Cubis problem--won't quit!

[ArchiveGuest]

(This post was originally by purplequilter)
I ran Cubis on my old Palm M515 for quite some time without a problem.

I just upgraded to a Palm T|X. When I loaded Cubis, I found that the software won't relinquish control of my PDA. It just won't quit the program! The only solution I've found is doing a soft reset.

Please help!

[Kieren]

Hi purplequilter,

The T|X has been causing a few headaches along these lines recently, because unlike other recently released devices, the T|X lacks the "Home" button normally found on the status bar of the device, so normally the only exit button is the hardware key on the device itself.

This isn't a problem for most applications, but games like Cubis need to make use of the hardware buttons within the game, which unfortunately blocks the T|X's hardware home button :( As we update applications, we've been adding various alternative methods to exit applications to work around this issue, and we'll be doing the same to Cubis soon!

In the meantime however, there is another way you can quit an application without needing to resort to a soft reset! Surrounding your graffiti area you should see 4 different application icons, which can be set to any of the applications on your device for quicker access to them. I normally advise changing one of these icons to the "Home" icon, and you can change their function by pressing and holding the stylus on one of these icons. After a few seconds a menu will appear listing all the applications on your Palm (plus a few default possible actions at the top) - simply select the item named "Launcher" and you can tap this in future to exit from any application where the hardware button doesn't work!

I hope that helps, but if you have any questions please just let me know!

Warmest regards,
Kieren
Technical Support

[sidlon]

Since I upgraded to a TXa few months ago, I've noticed this problem with many games (most recently MNC).

The main problem with Kieren's advice is that Graffiti2 works best when you use the 3-paned graffiti area display, which doesn't have any icons.

There's another workaround that works though: open the Options menu and click on 'About' item. Once the About dialog is showing, you can now use the hardware buttons to switch to another program.

If you guys want to fix these old games to work with the TX, this should be fairly simple -- Give us a preference setting to have game not take control of the hard buttons. Even better, make the buttons not used by default. (most games work fine with the stylus anyway)

I should note... currently MNC lets me set those buttons to not do anything, but even then it still doesn't pass those signals to the OS. Sudoku used to do the same thing until the most recent update.

[Roland]

Since I upgraded to a TXa few months ago, I've noticed this problem with many games (most recently MNC).

The main problem with Kieren's advice is that Graffiti2 works best when you use the 3-paned graffiti area display, which doesn't have any icons.


There's another workaround that works though: open the Options menu and click on 'About' item. Once the About dialog is showing, you can now use the hardware buttons to switch to another program.al one doesn't work!


Thanks! That's a very useful alternative workaround if my original doesn't work for any reason!

[quote]
I should note... currently MNC lets me set those buttons to not do anything, but even then it still doesn't pass those signals to the OS. Sudoku used to do the same thing until the most recent update.


Currently, Mars Needs Cows still uses the "older" version of our control system which predated the release of Mars Needs of devices like the T|X by quite some time, while Sudoku was recently updated with a newer system which was adapted to be more friendly to those devices like the T|X. Since this updated control system is something common to our game libraries, whenever any of our games are updated they should also receive this updated control system, much like Sudoku already has. The only bit of bad news is that I don't currently have a date for the next update to MNC. It's one of my favourite games too, but we have a *lot* of games both being updated and new ones in the pipeline!

Warmest regards,
Kieren

[sidlon]

Yeah, it's been a while since I originally played the demo for MNC, and back then I don't think I really got it.

But I'm guessing I'm not the only TX owner that picked it up in the promotion a few weeks back, so it might be worth a quick update.

If you guys wanted to release a quick update, please just make the hopefully short patch to not steal the buttons if they've been set in the preferences to not do anything.

The game is so stylus-friendly, I'm curious if anyone actually uses the buttons for it.

Thanks for responding!

[Kieren]

If you guys wanted to release a quick update, please just make the hopefully short patch to not steal the buttons if they've been set in the preferences to not do anything.


Unfortunately it's not as quick and easy to update the game as it might sound, partly because of the changes that always take place in our core libraries between releases of a given game - we always prefer to test them fairly closely to make sure that said updates haven't caused any new and unforseen problems, and that can be quite time consuming (in fact is often the longest part of any update like this). Ironically, any update to the game would most likely result in the controls being fixed without much direct intervention, but that's not the part that takes the time in this case :(

Warmest regards,
Kieren