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iPad Feature Request - No autoload portfolio upon app startup

K

Kizan

Well-known member
I've been using HL on the iPad for as long as there has been an HL iPad app. I converted all five of my licenses to be used on my iPads. My group uses iPad HL exclusively and for the most part enjoys it.

However, we have a request for a feature. We have noticed that when the iOS-HL starts it tries to open the previous portfolio. We'd like to ask for an option to turn that functionality off.

Two bad things can happen with this functionality on by default. First, Player1 grabs a random iPad from the stack and opens their portfolio from the Dropbox list and start playing. Player2 grabs the iPad that Player1 used the last time we play starts the app. This will auto-open Player1's PC and then will wreak havoc on Dropbox with "Conflicted Files" and soon there are six copies of someone's PC (five of which are conflicted... sounds kinda emo to me). And the player won't know which of the six files the leveled their PC up on as they may have opened/edited a conflicted file unknowingly. At some point the owner of the Dropbox share has to go in and clean up. Hoping they didn't delete the players portfolio.

Second, users starts the app and picks a portfolio, but the portfolio is too complex or corrupted or the iPad doesn't have the memory to load it.... the app crashes. No big deal just restart it the HL app, but wait the app will try to reload the bogus portfolio! And crash again. This will happen again and again. A few times I've seen the app pull out of this death spiral. More often I have to delete the app from the iPad, reinstall and reconnect to Dropbox. This process takes at least 10 mins and is a pain in the butt!

And there's no way to stop the user from doing it again. As you never know when that "next" level of fighter will put the PC over the edge into "this portfolio is too big for this iPad". We know that the more complicated (i.e. more classes and more levels) a PC has the harder the app works. My wife plays a Summoner [Unchained] and having her and her eidolon in the same portfolio will make the app crash about 50% of the time on the newest model of iPad. Either while loading (the load spiral of death) or while editing either the PC or the Eidolon. The fastest way to force an app crash is to switch between PC's in the same portfolio.

Help? Can there be an option to NOT load the previously loaded portfolio upon HL first start. It's that first time startup (usually after a crash or reboot) where the option would be most useful.

Thanks,

Kizan
 
Kizan said:
And there's no way to stop the user from doing it again. As you never know when that "next" level of fighter will put the PC over the edge into "this portfolio is too big for this iPad". We know that the more complicated (i.e. more classes and more levels) a PC has the harder the app works. My wife plays a Summoner [Unchained] and having her and her eidolon in the same portfolio will make the app crash about 50% of the time on the newest model of iPad. Either while loading (the load spiral of death) or while editing either the PC or the Eidolon. The fastest way to force an app crash is to switch between PC's in the same portfolio.
Click to expand...
Have you been reporting these issues to LW? The last few versions of the app have made it ultra stable for my group and we have crazy characters and loading a huge extra data package for my houserules.

One of the group has a .por file with 4 characters in it and its been much more stable. My point being if you see these issues I would ask you file a support ticket and provide the steps and information for LW to duplicate the issue. :)

Its the only way its going to get fixed.

As for you reload of the character I think if you force close the app it won't try and reopen the last portfolio again. "I think".
 
ShadowChemosh,

I would happily fill out a support ticket. I looked around the forum and didn't see official looking way to do that. I saw others had posted support/feature request type stuff on this forum so that's why I posted it here. Is there a sticky post or instructions somewhere that I could read for how to fill out a support ticket?

I have been religiously updating the app and data files on all the iPads each week. So I'm VERY sure we are all on the same version and all up to the latest version.

Force closing the HL app doesn't reliably fix the "auto-reload death spiral" problem.

Thanks,

Kizan
 
Kizan said:
I would happily fill out a support ticket. I looked around the forum and didn't see official looking way to do that. I saw others had posted support/feature request type stuff on this forum so that's why I posted it here. Is there a sticky post or instructions somewhere that I could read for how to fill out a support ticket?
Click to expand...

On the iPad, at the bottom right of the screen where you select a character, click "Get Help", and then choose "Report a Bug".
 
Is there an option to NOT fillout the support request on the iPad? It's much easier to type these things on a normal PC. Maybe it needs to collect data from the iPad or something?

Thanks,

Kizan
 
It's not a major thing to move bugs around - the auto-sorting in our bug tracker isn't perfect, so this week, from the shadowrun inbox, I've already moved two pathfinder and two realm works bugs into the correct folders.

Just give us a title that clearly indicates where it belongs.

P.S. Using the Pathfinder bug reporting form in this forum (http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=24976) automatically puts a "Pathfinder Bug Report:" at the beginning of the title, which helps us identify what system someone's talking about. Same for the Shadowrun and M&M reporting forms. Of course the auto-sorting feature hasn't quite recognized that as a pattern, so some of the ones that came in through the proper forms will still get mis-placed. Using the link in the iPad puts an iPad specific identifier in the title.
 
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Mathias said:
It's not a major thing to move bugs around - the auto-sorting in our bug tracker isn't perfect, so this week, from the shadowrun inbox, I've already moved two pathfinder and two realm works bugs into the correct folders.

Just give us a title that clearly indicates where it belongs.
Click to expand...
Ok good to know. So go nuts using the Pathfinder support ticket section then. :)

Then just wait for the email response saying your ticket has been created and do a "reply" to attach a .por file or images or other helpful files to the ticket.
 
ShadowChemosh said:
Ok good to know. So go nuts using the Pathfinder support ticket section then. :)

Then just wait for the email response saying your ticket has been created and do a "reply" to attach a .por file or images or other helpful files to the ticket.
Click to expand...

Actually, you can speed this up - when you get the auto-reply saying your message reached our bug tracking system, if you reply to that with the .por file attached, it will be added to the case, even before we open the case.
 
Mathias said:
Actually, you can speed this up - when you get the auto-reply saying your message reached our bug tracking system, if you reply to that with the .por file attached, it will be added to the case, even before we open the case.
Click to expand...
Yep. Different wording but pretty sure we mean the same thing. The ticket you get from the system that has a subject line of "(Case XXXXXX) Pathfinder bug report: "
 
I've had this problem with many, many .por files in the past years. Which one should I send?


Edit: I have replied to the ticket and attached the group of .por files my players are currently using.

Kizan
 
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While I don't have the death spiral effect to report, I do wish the auto-load last portfolio would be turned off, or set up to be an optional function.

The problem I run in to is sometimes HL crashes. Usually from a memory issue with my older ipad. Regardless of why it crashes, when I restart, it auto-loads. Portfolios usually can take a minute or three to load for me. Sometimes I don't want to go back into that portfolio and just want to get into HL itself, but I have to wait for the reload and then back out.

It just gets old waiting so long for the portfolio to reload when I don't want it to.
 
Lonewolf147 said:
While I don't have the death spiral effect to report, I do wish the auto-load last portfolio would be turned off, or set up to be an optional function.

The problem I run in to is sometimes HL crashes. Usually from a memory issue with my older ipad. Regardless of why it crashes, when I restart, it auto-loads. Portfolios usually can take a minute or three to load for me. Sometimes I don't want to go back into that portfolio and just want to get into HL itself, but I have to wait for the reload and then back out.

It just gets old waiting so long for the portfolio to reload when I don't want it to.
Click to expand...
If you force close the app after the crash it won't reload the same .por file.
 
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