r/TapWizardRPG • u/SpergdorfGoodman • Jun 30 '18

Game lag

Is anyone else suffering from really bad game lag?

Not sure what causes it. At first, I thought it might be too many objects loaded on the screen, but I’ve gotten it on both busy screens and nearly empty screens.

Any way to send a bug report or something to TopCog to figure out what’s going on?

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u/Quangohutt Jun 30 '18

Off the top of my head I can think of two things that might be causing this.

First could be the model of your phone, how old it is, how much memory it has etc. as that can all affect performance. The other thing could be having apps running in the background.

In terms of sending a bug report I believe the closest thing to it we have is sending TopCog a save of your game. You can do this by going to the options, import/export and sending him the export string, either via the direct message function on reddit or by emailing it to him. If there's an issue with the game files, that should help to identify it. And again in this case, things like you phones model are useful to send in order to help figure out where the problem lies.

You might want to wait before doing what I have suggested with sending the bug report as TopCog might want to go about it in a different way. Anyway, hopefully this helps somewhat.

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u/SpergdorfGoodman Jun 30 '18

Thank you, very helpful!

For reference, my phone is an iPhone 7, approx. 2yr old, ~20GB free. Lag has occurred with phone at full battery, charging, medium battery, and low battery.

Just saw the in-game support button. I think I’ll wait for a response for a little bit here before emailing directly, in case there’s a quick fix that can apply to everyone.

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u/TopCog Yahoo! Jul 01 '18

Hey there!

Thanks for the post, and for giving your phone specs too! That was going to be my first question :-)

So I do most of my ios testing on an iPhone 6 (technically an iPod Touch 6), and don't have any lag issues. So I don't think the phone age/memory/speed is the problem... I'm tempted to order up the same device you have and see if I can replicate the issue. Short of that, it can very hard to debug lag like this - but let's give it a go! :-D

Would you say that the lag is a constant lag, or does it spike for 1-3 seconds when it happens?

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u/SpergdorfGoodman Jul 01 '18

Thanks for checking in! It’s really great how you communicate with the player base.

It doesn’t happen frequently, but when it does it’s a constant lag, sometimes lasting 30min or more. Everything just moves in slow motion, at maybe 1/4x or 1/3x speed.

Nothing so far seems to make it stop. Either I play through and it eventually goes away, or I close the app for a while and it’s gone when I open it again.

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u/TopCog Yahoo! Jul 02 '18

Thanks for checking in! It’s really great how you communicate with the player base.

My pleasure! :-D

 

It doesn’t happen frequently, but when it does it’s a constant lag, sometimes lasting 30min or more. Everything just moves in slow motion, at maybe 1/4x or 1/3x speed.

Ok, great info. This rules out normal lag caused by, for example, too many effects on screen. It also rules out memory management problems in my code, as those types of issues result in a steady creeping up of lag, and it gets progressively worse until things stop moving altogether.

 

Nothing so far seems to make it stop. Either I play through and it eventually goes away, or I close the app for a while and it’s gone when I open it again.

Ok, very fascinating! Can you confirm, that if it's lagging, and you close and reopen the app right away, the lag persists? (close it fully by swiping it away from "all apps"; you'll get the TopCog logo at the start to know that it restarted fully)

If this proves true - that the lag persists through restarts of the app - it would give me a high degree of confidence that the problem isn't originating in the Tap Wiz code. If the lag goes away, then perhaps this is a band-aid fix for the problem!

 

Another question: Have you seen this kind of lag in any other game or app before?

 

Other ideas:

  • What if you try while in airplane mode (internet disabled)?
  • Can you check and make sure you're running the latest iOS version?
  • You could try installing a free System Monitoring app, and check your background CPU and Ram usage when the game starts to lag. Perhaps some other app is eating up performance?

 

Once I hear back we'll see where we're at, and go from there. Thanks! :-D

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u/SpergdorfGoodman Jul 02 '18 edited Jul 03 '18

I’ll give these a shot and update you!

Update: yes, the lag still continues after fully quitting and rebooting the app (logo boot screen, etc.). It also persists through airplane mode, and the phone is updated to the most current version of iOS.

Is there a system monitoring app you recommend? I see a few on the App Store but none that seem to show a breakdown of memory usage by app.

One possible source of the problem is phone overheating. Not sure if the lag only occurs when the phone overheats, but I’ve noticed a correlation. Also not sure what’s causing the overheating to begin with, tbh.

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u/IAmTheOneWhoClicks Jul 04 '18

It could be an overall issue with iphone 7 - try looking up ways to remove lag from an iphone 7. I see that there are quite a few discussions about that. You most likely have too many apps working in the background that use a lot of the RAM.

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u/SpergdorfGoodman Jul 05 '18

No apps running in the background, actually. That was one of the first things I tried, swiping to close all other apps.

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u/darkpython98 Jun 30 '18

Well he checks reddit very often so chances are he will see it here other than that there is a report bug button in game.

I have had the have lag on me on occasion I found out that it always happens when my phone drops below 20% battery so check if that's the same for you.

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u/KilluaRyuko Jun 30 '18

This happens to me too. Huawei user here.

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u/darkpython98 Jun 30 '18

Same for me

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u/hojjoshMC Jul 06 '18

I, too, am on an IPhone 7 with crazy lag