3.1 Game Crashing - Information Gathering

[Andrew]

The release of 3.1 on mobile was a big step for us. As many of you know, we are now using the same Unity codebase across all platforms. This has great long-term benefits for us as devs, and in the long-run should be better for players, as we are now able to focus on features and wont have to code them twice.

However, as 3.1 has completely shifted the codebase across to mobile, we are going to run into issues with some devices which likely didn’t have issues before. We would have liked to pick up all these issues in testing before release, but unfortunately some of these issues only show up once we release to the public.

So in order for us to try and find a pattern here what’s going on. So if you are experiencing the crashing issues, can you please let us know some information.

1. Does the game always crash at a fix point, is it random, or is there another way you can easily reproduce it?
2. When the game crashes, does it give an error or crash back to the home screen?
3. Does the game crash after resuming from a locked screen?
4. What device and OS version are you running?
5. Is your device close to full storage?
6. Is the game installed on device or on an SD card.
7. What graphics quality settings did your device default to, and what graphics settings are you running now?
8. What is the Blur Quality setting set to?
9. Have you tried enabling “Power Saving” mode to see if it helps?
10. Did you notice the game slowing down or lagging before the crash?
11. Did you play on mobile before 3.1, and did you have an issues with that?
12. Was there anything else you tried that managed to prevent the crashes from occurring?

Please note, the errors we are looking for here are errors on device, not errors that return back a message from the server (such as the “Internal error” that we can sometimes happen).

Thanks!

Update - Possible Workarounds

We’ve noticed a pattern with the crashes reported, and the devices that seem to be affected.

Random Crashes
The random crashes that occur during gameplay. We have noticed that a lot of the iOS devices reported here have 1GB RAM. We tested here on an iPad 3 (with 1GB RAM) and after a few Guild Wars battles in a row, we noticed memory warnings, followed by an eventual crash. This is when we had the Graphics Quality set to higher than “Ultra-Rare” or higher. So if you are experiencing those issues, please set the Graphics Quality to “Rare”. In this case, you shouldn’t have to set “Power Saving” mode to prevent these crashes.

On Android, if your device is 1GB of RAM or lower, we suggest you set your graphics settings to “Common” if you have been experiencing crashes.

We are aware that setting the Graphics Quality to lower is not ideal. This was one side-effect of porting our Unity code from console to mobile. One of the reasons we are changing to the new flat UI (seen in Dungeon and Soulforge) is so the game will run faster and with less memory on mobile. So when we update the UI for 3.2, most devices should be able to run at high quality graphics again.

Crashes When Resuming
Some iOS devices appear to be crashing when resuming the game from a locked screen, or after not playing for a while and attempting to restory the game. Some of these cases may be related to the Memory issues, however this problem seems like more of a bug in Unity, which unfortunately isn’t a quick fix for us. However, it seems like enabling “Power Saving” resolves this issue. If you still notice this issue occurring after enabling Power Saving, you may also want to downgrade the graphics quality settings.

[Grundulum]

Should this be “Official News”, rather than “Support”? If not for your avatar, I probably would have overlooked this thread.

[GoldPhoenix0]

Thanks, I’ve updated it to Official News so it will be more visible to everyone. The more (useful) information we get, the better!

[Jakeshi]

the game crashes at lauching , can’t access the game at all , this happened after updating to 3.1 , i’m running this game on iphone 5s ios 7.1.2 plz help need to do today’s guild war hh

[Strawnyy]

Let the team know that iPhone 6 can not handle the update.
MAny many many many crashes…
Some of us have no gotten losses for GW for the game crashes which totally isn’t fair.
Everything’s at the lowest. (graphics)
Me and my brother are just getting endless crashes.
t’s almost not even safe to play on because you’d just crash or game crashed on them
My broher has lost 2 games from this.
He actually is thinking of quitting because of these crashes.
It use to run really well…
My buddy is crashing on ipad…
We’re all getting crashes…
It’s pretty sad… Have guild mates saying it’s unplayable on iPad’s as well, and crashing on them.
It’s actually quite annoying… Some actually play on their tablets and mobile, so they can’t be safe doing anything without the game crashes which actually costs some guilds.
Everyone is saying they’ve never had this problem before this update and want to know if anyone tested alll this.

Welp i can say half my guilds not happy and it’s not even playable.
It’s not even safe to play, put it that way because you’re worried about a crash XD
That is NOT FUN

[Margola]

The game keeps crashing e every minute (yes minute) or so. It just crashed before I could play 2nd GW battle of the day, resulting in a loss. Also the troop filters aren’t working. I can search by name and that’s it. I play on iOS (iPad).

[Strawnyy]

Had a guild full of mobile players and tablet players and can’t even play on their iPads or Phones, whatever… Because simply it won’t run or just crash mid game causing frustrations.

[Alfster]

Hi, all my phone crashes have been random no error message. I have a Note 3 on Android 5.0. A couple of times yesterday GOW i got the message “the game stopped working properly” message. Sent message via reporting tool I assume these go to Google or 505 games. Game is installed on device storage. Game settings are Blur off, animation speed x1, graphics quality Ultra-Rare. Played with GQ in game settings yesterday did not help game still crashed. Been playing Gems on my smart phone for over 8 months no crashing issues before yesterday’s update. Tried power saving checked on didn’t help still crashes. I did notice that sometimes the back ground image wouldn’t load that the game did crash and even when looking at troops some of the card face images would not load then game would crash.

[Kalieri]

Does the game always crash at a fix point, is it random, or is there another way you can easily reproduce it? No, it seems to crash in any screen. So far it has crashed on me in the middle of battle (I’m afraid to start my GW battles today because of it), in the soulforge, on the main map, and in the troop select menu. (and in the options menu… see below)

When the game crashes, does it give an error or crash back to the home screen? It just goes straight back to the phone home screen. I can tab back into the game but it will crash almost immediately again.

Does the game crash after resuming from a locked screen? It seems to crash almost immediately from returning to the game from a lock screen. But I have completely closed the app, re-opened it and it has crashed within a minute without going to a lock screen.

What device and OS version are you running? iPhone 7. iOS 10.3.3

Is your device close to full storage? No, I have over 70GB of storage remaining on the device.

Is the game installed on device or on an SD card. On the Device

What graphics quality settings did your device default to, and what graphics settings are you running now? Graphics quality defaulted to Ultra Rare, and I have not changed it.

What is the Blur Quality setting set to? Off

Have you tried enabling “Power Saving” mode to see if it helps? I had not. But I just selected it… and the game crashed before I could confirm. However, then I went in did it again, confirmed the setting change, and it crashed within seconds again.

Did you notice the game slowing down or lagging before the crash? No

Did you play on mobile before 3.1, and did you have an issues with that? I only play this account on my iPhone.

Was there anything else you tried that managed to prevent the crashes from occurring? At first it seemed that if I completely closed the app and restarted it would stay open longer, but ultimately it would still crash.

[Esoxnepa]

Are people who are seeing crashes all trying to play at more then x1 speed?

I’ve noticed my HTC One M9, set to common, no blur, powersave, really struggle with x2 speed. So far it’s not crashing, but the speed setting is a question I didn’t see posed, that could overwhelm older devices.

[Akiven]

My experience so far is that on iPhone 6s not getting crashes but on iPad 2 air getting lots and lots of crashes randomly in the middle of battles with no warning signs just completely shuts down game. Using same settings on both.

[Saltypatra]

@Strawnyy please answer the 12 questions Andrew listed above. If any of your friends playing are experiencing crashes we would greatly appreciate them taking the time to do so as well. The more information we can get (and as quickly as possible!) the faster we can sort out this issue for everyone involved.

[Amadan]

Does the game always crash at a fix point, is it random, or is there another way you can easily reproduce it?

• Random, after a few matches. It’s “consistently random”, though: I’ll always crash, randomly, mid-match, after a few matches.

When the game crashes, does it give an error or crash back to the home screen?

• No error, just back to home screen.

Does the game crash after resuming from a locked screen?

• N/A, I don’t usually lock the device while I’m playing or have left the game up.

What device and OS version are you running?

• iPad Air MD786LL/A, iOS 10.3.3

Is your device close to full storage?

• Define “close”, I guess, but not really - 1.14 GB free.

Is the game installed on device or on an SD card.

• It’s an iPad, sooooo…

What graphics quality settings did your device default to, and what graphics settings are you running now?

• It’s at Ultra-Rare qualitty, Power Saving on, 4x speed, Blur off. Damned if I remember what it defaulted to.

What is the Blur Quality setting set to?

• Off.

Have you tried enabling “Power Saving” mode to see if it helps?

• It’s been on the whole time.

Did you notice the game slowing down or lagging before the crash?

• Not particularly.

Did you play on mobile before 3.1, and did you have an issues with that?

• Played on this device foreeeeeeeeeever and never had crash issues before.

Was there anything else you tried that managed to prevent the crashes from occurring?

• N/A; it’s still happening.

[Strawnyy]

Sorry on my phone was on my way to work, now here on my phone. But yeah, i just was playing a match quickly to just pass time, and i got a “Internal Error” as i was sent back to the pvp screen.

[HiGi]

Does the game always crash at a fix point, is it random, or is there another way you can easily reproduce it?
Only when I do pvp, but that’s basically the bulk of my activities. After about 3-10 pvp battles, happened in the middle of a match (twice), right after a match ended (once) and inbetween matches (about 4 times).

When the game crashes, does it give an error or crash back to the home screen?
The game screen went black & the game closed & forced me back to the phone home screen, no error message.

Does the game crash after resuming from a locked screen?
Haven’t tried that, I always close the game before locking because the game eats up a lot of battery.

What device and OS version are you running?
Iphone 6 plus, ios 10.3.2

Is your device close to full storage?
Yes, I might try to update my phone and get back that space taken up by the new os to see if anything improves.

Is the game installed on device or on an SD card.
Device.

What graphics quality settings did your device default to, and what graphics settings are you running now?
Defaulted to ultra rare, which I kept using. 4x speed.

What is the Blur Quality setting set to?
Off.

Have you tried enabling “Power Saving” mode to see if it helps?
Did that just now but I haven’t played enough yet since I’m afraid of crashing.

Did you notice the game slowing down or lagging before the crash?
Both times when it crashed mid-game it was lagging really badly. I’m also using 4x speed. Not sure about the other crashes but IIRC it wasn’t lagging those times.

Did you play on mobile before 3.1, and did you have an issues with that?
Yeah for a long time and never anything like this.

Was there anything else you tried that managed to prevent the crashes from occurring?
Lowered quality to rare & enabled power saving but like I said I haven’t played enough yet.

Update: after doing the above the game “only” crashed twice, after a fair amount of pvp, while I was scrolling through the battle log of all things.

[Strat]

I know its not possible for everyone. But considering how frequently the game is crashing for some users if you have a second device use it to make a video of your Gems gameplay beginning with the OS version at the start of the clip (or just type that info in).

Videos always assisted the developers with console problems in the past. This way they will be able to see exactly where/what is occurring at the time of the crash.

[Namour]

Happening in the troop selection menu screen, having already filtered on a troop name.
No such issues prior to 3.1
Have 30+ GB of spare device capacity
It is not stored on a sim, it’s from AppStore.
iOS version 10.3.2
Has occurred on both 4x and 1x
Blur quality is off
Power Saving is on

[polyester]

iphone 6+, iOS 10.2. Lots of instant crashes to home screen.

Did some experimenting: If the game is active when I lock my phone, it instantly crashes upon unlocking it every single time. But if I exit to the home screen (leaving it running in the background), I can lock and unlock my phone and it won’t crash.

Fixes:

Power Save mode Off = crashing. Power Save mode On = no crashing.
Minimize game before locking phone = no crash. Lock w/ game in foreground = crash.

No effect:

Graphics quality
Blur settings

Question answers:

1-4: See above.

5. 6GB free of 64, so roughly 90% full

6. Installed on the phone

7. Defaulted to Ultra Rare, I bumped it up to Epic. Tried lowering it all the way, it crashes on every graphics setting.

8. Blur defaulted to Off. Currently it’s off. Crashes on all settings.

9. Power Save Mode fixes the issue.

10. No slowdown noticed.

11. Played on mobile for a long time; this behavior is definitely brand new with the update.

12. Just Power Save Mode.

[RiverSong]

I play on iPad Air, iOS 10.3.3. The only crashes I have experienced have been either in the middle or end of pvp battles. Graphics are on Ultra-Rare, speed 1. If I remember to go in and change the power setting, it doesn’t crash, but I have to turn the power setting off and turn it back on every time I load the game, otherwise it will crash.

[Sunny]

1. Random
2. Always crashes to home screen
3. Always unlocked while running the app
4. iPad mini, iOS 10.3.3
5. Over 5G free; it’s rather a memory issue than storage
6. Device
7. Legendary at first, now common; frequent crashes at all settings except common. So far it didn’t crash on lowest res but looks terrible.
   Power Saving was on all the time
8. Off
9. See #7
10. No
11. 'Yes’and ‘No, never’
12. Avoid running it with other apps open

In its current state the iOS app is only playable on lowest graphics setting to not risk random crashes/losses. Graphics look really bad and I’m not happy right now

On the bright side most things are loading faster now, especially troop screens. That’s probably due to caching that wasn’t there before but could also be the reason for excessive memory usage.