Forum Discussion
Hello!
Perhaps the developers did not see this topic
https://www.reddit.com/r/PlantsVSZombies/comments/wmw0wg/update_99_is_live_tomb_tangler_and_more/
or ignored this message from user Euphoric-Seaweed
I'll write it here on purpose so you know that there is a solution to the problem (as it is):
We are aware that the Limited Thyme Events are not showing up for some users. We have not been able to reproduce this internally, even with user IDs. If you can provide clarifying users steps (do you have multiple accounts? Do you play mostly offline? Android or iOS?), we will have a better chance to resolve this.
JFC, I need a drink...
OK, I'm back and a bit calmer. OK, let me try to explain you what is going on.
As the event progresses, information about it (amount of energy, last played level, which rewards have been claimed, timestamp of the start of the event, etc.) is recorded in the game save file (pp.dat), in an array field named tei, so that this information could be synced between linked devices. So far, so good.
The problem is that when an event ends and a new one starts, this field is not initialized. Somebody played the 31-level Circus/Carnival event? The game has recorded that you have already played level 31 and collected all the rewards. A new, 15-level event (Lawnbowl I) has started? Sorry, the game thinks that you have already done the 31 levels of it (!) and collected all the rewards, so the icon for it is not displayed.
You can't reproduce it? That's because you're playing it on a test device that you have just initialized. You need to play it on a device that has already completed a previous Thymed event!
This is very similar to the bug that was marking all Penny's Pursuit levels as completed, despite that the player had played none of them. Only the fields in the game save file are different - but again, since the game didn't initialize them when a new event started, the values from older (completed) events were taken for the current one and this information was synced between devices. I do not know if you guys have fixed that particular bug, because none of you said clearly so here, so I'm still using workarounds to avoid it. Sadly, no such workarounds for the Thymed event bug. Anyway, talk to your programmers about this one.
The proper way to fix the bug, of course, is to initialize (with zeroes) the elements of the tei field when a new event starts. As an additional check, I would add testing whether the event with the starting time recorded in any of the elements has already ended and, if it has, wipe the fields of that element with zeroes. Really, guys, this is trivial stuff; I would expect to explain this to a 1st-year computer science student; not to a software company...
Anyway, if any of my explanations are unclear and your programmers still can't figure out what is going on, feel free to contact me privately and we'll try to think up of something. One big problem for such communication is that because of the peculiarities of my profession, my anonymity needs to be preserved, so I can't send you an export of a virtual machine with an Android emulator and the game installed that demonstrates the bug - because my identity will be visible from the Google services on it. But we could try to think up of some alternative, if there is a will.
Of course I would like to see the response of the developers on this forum. But this seems unlikely. It seems to me that this forum is not interesting to them. From the word "absolutely".
This is terrible.
Yeah, I saw both of those posts on Reddit as well - if we’re able to connect the dots, not sure why they can’t. I also replied to the PopCap Reddit account that posted the no-update update on this issue, gave them the problem ticket I opened and the additional info they requested in the post.
EA Support actually had the nerve to email me this morning to ask if this was still an issue or if they could close the ticket. I replied with the post from their Reddit account where they acknowledged that it was still an issue and asked why they were asking. No response.