Help - App Card duplication / overwriting

Exactly the same thing has happened to me no less than a dozen times. One time, one of my cards was replaced with an editable version of @richardfu 's "Hellhound" level. This has happened to me on 2 separate devices and after 3 reinstalls total.

 

My debugging experience extended to BASIC, C++ and assembly language... and that was 35 years ago, so no.

 

Thanks for reporting! I've added this to my list of bugs I currently don't know how to reproduce.

Yes, levels are stored as binary files that are typically a few hundred bytes. (In comparison, a card image is typically hundreds of thousands of bytes). Each file is named using a UNIX time stamp, with millisecond resolution, and a prefix that determines which menu page spread the level belongs to. These file names are cached into memory, sorted, and used to generate cards on-the-fly.

Evidently there's a (hopefully rare) bug somewhere.

 

@Martin Magni
Hi Martin, Thank you soooo much for your fantastic work. Your app is actually my favorite.

May be it has something to do with... (really, I've got no idea about that)
... using apps which kill active programs or clean cache? Sometimes l use Avast Cleanup and Taskmanager together during work in mekorama.

 

Spoiler: screenshot

@Martin Magni
Thanks for your reply! This is everything I know about the bug.

It always is the last card on the "Make Level" screen. I don't think it has ever happened on the left side, always the right side. Not 100% on that though.

It seems to prefer to replace it with the level up 3 rows and over 1 column. (See screenshot) I know the green ones don't match currently, but "Elevate" (Bottom one) was replaced with "5x5x16" (Top one) at one point. I just rebuilt it. However, it doesn't always happen this way. Like I said earlier, one of my levels was replaced by a level from a different screen once.

It has happened to me on two separate devices, both LG, but @chuckthulu had it happen on a Samsung. Has anyone had it happen on iOS?

 

Yes, I think the pattern is right. It has happened only once to me so I haven't noticed anything else about the bug but the position of the cards seems right like when it replaced mine.

 

If this is true we should always have an unimportant or empty levelcard at last place.

 

I'd say that if it's happening often and it follows this pattern then you may want to have a placeholder card in that spot and continue working on the next card of the left column, I also think that if you had 2 or 3 more blank cards after the one you're working on it may prevent the bug, but since this is all speculation I guess it will all be trial and error...

 

That's not a bad guess. Even if you don't use some cleanup service, Android will kill and restart apps by itself. Correctly recovering from this can be... challenging.

 

I've been trying to recreate the bug all day and got it to happen only once. I was just punching random buttons when it happened so I'm not sure of the exact sequence of events, but i know i was in the level card (not sure if i was in edit or play mode) and locked my phone. I unlocked it, then returned to the "make level" page. Then i "minimized" the level to show the entire "make level" page. As the card was shrinking into its slot, it "refreshed" just like it always does, but that is when the switch happened. It replaced the card with the one 4 rows up (not 3 this time) and 1 column over.

I know there are lots of variables in there, but thats as specific as i cam get it right now. Thanks!

 

Speaking of which, and maybe this is a question for a new thread, but is there any way of backing up the levels you've made or downloaded?

 

Hi, today I encountered a unique bug in the Level Creation Section (but "Disappointing"). I had nearly completed making a new level when I had to go out, so I paused and locked the screen as it is. And when I returned the level was nowhere to be found in my level creation section . After scrolling up and down the section (Though I was sure it was the last card, as it was a newly created ) I still couldn't find the level . I thought maybe in a hurry I had deleted the level :mad: (which is Highly Improbable), than I noticed something different at my last card. The last card was the same as the card that I had created few days earlier . It even replicated the name of the level . And I am very sure that I would not have created the same level in two different cards as there is no purpose to do so . So now I am left with a duplicate card (which has no purpose) :mad: and the level that I nearly completed, just vanish in thin air . The most saddest part of it all is that my "College Project" is gonna start and due to that I won't be able to spend any time in this , so I wanted that level to be a sort of last level before I take a break of 3 to 4 months . But even that had to be taken away. Oh well lets just take it as a story of "The Fox & the Grapes" and move on I guess.

I however would like to know if anyone has ever faced similar bug. If so have you found any solution for the same.

Following is the image of the duplicated card:

 

My mekorama experience became sour.

This happened twice now:

When I am creating a level and go back to the menu page of the own creations, my level card suddenly becomes a copy of another own created level. This is permanent and has suddenly deleted lots of work in progress.

Someone who also has this error sometimes?

 

This happened to me twice. I am always afraid of it when I am about to finish a large level... I guess that's what happens when you answer "no" too many times when asked to support the developper

 

This bug happened to me too with version 1.1 on android 5.0.
I accidentally got out of a level I was creating, after the level solved itself in a way I wasn't expecting (at the moment of being stamped with the check mark the level card was even black)
I think at that point I touched another card, in the top left corner, with a similarl results as the screenshot above.

EDIT:Forgot to say this bug cloned the card overwriting on the level I was creating!!

 

Some update on this bug.

It happened accidentally to me today and I was since able to reproduce it 3 times. From reading the whole thread there seems to be several ways to generate the glitch but I may have found one relatively easily reproductible one. I use a Sony Xperia M2 on Android 5.1.1.



In this technique, you need to select a card, and somehow manage to start the level AND minimize the app at the same time. To do so, the handiest way (on my phone anyway) is to press and hold the "Play" button until it's highlighted, and without raising the finger, swipe the top or bottom of the screen with another finger to display the "minimize" icon, then release the "Play" button and immediately press the "minimize" icon. Once you go back to the app, a level had been duplicated.

After several successful attempts, I can say that it can happen on any card from either the left or right row, and that the duplicated level seems to be chosen completely randomly (you can see there is no pattern on the picture above).

I hope that works on other devices/OSes as well.