Serious issue: GameSalad games running too fast on iPhone 17
CasualEvolution
Member Posts: 560
Hi everyone, and @adent42
After some time away, I recently came back to a project that is almost finished, determined to finally complete it.
I now have an iPhone 17, and when I run the game in GameSalad Viewer, it runs noticeably faster than it should, probably 2 or 3 times faster. This never happened on my previous phone, an iPhone XS, and it doesn't happen on my iPad either.
I had the idea of testing an old game I made with GameSalad many years ago ( which I still have installed on my phone, although it's no longer available on the App Store), and to my surprise, that game also runs much faster than it should on my current iPhone! (I'm talking about a launched game, not running in the viewer).
I then ran the same test with my son's iPhone 13 and GameSalad Viewer runs at the correct speed, also on my iPad and my old XS.
So I'm wondering if this could be something specific to newer iPhones. Maybe it's related to the newer 120Hz displays instead of 60Hz? If that's the case, it seems there may be something in the engine that needs to be addressed, otherwise more GameSalad games could start running incorrectly as people move to newer devices.
Has anyone else noticed this on an iPhone 17, or perhaps on other newer iPhones?
If anyone has one available, I would really appreciate it if you could test one of your GameSalad games and see if it appears to run faster than it should.
Unfortunately, this is becoming a pretty critical issue for me. I'm currently trying to finish this game, but I really can't complete development and release it knowing that it may run at the wrong speed on newer iPhones.
I'm really hoping there is a workaround, or that this is something that can be fixed in the GameSalad runtime. Any tests, ideas, or information from other users would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
Try a real build. The viewer is so old that it's likely the 120hz issue you're talking about. Unfortunately Apple isn't letting us update the viewer. Once I get the new engine out I'm gonna work on paring it back down to it's original scope and seeing if apple allows it through.
Thanks! First of all, I hadn't tried a real build simply because I was being lazy about updating all my certificates and provisioning profiles 😅. But your suggestion forced me to finally get everything up to date, which I needed to do anyway.
And it worked! The real build runs at the correct speed on my iPhone 17, so thank you!
There's just one thing I'm curious about. The old GameSalad game I mentioned, which is an actual build from 2019, does have the same speed issue on my iPhone 17. It doesn't really matter in my case since that game is no longer on the App Store, but could it be that older GameSalad builds have this issue, and that it was fixed at some point in newer builds, while the old engine in the Viewer still has it?
Just curious to understand what's happening. The important thing for me is that current builds work correctly, so I can keep moving forward with the game. Thanks again!
Yes, you hit it on the nail exactly. Older engines have the bug. I don't remember making something specific for it (I do remember fixing it for android), so I think in the course of newer SDK build it just fixed itself?
Perfect, that makes sense.
So for now the issue basically survives in the old Viewer. At least with the iPhone 17, I'll just have to stop relying on the Viewer for testing and either check things directly in the Mac editor or make a build when I need to test on the phone.
Not ideal, but definitely survivable for now haha. Thanks for confirming!