Scope aggressively wants to reset

[skybolt 11]

OnePlus One, Android 5.1.1

Scope aggressively but occasionally activates the "scope wants to reset, please reset or abort". Aggressively means multiple times within 10 minutes, occasionally means it might not happen for hours, off and on.

[cane54 0]

Personally the message "scope wants to reset, please reset or abort" confuses me.

[skybolt 11]

Not sure how else to describe it ... see attached. Game states "your scope wants to reset"

[Silver 1,978]

Scope Rest should not happen more than once every 7 to 10 launches.

I plan to write a full blog post on this but I'll provide a brief summary here.

A relaunch button was added to the launch results screen to make it easier for players to dump their entire scope into a zone using the same formation. You no longer need to go back and forth between the launch screen and results screen. Players have long requested a way to relaunch and often complained that one phone platform is faster than the other because of navigation differences (back buttons).

However, with this improvement comes a major danger. Over the years QONQR has invested huge amounts of effort into stopping cheaters. Android (and iOS) offer options for developers to setup auto-tapping programs that will automatically tap the screens in specified locations. But even if this wasn't possible, we have also caught players who built physical robots with an electrostatic finger to play QONQR for them while they slept. Putting a relaunch button in the same spot on the screen would make it very simple to build a robot to tap a single spot on the screen automatically.

No one enjoys doing launch verification. Matching up the symbols is slow, and for some players creates a tremendous amount of anxiety. We didn't want to be more aggressive with Launch Verification for those reasons. Instead we created Scope Reset. This was designed to be simple, fast and something that would be very difficult to defeat with a robot tapper.

Launch Verification still exists because that system will help to stop someone who might attempt to crack our binary or encrypted network traffic. Scope Reset is for Screen Tappers.

Finally, Scope Reset will also offer us an opportunity to clean up resources. We aren't aggressively doing this yet, but if we begin to see issues with memory or performance, we may begin recycling stuff in the app to reclaim memory if players let their scope reset.

We may change the frequency of Scope Reset or the display as our testing continues, but I hope this explains more about why it is there.

[skybolt 11]

Don't change it, given your reason, it's fine and so is the frequency. I thought it might have to do with layered windows and a scope reset to deal with a memory leak.

I didn't mind launch code verification. Made me feel like I was the US president carrying the nuclear football.

[Silver 1,978]

Awesome, appreciate the response. So far the response to Scope Reset (once the reasons are understood) has been "Positive" to "Neutral -1".

[skybolt 11]

You might want to tweak the text on the scope reset --- something like "enemy scan interference, reset scope to clear buffer, or continue at your own risk ....

You know, something to make it more fun or add to the spice.

Also, if you _are_ having memory leaks or cascading windows issues, you could use the reset the window stack!

[Silver 1,978]

We don't use a window stack. The implementation is different on all platforms, and there for the cross platform implementation out of the box is bad, specifically for back button processing. We roll our own nav stack to get the best experience.

[Malchir 1]

Scope reset has been frustrating. I completely appreciate the reason.

For me scope reset tends to come up twice, nearly every time I perform a full bot tank launch...

Then, to compound the problem, the sliders will move position on the screen _while_ I'm attempting to hit reset, causing me to try and reset 2 or 3 times before it finally triggers and goes back to the launch screen.

[Soupist 39]

Scope reset

Scope reset can be annoying. These things might help.

1. If there are not enough bots to launch the current formation, don't show scope reset.

2. If 7 launches have gone out, don't present a scope reset.

3. Make the green and red sliders brighter, so I can tell which is which quickly with a glance. If not, make the scope reset a random button you slide, left to map and right to stay.

4. Having a Launch verification and a scope reset is redundant. If the LV is shown, don't have a scope reset waiting before you get back to launching.

I see this 2 out of 3 cycles, so any improvement would be very helpful. For those times you are pocket launching, you should be able to with one eye and from the hip.

[Malchir 1]

Oh man... Why do I have to agree with swarm...

[skybolt 11]

Agree with Soupist, also scope reset appears to be generally buggy, but I'm holding off on bug reporting until the iOS version is deployed, as that will be a better test of the underlying code and should therefore be easier to trace than issues caused by Android platform balkanization.