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Downloaded and installed this app today onto my Playbook. All was well until my Playbook froze. I tried to close the game by swiping etc but nothing worked. Eventually i had to do a hard reset.
The worrying thing was that my Playbook was heating up quickly until the reset, and you know how hard it is to press the buttons to reset!
ive tried the game again and it seems fine but im kinda worried now.
Anybody else experienced this? Ive contacted support, so we'll wait and see what EA have to say.
In another SimCity thread, someone mentioned it used a lot of battery power - that could explain the heat. I don't know if that usage is normal or an issue with the new app.
I experienced the same problem too last night. Hopefully it is something that will get resolved in a future update. It was a bit alarming to me when it happened. Due to the fact I had not had application cause my playbook to completely lock up.
Was your battery low at point of lock up by any chance?
I was playing for probably an hour or so, and then noticed the game play was slowing down a fair bit, getting less responsive. I saved the game and exited, and when back on the PB home screen noticed the battery was down to 8%.
Sim City does use a lot of battery, lucky I have the charging dock as I've played it for most of the day and had to put it on the dock twice!
It does heat up, its working hard! :-) My city is rock'n... :-)
My Battery wasnt low when i started playing, although by the time i had finnished it had dropped a lot. I was more annoyed about the heat from the Playbook, although i think now that probably was the heat off the battery.
I wonder why this app has more of a drain that the likes of Deadspace which has never given me any issues? :confused:
Just downloaded it...start up..bang freeze. I only had the browser running with 2 open windows and mainly text based sites. This game sure uses a lot of memory then, or not?
I never had any other applications running in the background, i dont tend to do that anyway.
When i left feedback i only left 3 stars due to the lockup but noticed that my feedback has now been removed. There must be an issue with this particular app and wonder why my feedback has been removed? :confused: I am aware that developers have the opportunity to vet the reviews but surely this defeats the prupose?
Anyhow, i do like the game...however these issues need fixed, especially on a �6 app :mad:
Lets hope EA looks on these forums.
Mine has never locked up or frozen. Weird. Played it for hours today! :-)
Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com
Sorry this happening but please in the future do not leave feedback or a review until after contacting the company and giving them a chance to fix it. It's really unfair to leave a bad review without first contacting them and giving them a chance to respond because once you leave a review you can not change it when it is fixed to leave a better review.
I'm not a developer.
My very small issue is that when creating a city and name of mayor I cant put a capitol letter!!????
I am aware that some may find leaving negative feedback a bit harsh but leaving a three star review is hardly negative in my opinion but more importantly in my view, these games/apps should be thoroughly checked before being released.
I undertsand that there are limitations on what can be checked before release but just looking at this post, tells me there is a bug of some sort within the program which needs attention and addressed asap which may or may not have been apparent before release.
One other point i would like to make regarding feedback in appworld...If a developer is aware of negative feedback then why wouldnt they themselves contact the buyer to at least acknowledge that there are aware of the feedback, have removed it and are currently investigating the issue? I feel this would be a more customer friendly approach and would put some minds at ease...and definately encourage buyers to trust the seller/developer.
As i am not a developer and so i am unaware whether or not there is this facility to contact the buyer, if not there should be.
I have emailed EA and have yet to recieve a response. I would urge everyone else coming across this fault to contact EA and make them aware of the issue.
I've noticed a large battery drain with Sim City as well but never had it freeze up. I also have the problem of unable to use capital letters but I'm sure that will be cleared up in an update as well. The only thing that is bothering me in the app is how the heck do you level terrain once you are playing the game???
Mike
I have the same issue.
I've also had the issue of the game being super slow and not rendering things but a re-boot fixed that.
Remember grasshopper, In the PlayBook's LaLaland NOTHING has to be checked before it is released, as we are part of the elite few who are the greatest beta testers in the world, PlayBook owners!... OS 2.0 time yet???
I found this annoying also. Other than that the game has worked great without freezing. Perhaps a little on the heavy side for battery usage.
I've also found the PB gets quite warm when playing Sim City, which is a bit odd considering other more graphics intensive games (ex. Let's Golf) doesn't seem to heat up as much. I've also found that once in a while the game will stutter for a moment, but so far no hanging for me.
Seems like the game could use some programming optimization.
I am a small-time developer myself and I just wanted to note that in App World the developer cannot find out who posted the review, so the developer cannot contact that customer to try to resolve the problem.
Had it freeze once but i just killed the app.. Reloaded and it had autosaved it for me :)
The battery will be eaten up, but i suggest you turn the screen brightness down.
I'm going to start a new city.. My population is all up and down all over the place..
Wasted a couple of hours playing last night... One of the better games i have seen on the playbook.. and the UI is perfect.
I played Sim City for about 2-3 hours on Monday and didn't notice it heating up and rapid battery loss but I probably wasn't paying attention because I was trying to balance my budget! Everyone wants more services but is not willing to pay for them.
Anyways, it sounds to me like the game is not optimized for the PlayBook hardware. Which makes sense considering it is a port of an iOS game. If you keep bugging EA about it hopefully they will update the app to run a little bit better.
I'm not a developer or anything but this is my experience when games get ported to another platform sloppily.
Okay, something weird just happened to my city... All the roads suddenly disappeared from a certain section of my city. Like they were clean bulldozed... Looks like some bugs in this one.
I had one lockup today as well, but mostly it works. With a large city it can start to get a bit sluggish at times.
Also of interest is that Battery Guru shows it uses 0.5W of power even when paused and the tablet is in standby! There is *no* good reason for this to occur unless they simply got lazy and didn't use the right value for the inactivePowerMode setting, or issues with the development environment (Marmalade?) prevent it.
It's a bit humorous to me, given all those ignorant claims from some people, last winter and spring, saying that Flash apps would suck so much more battery power than others. Here's likely some proof that poor programming is the cause of that, not the language used...
Love the game though!
As someone who measures power for a living (well, kind of) have yo contacted them with the power usage info?
The Game always tells me "There is not enough water, build more por water pumps", you could spend all your money in water pumps, and it stills sends that message, the developer of the game has taken so long to fix this issue.
Just purchased last week and it locked the playbook up twice so far. Had to do the hard reset via holding the power button down. Not good. It is a fun game but I am worried about the lockups. I am on PlayBook OS1 official unaltered release.