can't recommend BGii on the OS X App Store

coffeeBeans

I love this game. I've spent hundreds of hours playing it BUT...

there are bugs in this game that spoil the fun. first, I ran into the bug when working on the killing task for Bodhi which eventually required a visit to the console to allow me to continue.

and now, I'm getting crashes, usually after having fought a really difficult battle for 30 minutes to an hour. I had to battle the slaves and slavemaster in Sendai's caves 6 times before I could save my progress. those battles each lasted more than an hour! now I'm crashing while fighting Sendai herself, after fighting her again for more than an hour.

if patches/updates were made available to the OS X BGii app as promised, we'd all be happy and we could all whole-heartedly recommend the app to others on the store, but as it stands...

I could send you crash reports, but what's the point? you haven't released any patches in over 7 months in spite of your promises.

fix it guys!!!

cheers,
Gregory



Baldur's Gate II - Enhanced Edition 1.2.0
OS X 10.9.4

coffeeBeans

after copying the "Save" folder, deleting the entire BGii installation (from the /Applications folder and from the ~/Library/Containers folder) and re-installing it from scratch, BGii crashed again more than an hour into a fight with Sendai. not good!!!

crash report available if anyone is serious about finding and correcting the bug.

CrevsDaak

When the "report to apple" message appears after the crash, select all the text (cmd+a) and copy it (cmd+c), open text edit, create a new document, paste what you had copied, save it as a .txt and upload it here with the Attach a file option under the comment box.

coffeeBeans

done.

CrevsDaak

Ok, may I ask you when is that the game crashes--if it's random or whether you do something specific (e.g. double clicking a stack of item in the ground in the inventory screen, which is known to cause crashes).

Also tagging @Dee so at least one of the devs take a look at the dump

Dee

It sounds like the memory leak issue we had at release; the hot-fix never made it to the Mac App Store, which is probably why you're seeing it now.

Until the 1.3 patch for BGII:EE is released, just make sure you save your game often. Playing for shorter sessions may also help.

coffeeBeans

I save frequently, but you can't save during battle, and these battles take a very long time to win!!! I'm beginning to fear playing the game because you work so hard to win the battle and get so close only to hear everything go quiet and watch the game crash 2 seconds later.

no specific action triggers the crash, but it happens more often with the long battles.

my characters' inventories are very full, including 4 bags of potions, 1 munition belt, 4 'tardis' bags, etc. With so much inventory and long battles, there's a **lot** going on and being recorded in memory.

coffeeBeans

btw people, I've noticed repeated advice to buy a second copy of the app from the Beamdog store because it will 'be a later version' than the App Store app, but I've also seen someone say that BG2 isn't being updated yet, only BG1.

out of interest, because it's not stated anywhere that I can see, what's the version of BG2 now available from the Beamdog store?

coffeeBeans

another crash. another report. this time just after Select All characters and clicking on Sendai. the battle was almost finished!!!

GreenWarlock

Dee said:

It sounds like the memory leak issue we had at release; the hot-fix never made it to the Mac App Store, which is probably why you're seeing it now.

Until the 1.3 patch for BGII:EE is released, just make sure you save your game often. Playing for shorter sessions may also help.

OK, I said I was going away till November as forum members did not like 'entitled' Mac customers 'wanting work for free', but this is really terrible advice. The problem is, the memory leak bug corrupts saves and resets the game, so saving often is a good way to overwrite what little progress you have made. The advice to play for shorter periods is solid - although I have not made it as far as the late ToB battles to know if indeed we hit single fights that cannot be completed between save points due to the leaking bug. I made it through the original game by save-quitting ever 60-90 minutes, and avoiding the new characters other than taking just their specific missions (to avoid the infinite dialog loops elsewhere in the game).

Waiting 8 1/2 months for a patch that other platforms had within a week of release is NOT supporting a platform. Telling us to wait another unspecified interval for a later patch is definitely not supporting a platform. Looking at the progress on the BG 1.3 patch, it has been over 5 1/2 months since the start of the public beta, on a game that is starting from a much more stable state. BGII 1.3 is not yet in public beta, has much more work to do. If we had heard there were Mac App Store approval issues it would be vaguely understandable, but we have heard nothing since it was mentioned in March that BG simply forgot to send Apple the patch. Since then, Mavericks has been released, and we should expect Yosemite to launch before the 1.3 patch as well, which will doubtless add some more Mac compatibility issues to wrangle - will you hold all the other platforms up waiting for the Mac release to stabilize next time, or will we be looking at another indefinitely delayed Mac release if there turn out to be App Store issues?

What does unsupported mean? Among other things it is pointless Mac customers reporting bugs as we are running a version that is 8 1/2 months out of date; any bug report we file is meaningless due to likely interactions with existing fixed bugs (like the prevalent memory leak).

I do not begrudge BeamDog their business and their efforts for other platforms, but they are in denial if they think the Mac is a supported platform at this point. The actual deliveries are very different to their best intentions.

Dee

GreenWarlock said:

Dee said:

It sounds like the memory leak issue we had at release; the hot-fix never made it to the Mac App Store, which is probably why you're seeing it now.

Until the 1.3 patch for BGII:EE is released, just make sure you save your game often. Playing for shorter sessions may also help.

OK, I said I was going away till November as forum members did not like 'entitled' Mac customers 'wanting work for free', but this is really terrible advice. The problem is, the memory leak bug corrupts saves and resets the game, so saving often is a good way to overwrite what little progress you have made. The advice to play for shorter periods is solid - although I have not made it as far as the late ToB battles to know if indeed we hit single fights that cannot be completed between save points due to the leaking bug. I made it through the original game by save-quitting ever 60-90 minutes, and avoiding the new characters other than taking just their specific missions (to avoid the infinite dialog loops elsewhere in the game).

Yes, that's an excellent point. Shorter sessions is a better way to preserve your progress.

Waiting 8 1/2 months for a patch that other platforms had within a week of release is NOT supporting a platform. Telling us to wait another unspecified interval for a later patch is definitely not supporting a platform. Looking at the progress on the BG 1.3 patch, it has been over 5 1/2 months since the start of the public beta, on a game that is starting from a much more stable state. BGII 1.3 is not yet in public beta, has much more work to do. If we had heard there were Mac App Store approval issues it would be vaguely understandable, but we have heard nothing since it was mentioned in March that BG simply forgot to send Apple the patch. Since then, Mavericks has been released, and we should expect Yosemite to launch before the 1.3 patch as well, which will doubtless add some more Mac compatibility issues to wrangle - will you hold all the other platforms up waiting for the Mac release to stabilize next time, or will we be looking at another indefinitely delayed Mac release if there turn out to be App Store issues?

Yosemite doesn't appear to cause any issues (we have a developer build of Yosemite for testing), so I'm not worried about that.

As to the delay, at this point we're focusing on completing the patches that have already begun. When it comes time to release, I will personally make sure the patch gets submitted everywhere it needs to be, including the App Store. If the Mac version requires more work, we'll make sure that work gets done before releasing the patch.

What does unsupported mean? Among other things it is pointless Mac customers reporting bugs as we are running a version that is 8 1/2 months out of date; any bug report we file is meaningless due to likely interactions with existing fixed bugs (like the prevalent memory leak).

You can certainly report bugs like this; one of the first things we do when a bug is reported is test it on our internal build to make sure it's still an issue. As I did here, if you report something that we've since fixed, we can tell you that it will be fixed in your game's next update. That's not meaningless. (And if it is still an issue, then we have a bug report we can use to make the game better.)

I do not begrudge BeamDog their business and their efforts for other platforms, but they are in denial if they think the Mac is a supported platform at this point. The actual deliveries are very different to their best intentions.

I totally understand where you're coming from. All I can say is that it frustrates me as well, and we're doing our best to improve things.

coffeeBeans

last night, I fought the Sendai battle a fourth time. sometime after killing the second statue, there was a lull when Sendai and my characters couldn't see each other. as soon as the Killcloud dust settled, I saved, quit and relaunched. I was finally able to complete the battle

having fun now back in Watcher's Keep. there are some powerful entities in there and I've chosen to let a few of them leave when they make that possible. can't see myself beating Aesgareth for example when his team flattens an Adamantine golem in seconds!!!

cheers guys.