Gamecenter integration?

[sa_gibson]

The Game Center integration seems fragile in some way. The game takes a long time at launch to log in to Game Center, and seems to lose that connection all the time. The game often doesn't register new turns by online opponents and doesn't seem to reconnect to GC when it had lost that connection. Often I have to go to GC, find the games with new turns available, and re-enter the game that way. Often this procedure has to be repeated several times before it works.

Are others seeing this? Is it a problem with DOM or with GC? Note that I don't see it happen with other games.

[boone737]

I'm seeing the same thing. It's a bit maddening.

[daviddunham]

I see much slower Game Center authentication in iOS 7 in any game.

[thedudeabidez]

I agree, iOS 7 sucks.

[sa-oas]

Yes, I see the same thing with DOM. Often I'll get a notice that my opponent moved, but when I check the list on the "choose" page, it shows that move occurred an hour ago. It makes it difficult to have interactive online games.

[sa_gibson]

Has anyone found a reliable way to force DOM to reconnect to Game Center? It really is quite maddening to try 5 or 10 times to force a turn update and still not get it.

[BradTSS]

Can you explain more about this problem? Not sure I understand you.

[s_nkarp]

Has anyone found a reliable way to force DOM to reconnect to Game Center? It really is quite maddening to try 5 or 10 times to force a turn update and still not get it.

If you have a good connection, you can always see any waiting turns by going to the main menu->Play->Choose. Never seen that fail.

[sa_gibson]

Often I'll see a flag on GC that there's a move update but no corresponding flag on DOM. Launching DOM does not force a reconnect to GC so the move still doesn't register. If you exit to the main menu, you see no move update flag. If you select play, you see no move update flag. If you go through GC, select the game with a move ready from there, it launches DOM but can't load the game, claiming there's no connection with GC. Multiple tries will eventually work, but it's frustrating.

I'm playing on an iPad 2 running iOS 7.0.4 and play on a variety if networks so it is not a connection reliability problem.

[daviddunham]

Often I'll see a flag on GC that there's a move update but no corresponding flag on DOM. Launching DOM does not force a reconnect to GC so the move still doesn't register. If you exit to the main menu, you see no move update flag. If you select play, you see no move update flag. If you go through GC, select the game with a move ready from there, it launches DOM but can't load the game, claiming there's no connection with GC. Multiple tries will eventually work, but it's frustrating.

I'm playing on an iPad 2 running iOS 7.0.4 and play on a variety if networks so it is not a connection reliability problem.

In fact, launching Moscow does force a reconnect to Game Center. This however seems to be much slower to complete in iOS 7, regardless of network quality.

As for the badge on the icon: that is totally under Apple’s control. If it shows up on the Game Center app and not the Moscow app, it’s a bug but we cannot fix it. (This has never seemed completely reliable, alas.)

I know this doesn’t help you, but given we are using Game Center, those seem to be the facts.

Since we explicitly check for available matches when returning to the main menu, it may be that Game Center is failing us there. And if you pick a match from the Choose dialog, we explicitly ask Game Center for the latest version of the game. It could be we aren’t interpreting some state correctly, but we are also at the mercy of Game Center giving us the right data in a timely fashion. We can take another look at this side of things, since most of it is under our control.

[sa_gibson]

Thanks for the response. I'm sure the issue is with GC rather than DOM, and I understand you can't fix GC. I was just asking if anyone had found a good trick for working around it quickly.