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Boot Hill Heroes on PSM May Crash in Swellsville, for Some People, Sometimes

Categories: Uncategorized
Comments: 11 Comments
Published on: April 5, 2014

UPDATE:  If you still experience this problem after downloading version 1.03, please let me know.

 
It’s the bane of any coder, an error that occurs without consistently and without cause. One that can’t be recreated and know conditions can be identified. I can’t tell you how disheartening it is.

I’ve been struggling with out-of-memory exceptions during development, trying to understand the pattern PSM uses memory and the conditions that cause it to run out. See PSM runs on a virtual machine, an emulator which runs on the operating system. I believe this to be the reason for much of the randomness to it. I wasn’t able to establish a consistent pattern so I instead reduced the use of memory by a significant amount. This kept the game from crashing for me for several play-throughs. I fixed it… or so I thought.

Now my old friend out-of-memory exception is back and is making this game a frustrating experience for some users. Of course it doesn’t matter how unfairly random it is for me. It’s my job to fix it. People paid for a product and it’s ridiculous that it doesn’t work. If I was on the other end of this I would be furious at the developer. But I’m the developer and I can only beg for mercy!

I’m looking into the matter now and will find a way to address it by the next update (not the next update which fixes the slowdown issue but the one after that). If no solution is found, then I have a backup plan – gut Swellsville. Reduce the town size so that it is less likely to cause an out-of-memory exception. That’s how I fixed it before but perhaps I did not go far enough. Of course, I’d hate have to change a significant part of the game like that, so I hope there is an alternative solution. Since I have to wait for the next update cycle before I can submit a new build, I have time to find one.

Did your game crash in Swellsville? Please let me know if it did or did not.

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11 Comments
  1. Andrew Bueno says:

    Yes sir, I bought Boot Hill Heroes on vita last night. Before I got to Swellsville I had only one non game-breaking bug occur frequently. This bug occurred after battles, the background music would either not play or would loop the first 5-8 secs of the track. I did not pay this any mind, because it wasn’t that annoying. When I got to Swellsville though I ran into insane amounts of lag (what I would call it), everything is in slow motion in Swellsville. I went into the saloon to see if there was a change and it was worse, my character would walk like he was transporting from place to place. Fun game so far, hope its fixed so I dont have to put it down.

    • Dave Welch says:

      The music bug you describe has me baffled. No one else has reported anything like that. Are you saying it occurs after every battle or just some battles? Do you remember which ones.

      The lag is due to an awful mistake on my part and will be fixed as soon as the review team releases the update. I discuss that here if you missed it: https://www.experimentalgamer.com/oops-psm-boot-hill-heroes-bug-fix/

      • Andrew Bueno says:

        Sure, the music problem only occured in the fights that took place before I got to Swellsville. The area it happened most was the area where you fight the brown chickens, and those chickens were the enemies that mainly triggered this occurence. To fix the sound looping/no music, I would have to enter into another battle. Also, thanks for taking the time to work on a patch man!

  2. Oscar Villarreal says:

    This game is unplayable for me; it keeps crashing in the loading screen after the opening scene. I’m not sure which version of the game I’m running, but I bought it on the day of release and redownloaded today from PSN to make sure I have the latest version.

    This is on a WiFi Vita with system version 3.12 and a 64gb memory card, if that helps narrowing down a test case.

    • Dave Welch says:

      Yeah that seems to be the case with a lot of people. The game is loading Swellsville during that introduction which ends up crashing for a lot of people (but not everybody). Thanks for the info.

  3. Oscar Villarreal says:

    Sorry if I missed an update, but you guys are still working on a patch, right?

    • Dave says:

      Yeah, the patch which will hopefully fix it has been waiting to go up in the store for a few weeks now. I feel like it will be up any day at least.

  4. Todd Brownlie (Tinlunchbox) says:

    Yeah, it crashes immediately after I pick up Rosie and we head south one screen. It’s made the game virtually unplayable 🙁

    • Dave Welch says:

      This issue that was thought to be resolved in May has somehow been resurfacing as of late. I’m back to looking into exactly what is causing the problem. Some users have had success in re-downloading and installing the game, but not always. I’ll keep everyone updated when I have a solution ready.

      • Todd Brownlie (Tinlunchbox) says:

        Just wondering if any positive updates have come about. I’m still dying to give this game a good go, especially since I spent the full amount on it, which frustrates me most, since it’s a PS Mobile game. Still having the same game breaking bug at teh same spot.

        • Dave Welch says:

          Nothing yet. It’s a slow process as there is a lot of back and forth between me and PSM mods who are helping me try to figure out why this issue still affects some people If you haven’t already, try updating to the latest version.

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