikvm(1753): Added shared lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/liblsqlite3.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.968: D/dalvikvm(1753): Trying to load lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libjson.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.968: D/dalvikvm(1753): Added shared lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libjson.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.976: D/dalvikvm(1753): Trying to load lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libbitop.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:53.976: D/dalvikvm(1753): Added shared lib /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/lib/libbitop.so 0x40517578
  10-23 08:50:55.015: D/Gideros_Java(1753): externalDir: /mnt/sdcard
  10-23 08:50:55.015: D/Gideros_Java(1753): internalDir: /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/files
  10-23 08:50:55.015: D/Gideros_Java(1753): cacheDir: /data/data/com.pishtech.mifd/cache
  10-23 08:50:55.124: D/libEGL(1753): loaded /system/lib/egl/libGLES_android.so
  10-23 08:50:55.124: D/libEGL(1753): loaded /system/lib/egl/libEGL_POWERVR_SGX530_125.so
  10-23 08:50:55.148: D/libEGL(1753): loaded /system/lib/egl/libGLESv1_CM_POWERVR_SGX530_125.so
  10-23 08:50:55.171: D/libEGL(1753): loaded /system/lib/egl/libGLESv2_POWERVR_SGX530_125.so
  10-23 08:51:04.812: D/MediaCmdReceiver(1753): Connected to server
  10-23 08:51:04.851: D/MediaCmdReceiver(1753): Thread started
  10-23 08:51:05.093: D/MediaCmdReceiver(1753): close
  10-23 08:51:05.156: D/MediaCmdReceiver(1753): Connected to server
  10-23 08:51:05.171: D/MediaCmdReceiver(1753): Thread started
  
  After a few seconds, probably when the game tries to show its main menu, the game dies, with no more entries in the LogCat.
  
  Really baffled... I've tried adding some file IO to log the progress as screens load, etc., calling a function to append a message to a file, hoping to at least narrow down what part of the code it's in when it quits. I'm logging steps with this code:
  
  local file = io.open("|D|mifdts.txt", "a")
  if (file~=nil) then
  file:write(msg .. "\n")
  file:close()
  end
  
  The log file doesn't appear to anywhere on the phone, either in system memory or on the SD card. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to get that working without success, though I know others have had issues with file IO.
  
  Any other ideas?
  
  Paul
  

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• john26 Maintainer

  October 2013

  Maybe try creating a stand alone APK and installing it manually on the phone. Thus rule out this being due to Eclipse.
  
  Does it crash on every Android phone or just one?
  

  http://giderosmobile.com
  https://github.com/gideros/gideros
  https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnBlackburn1975
  

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• PaulH Member

  October 2013

  I've tried the manual APK installation and I get the same crash. Based on user reviews it seems to crash on a handful of models. That never included mine until this update. It's fine on a Galaxy Tab, but seems to crash at least on the Droid X and X2.

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• ar2rsawseen Maintainer

  October 2013

  So let me get this straight
  the app works on Gideros player (on device) but fails as exported apk and it started happening after Gideros upgrade?
  
  Did you do full export from Gideros in the fresh clean directory? Maybe some old gideros files from previous version interfere with the current exported app.

  http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile

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• PaulH Member

  October 2013

  It works in the Gideros player on Windows. I wasn't aware the player could run on the device. I've only ever produced the APK by exporting the Android project and building in Eclipse. The app failed on some devices but none of mine in the past, but now it's crashing at the same point on my phone (Droid X), though still working fine on my tablet (Galaxy Tab).
  
  I'll try exporting to a fresh directory to try to rule out stray files.
  
  PaulH

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• ar2rsawseen Maintainer

  October 2013

  if it works on one Android device and does not work on another, then probably the fault is not in older files.
  I also see from logcat that you do not use any external plugin (only the ones bundled with the project), is that right?

  http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile

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• PaulH Member

  October 2013

  That's correct. I experimented with using the AdMob plugin, but current there are no added libraries. Next I'll try moving the project to my laptop and try to debug on the player on the phone over wifi.

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• PaulH Member

  October 2013

  Move project to laptop, testing on Gideros player on the phone in question, and I get the crash. I was using print statements to try to narrow it down, and it seemed like it could be related to some timers I'm using. I put up a "loading" screen and use a timer to trigger the actual loading of all the scenes, so the system will take over and get the loading screen to display. Then the function called by the timer does the rest of the loading. Somewhere along the process, and at a slightly different point each time I run it, the "print" statements stop working and nothing further gets to the output. Clearly more code is getting executed, though. My menu music starts before it loads all the graphics and I hear it start, but the print statements around starting the music don't show up in the output window.
  
  Anybody have any ideas why print statements might not show up?
  

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• PaulH Member

  October 2013

  I've determined things break down when the code tries to pre-load all the scenes. For each scene (shopping for tackle, cutting a hole in the ice, fishing, etc.) I have a lua file defining the scene. Each scene extends the sprite class and has a full screen sprite for the background, and various bitmaps that get added as children of the main sprite to complete and animate the scene. So by loading all the scenes, I'm loading all the game graphics into memory at once. The idea was to minimize the time transitioning between scenes. I've found that if I load only the first couple of scenes the crash doesn't happen, until of course I try to move to one of those scenes that hasn't been loaded. If I add code to load them only when they're needed I get the crash on about the third scene. It seems that if the code gets far enough to trigger the crash, the queue of print statements waiting to get handled (shown on the output window) get lost.
  
  I suspect all this means the device is simply running out of memory. I could overhaul the code to keep only the current scene in memory, at the cost of much slower scene transitions. Before starting the app I see free memory about twice the size of the app, but with overhead perhaps that's not enough. Even if I shut down all apps and do a memory cleanup immediately before launching the app I get the same crash, and briefly see system memory quite low after the crash before it shoots back up.
  
  I think I have to conclude that I need to take a careful look at memory management throughout the app.
  
  Or has anybody seen anything similar that was caused by something else?
  
  

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• ar2rsawseen Maintainer

  October 2013

  on mobile phones, especially with higher res graphics its very easy to hit the ceiling.
  thats why SceneManager was made with the idea of disposing previous scene and moving to another.
  Well as last resort, you could save the most common scene (like start scene) in the memory, but dispose of other scenes when moving to the next ones

  http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile

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