My mistake. Didn't know you guys had read apples ios code, and were so knowledgeable on how efficient the ios memory management process is. You sound so sure that's the case.. Anyway, if anyone here has any crash problems, go ahead and open every single app you have on your idevice. See if that reduces the number of events.
This game rocks. Runs like a champ on iPad 3. The only thing missing from the PS3 version is the option to customize soldier armor style and coloring, which is vital to identify class and officer status on the battlefield. Guess I'll have to do that with hair color for now.
Here's some basics from apple for how devs are supposed manage memory usage. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iphone/conceptual/iphoneosprogrammingguide/PerformanceTuning/PerformanceTuning.html I've developed OS's for embedded systems before, OS's very similar under the surface as iOS (which is a derivative of BSD... Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29 which is a derivative of Unix Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution ). But dig through the filesystem on an iDevice sometime and you'll find iOS uses icon cache files for the interface. That's why in the past people experienced white icons when the cache gets corrupted. It's not polling the entire applications folder and pulling icons on the fly every time you do something. Imagine how slow that would be for people with a lot of apps. Instead it populates a cache file and loads that into memory so the interface can be fast. For more on too many apps, try this person that had over 1200 apps and their device wouldn't even boot or load apps without a system restore. After deleting some apps they notice the issues start to go away despite having over 1gb of free storage to begin with. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4384437 I would have loved to see how massive their appicon cache had become. iOS does a solid job of clearing the memory out when required, but it isn't a coincidence that every nearly every single person with some kind of issue with this hardware intensive game that did a reboot on their iDevice suddenly found the game working better. But I ENCOURAGE everyone that just believes that iOS does this perfectly to go under the hood of iOS in YOUR device. Don't take my word for it. Go to your "SETTINGS" then "GENERAL" .. then "ABOUT"... then scroll to the bottom and select "DIAGNOSTICS & USAGE" and within that choose "DIAGNOSTIC & USAGE DATA". Entries are alphabetical so Scroll down to the "LowMemory" warnings and look at some of the data there. Note too that the kernel name is "Darwin"... just so you can see the Wiki links above weren't just put there for convenience. Now go through the LowMemory warnings and notice that sometimes there are Purgeable pages and sometimes Purgeable is ZERO. That's partially due to the inefficiency of what gets flagged as Purgeable and what doesn't. Scroll through the list of what was running when the LowMemory error occurred. Look for Springboard. Notice how much memory it was using. Also there's another process called "assetd". I've read on some XCode forums that this has something to do with images being pre-loaded for the OS... but they may be wrong. I just want people to see what is running in the background. FOR ME: my SpringBoard uses 5511 rpages during a crash on 5/17... but I installed a bunch of apps since then and a low memory message on 6/19 said it was using 10428 rpages for SpringBoard... at both times I was in another app that caused the low memory error. For more info on memory related stuff from Apple for devs... try this article: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Performance/Conceptual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html But no amount of techno jargon is going to change the mind of anyone that has had new big game installed only to find it crash and a reboot suddenly fixed everything. It's a proven solution to some issues.
Interesting ram and background apps discussion but nightc1 is far closer to the truth than the others. There is plenty (and by that I mean a lot) of anecdotal evidence on numerous forums and qualitative benchmark and test data on developer related (both Apple and Engine support related) sites to back him up in many areas. And they can be found with a simple enough search so not going to jam the place up with links or sources. A small bit of research will qualify what he says to be true. Now, the simplest thing, rather than getting in a sideline discussion about it, is for those that are having performance related issues, follow some of the steps nightc1 has posted and you will see an improvement. How or why doesn't really matter to most, but the steps themselves will most certainly help you out. I'm pretty sure that most who develop for, or contribute to, iOS will agree that the steps will be effective.
Rip73, I appreciate the backup there. I didn't want to derail the thread into tech jargon, just had to respond to the Q and figured I'd take the high road with information. Hopefully that satiates the minds of those that want to argue specifics over actual working solutions. ... It'll probably be a week or so before I can even consider getting this game (mega tight budget right now)... hopefully the text size on the 4S won't be as big an issue. I wonder how well this looks over HDMI? I know that defeats the purpose of portable gaming, but it's a "nice to have" option in my book.
Well it doesn't support full hmdi out meaning that it's only mirrored so the game will look worse than it should. I'm still puzzled by the lack of support for that feature especially with the UE where it is supposed to be easier to implement that.
So anyone figure out yet how to unlock Hero units? That was one my favorite parts of the PC version. Changing solider names does not seem to work
Wow thus game is hard if my whole party gets wiped should I be reloading my save? It just feels cheesy to do that and not to just continue.
You need to sign up for the my2k on the main menu down by the setting and gamecenter button. Then after you verify your account you can use the soldier names like the pc
Wait.. so is that how you unlocked the Hero units? I should clarify, i can change my solider names no problem, but the way to unlock Hero units like Sid Meier and Joe Kelly was to change the name of your soldier to that and then it would "summon a hero"
Right. Summoning the heroes will disable achievements for the remainder of that game. Or so says the email from 2K when you sign up.
Awesome! gonna try this when i get home. I had earlier just kept trying to change the names to no effect. Im glad they kept the hero units in the port, fun to play as a suped up Sid Meier!
Got my first nasty bug about 5 missions in. Had to abort due to a bomb timer running out, got all my team to the extraction point, went into abort mode, game hung with nothing to click on at all, no option but to quit, reload the game and try again. After a few failed attempts to abort the mission, I (ironically) successfully aborted. How this would work in Ironman mode, I dread to think - probably completely knacker your progress and force a restart from scratch. My fault, I suppose - if I was less rubbish I wouldn't have to abort the mission. Lesson learned, etc. Apart from that, all kinds of fun. Great game.
well i was worried with an ipad 2, no space, and a lack of money. but i needn't have been, brilliant game, and uptil now no problems at all
I have to say some people are just to negative. People are complaining about low textures, missing maps, frame rate drops, no MP, no shadows and what not. I still decided to buy this for my ipad 2 and happy I did. So what this looks better on xbox or pc a good game is not about the looks but about fun. The original xcom looks like shit by todays standerds but is still a great game. And so is this. Running perfect so far on my ipad 2. Just my 0,02 I am now gonny play me some more xcom!
