For the past week or so, all the leaderboards in my app have been showing the same scores, and the same number of total scores in the 'All Time'/'This Week'/'Today' views.
There have definitely been new players since this point, and it started without any update to the app itself, so I'm pretty confident that its score-submitting code is sound. I have sent out a new update since, though none of the GameCenter-related code has changed. While four new leaderboards got approved along with the update, and are showing, they contain no scores.
Anybody else experiencing this? Or does anyone have any inclination of why it might be happening?
Thanks in advance!
Related
I'm trying to develop a rhythm game in Monogame. The notes are frame rate independent and work consistently over different computers, but the song playing does not. Right now I have it hooked up so the notes spawn and MediaPlayer.Play() do not start until I hit a key (so it's outside of loadcontent/initialize like I've seen other solutions suggest). The song does not start playing until I hit the "I" key (gets checked in Update). However, the song seems to start playing at different times across different devices. I pull down the project on both my laptop (on battery) and desktop, and hit the "I" key at the same time on both, and I get different results on my laptop. Sometimes it'll be seconds ahead of the desktop, other times it'll be a second or two behind (this is usually the case). It seems pretty consistent on desktop. I'd try more than a dozen times and everything is still synced, but not on my laptop. I'm worried this is something that works only on my PC but not on others.
I've tried enabling fixedTimeStep and setting FPS to 60 (and setting the TargetElapsedTime to the window title ensuring that they are indeed both hitting 60) and I still get inconsistent results. I've read from other answers about using PlayPosition from the MediaPlayer class, but that property is readonly so I'm not quite how I could use that.
At first, I thought my notes were simply dependent on frame rate, but after setting FPS and fixedTimeStep, and also holding my laptop up to my desktop monitor they match up perfectly. It's just the song not syncing up. I'm still a newbie to XNA but I couldn't find anyone else reporting different song starting timings like this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I thought of a solution the second I got out of bed the next morning. I figured there must be some overhead on MediaPlayer.Play(), but I wondered if I could start it, pause it, then resume instead. Turns out, there is a Pause() and Resume() method which is what what missing from making this work.
So! If anyone else out there is having similar issues, here's what I did. I kept a key to activate MediaPlayer.Play(), but immediately added MediaPlayer.Pause() after. Then I got another key to resume the song, and the notes spawned when the song was resumed. So pressing "I" played the song and paused it immediately. Pressing "R" resumed the song and started spawning the notes.
I'm using the VerificationController provided by Raywenderlich in several of my apps, and it's been fantastic. Totally reliable, easy to implement, and effective. It's been live in three of my apps for several months each.
However, two days ago, all three apps suddenly stopped working properly. Every purchase is now being flagged as invalid without exception, both for my live users and for my own test accounts. I've made no changes to the apps or their backends, in fact I've been moving apartments so I literally haven't touched them in a week or more. The change was instantaneous across all three apps, and I've understandably started getting complaints.
The problem seems to be in the checkReceiptSecurity() function (it's always returning NO when it needs to return YES for valid transactions), but the code inside that function is beyond my ability to comprehend. I'm hoping someone has encountered something like this, or perhaps is even experiencing it now, and knows a solution?
As far as I can tell, it seems to be happening on the second of these lines (VerificationController.m line 158).
require(signature_length > offsetof(struct signature_blob, certificate), outLabel);
require(signature_blob_ptr->version == 2, outLabel);
certificate_len = ntohl(signature_blob_ptr->cert_len);
Which are helpfully commented as "Make sure the signature blob is long enough to safely extract the version and cert_len fields, then perform a sanity check on the fields." When it hits the signature_blob_ptr line, it suddenly jumps to the end of the function, which I assume means that it failed a check having to do with the version number of some response from Apple?
Can anyone shed any light on what is happening? This is obviously devastating to my app portfolio, and I need to fix it immediately. I'll disable the verification temporarily and release an update if I have to, but I'd like to find a fix for whatever has changed...
Search for "receipt validation" at https://forums.developer.apple.com
Apparently, a certificate update just made VerificationController to stop working.
The obvious, but not quick at all, fix is to use the more recent receipt validation processing. See: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/releasenotes/General/ValidateAppStoreReceipt/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010573-CH105-SW1
As for the code above, signature_blob_ptr->version == 3 now. But putting 3 instead of 2 in the code is not a fix as the signature is not 128 bytes long anymore.
I have been developing an iOS app that utilizes the CloudKit feature available for Apple Developers. I've found it to be a wonderful resource, especially since the very day I started designing my backend, the service I was intending to use (Parse) announced it was shutting down. It's very appealing due to it's small learning curve, but I'm starting to notice some annoying little issues here and there so I'm seeking out some experts for advice and help. I posted another CloudKit question a couple days ago, which is still occurring: CloudKit Delete Self Option Not Working. But I want to limit this to a different issue that may be related.
Problem ~ Ever since I started using CloudKit I have noticed that whenever I manually try to edit (delete an entry, remove or add part of a list, even add a DeleteSelf option to a CKReference after creation), and then try to save the change, I get an error message and cannot proceed. Here is a screenshot of the error window that appears:
It's frustrating because anytime I want to manipulate a record to perform some sort of test, I either have to go do it through my app, or just delete the record entirely and create a new one (that I am able to do without issue). I have been just working around this issue for over a month now because it wasn't fatal to my progress. However, I am starting to think that this could be related to my other CloudKit issues, and maybe if I could get some advice on how to fix it I could also solve my other problems. I have file numerous bug reports with Apple, but haven't received a response or seen any changes.
I'd also like to mention that for a very long time now (at least a few days), I've noticed down in the bottom left hand corner of my Dashboard that it is consistently saying that it's "Reindexing Development Data". I remember at first that wasn't an issue, I would get that notification after making a change but it'd go away after the operation is complete. Now it seems to be stuck somewhere inside the process. And this is a chronic issue, it's saying this all the time, even right when I log into my dashboard.
Here is what I'm talking about:
As time goes on I find more small issues with CloudKit, I'm concerned that once I go into production more problems could start manifesting and then I could have a serious issue. I'd love to stick with CloudKit and avoid the learning curve of a different service like Amazon Web Services, but I also don't want to set myself up for failure.
Can anyone help me with this issue, or has anyone else experienced it on a regular basis? Thanks for the advice and help!
Pierce,
I found myself in a similar situation; the issue seemed to be linked to Assets; I had an Asset in my record definition. I and several other I noted reported the re-indexing issue on the apple support website and after about a month it eventually disappeared.
Have you tried resting your database schema completely, snapshot the definition; since you zap it completely and than reset, see inset.
Ultimately I simply created a new project, linked it to cloud kit and use the new container in my original app.
I am using Game Center turn-based matches for my card game. It feels like a good fit because people want to check their email or write a text sometimes between turns. Some users have said that they do really want to be able to have a very asynchronous playing experience.
For the people that are keeping the game open between their turns, I want to update the screen to reflect things that the other players are doing on their turns. I have set up a listener on GKLocalPlayer that responds to player:receivedTurnEventForMatch:didBecomeActive. The documentation says that this will get called when match data is saved by another player even if it doesn't become the player's turn (the player on the current device). That doesn't appear to be true 100% of the time. In fact, it appears that it only gets called about 1 in 3 times that match data is saved by other players. It seems more reliable when it becomes the player's turn, but even that isn't 100% reliable.
I am using saveCurrentTurnWithMatchData:completionHandler: on GKTurnBasedMatch to save match data that doesn't end the current player's turn and I'm calling endTurnWithNextParticipants:turnTimeout:matchData:completionHandler: on GKTurnBasedMatch to save the data when it does end the current player's turn. There are a few scenarios where I want to call saveCurrentTurn… with updated matchData. In my game, you can have computers playing in your multiplayer game as well. So, a human player may play a card and then a computer may play a card before that GKPlayer's turn ends. There are also scenarios where an individual player may play twice. (eg. A player plays the last card on a trick. That player takes the trick and gets to lead the next trick.)
I have set up a ton of logging around this and I can see clear scenarios where one device calls saveCurrentTurn… and the completionHandler is called without an error and the other device doesn't get notified with a call to player:receivedTurnEvent… I have also added logging to verify that each time I'm calling saveCurrentTurn… that I'm calling it with new matchData. I'm not making redundant calls.
If I go to the device that didn't get the updated matchData and force it to load the matchData for the match again, it gets the updated data. So, it's definitely getting saved.
I have tried throttling the calls to saveCurrentTurn… so that they don't happen in immediate succession and that didn't help.
Both devices in my testing are running iOS 8.4. There appears to have been an issue in iOS 8.3 that is fixed now (see this question). This Apple forum post also reports this issue 2 years ago and it appears that bug reports were filed and marked fixed.
Has anyone else seen this? I would love to know that I'm doing something wrong. Any ideas are very welcome.
I do something similar. In my game, each player has multiple pieces, saving the match when each piece moves so that other players--if they're in the game--can watch what's happening in real time. Like you describe, the Game Center messaging is almost completely useless.
As you referenced, in 8.3, the "end of turn" messages were completely broken. As of 8.4, they happen most, but not all, of the time. As you're seeing, the "match has been saved" notifications are also erratic. Here are some tips I've used to increase the success rate:
Slow down the saves. If you save too fast, only the last one arrives at the recipient. I set up an NSArray queue, and each time I want to save the match, I add the new matchData to that queue. I have a timer loop running that does the actual saveCurrentTurnWithMatchData, pops the item off the stack if the save was successful, and then sets up a new timer to call itself again a little later. I'm using 2 second intervals which seems to be working well.
Append each new piece of data, don't overwrite. Put a sequence number on each piece of data. So, if you save seq numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4, but the recipient only receives a notice for #4, the records for 1, 2 and 3 are there in the match object. The recipient needs to track the last record it read, and then iterate through any new records from that point when it receives an updated matchData.
I also use the queue's NSArray writeToFile: function to maintain a list of the pending saves. If the user exits the game before the queue is flushed, I reload the queue NSArray from disk at the next startup
Note that even with this mechanism, the notifications to the recipient are erratic. Generally speaking, they arrive in batches of 4+. Then nothing happens until 3 or 4 more saves happen, which again all show up together. Making 1 save and letting the game sit for 10 minutes will probably never generate a notice on the recipient's machine. But, if you save 4 or 6 times in a row, all of them tend to show up in a burst.
Sometimes, the notifications just stop for a few hours. Not sure if this a sandbox flaw or a game-center-in-general flaw. There are no failures of any kind, the messages just stop working for a while. Sometimes, the next morning, they show up in a burst. Sometimes not. In the end, I've stopped relying on the notifications. I set up another timer loop to continuously download the match. It checks if it has become my turn or not, it checks if new updates have been added to the matchData. Then calls player:receivedTurnEventForMatch:didBecomeActive. As far a receivedTurnEventForMatch: knows, it was launched because of an event and it merrily goes on about its business.
It does seem that saving the match is pretty prompt. If you don't get an error, it seems pretty certain that the updated match is immediately available for other players to consume... they just need to know to consume it. The messaging framework, though, has to be viewed as completely unreliable and non-guaranteed. Hence, the timer loop to continuously poll the match.
Edit: arguably, once I implemented #2, #1 shouldn't really matter. Any notification received by the recipient will trigger reading all new records in the data. But, this "hardening" has evolved over the past few months as I wrestle with Game Center's shortcomings. I just haven't gotten around to removing #1.
this is my first time posting so if I make a mistake correct me please!
I am currently brain-storming an app, and as I have been researching part of it on here, and other places I have come to a bit of a snag. I want the app to be able to access the call timer on a iPhone (as in, it will be able to track how long you are in a call) and then store this information. As of 2011 it seems that this was either not possible, or you had to use something called CoreTelephony. I however could not find any recent material on this, so I was wondering if anything has changed in recent years.
Thanks in advance for any help!
If your trying to count/show how long someone has spent on the phone from the iphone usage data you cannont, If you are trying to show how long someone has been on the phone in your app using your phone/voip or what ever you use then you can use NSTimer