Buy/Sell Playability Issue

[Damaso]

My apologies if this has been addressed in the past - many topics titled "Bug!" do not help when searching...

I recently purchased the game after hearing the rave reviews and frequency of updates. I've noticed a very frustrating feature, or bug, that occurs far too frequently to make playing very enjoyable.

Say I pull into an Urban area and head to the exchange to buy more water, luxury, and sell some electronics. If I choose to buy 20 water, then to buy 10 luxury, the water selection disappears and I only end up buying the luxury. This is especially a nuisance after battles when you need to repair a whole bunch of things and only the very last selection is performed. This seems to occur whenever something needs to be "purchased". Oftentimes I end up thinking I bought a hold full of water only to find out, 10 spaces away from a water-selling planet, that I really only bought 2 units of luxury

[Damaso]

Actually this seems to be an issue with all changes in stats...going to a spice hall to recruit and then to pick up some contracts, I've left port with only 1 crewmember in two, yet I recruited ~20. What the heck! Same at the palace - I'd purchase new ranks, only to leave and find them NOT purchased...

[Cory Trese]

I play this game every single day, as the author and owner it is really the only Android game I play regularly.

I play it on many devices and speak with a lot of players on a daily basis. This issue is isolated to your phone or configuration.

A few questions:

- How many task killers are you running?
- How many of the task killers you are running are set to kill foreground task?
- What Android OS are you using?
- What device?

Any other information about the task killer would be great

[Cory Trese]

I did some testing -- I wasn't able to recreate it any other way than setting up a task killer to close all open processes every few seconds. it is also possible that there is something very wrong with the game's install. if you can share what market you acquired it from that would help (Amazon, GetJar, Android Market)

[Cory Trese]

Also:

If you feel that this qualifies you for a refund, please e-mail me at [e-mail] with your name or order number and I will process a prompt refund for the full purchase price of the Elite edition.

Thanks,

Cory

[Damaso]

Thanks for the quick response! I would definitely NOT like a refund - I really would like to get the game working as it is quite fun (despite the repetitive buy->back->buy->back)

I am using a Samsung Fascinate w/ 2.1 Android OS (non-froyo). Homescreen app is LauncherPro Plus v0.8.5 - has a built in memory management system, although im not sure how much this would affect ST...

[Cory Trese]

Star Traders, as an application with no permissions, services or internet connections can only store the game data locally. In most cases, the game stores the data in the saved game database or in the in-memory game cache.

When Android OS reclaims a process (or is told to reclaim a process by another application) some progress may be lost.

There are several threads on the forum about the uses (I consider it cheating) of Task Killers to manipulate Trade, Combat and Economic simulations.

I'm a little confused by "buy->back->buy->back"

If you are pressing the "Back Button" to Confirm a Trade, you're misunderstanding the trade window. You must press "Confirm" to complete the trade and store it to the database.

[Damaso]

Say i wanted to buy 5 of both W-F and luxury rations. I would have to hit "water fuel", then set the amount, then hit Complete Transaction. If i proceeded to attempt to buy the luxury rations at this point, the water-fuel value would be reset. I must hit the "back" button to leave the shop, then enter back in and buy the luxury rations as a separate transaction.

[Cory Trese]

That description tells me that there is something wrong with the phone or the phone's database (Android OS provided) features.

Because ST RPG uses the standard Android OS database driver, no permissions and Android 1.6 SDK only, it is a very simple application. However, it is also very susceptible to data loss due to Task Killers.

I have looked at what type of performance hit would be incurred by armoring all the access hooks and I think the penalty would just be too severe.

Fortunately for me hundreds of thousands of players on the Free edition are able to run it on there phone's configuration (with and without Task Killers) without having these problems. There are a small sub-set of phones, ROMS and Android Task Killer configurations (ATK is what I used to recreate) that can cause the game to go haywire.

Unfortunately, their is very little I can do. My normal customer service response is to provide a refund and/or suggest that the customer continue their adventure in the free edition. However, because the free edition uses the same Google provided Android OS database the differences between the editions will not help you.

One suggestion (although far from perfect) would be to try out the Star Traders RPG Mini edition, which while not as current, does use considerably less memory outside of the database object. You may find that your task killer setup ignores Mini due to the small footprint.

Good luck,

Cory

[Cory Trese]

As the owner of Star Traders RPG, I need to play and test the game a LOT and on many different phones. When these reports come in, I try it by hand in 6 different versions of Star Traders (RPG, Elite, Amazon RPG, Amazon Elite, GetJar, Mini) on 4 different phones.

I was not able to recreate the issue without special task killer configurations. I am testing using Samsung, Google, HTC and Motorola hardware.

I also have an automated test system which runs on my computer in an Android emulator. After doing the manual testing I ran a repeatability test to confirm that the trade database does update reliably. I let it run for a few hours and it completed 19,000 trades with 2 trade database errors, both of which were caused by out of memory errors.

If you are seeing a "Force Close" or "Application Not Responding" dialog between your Water Fuel and Luxury Rations trades, then you are having the out of memory error that does cause the trade to be lost!

Are you getting an error message?

[Damaso]

I agree that it is definitely an error on my side. It befuddles me as well, since I do not see any error messages or memory messages or force closes. I will try to troubleshoot the issue on my end - starting by disabling the launcher app and working down from there.

I do notice that when I play on fullscreen mode, upon switching screens (ie going from the Urban screen to, say, Exchange), the android menu bar comes down/appears briefly before a re-load/render. Has anyone noticed this before?

[Cory Trese]

Damaso:

Sadly this is a known bug:
code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3674

Some discussions:
stackoverflow.com/questions/2965125/problem-with-notification-bar-in-fullscreen-app

[Damaso]

So, my phone just got the Froyo update (woohoo!) and i thought it would change things. And it did, sort of.

So, if I, say, buy 1 spice, 1 WF, the former action seems to be replaced by the latter. However, when I hit back to go to the main Urban screen, all the transactions have been recorded (as normal). Any idea as to what could be causing this?