Bug Portrait mode doesn't work anymore!

Since last TPA update portrait mode doesn't work anymore, if I start a game first of all I have to press the start button twice (pressed once and waited a while but then nothing happens), then I see for a second that the screen goes back to landscape and then turns black, after a few seconds a screen comes up with exit game & resume, just like I would have pressed the back button, if I press exit it exits normally, if I press resume, same thing happens again, if I turn it to landscape and press continue the game works fine, also if I have it in landscape from the start I only have to press start game one time and I can play without issues. A lot of times it also directly crashes the complete app.
I did not have any software update on my tablet (Samsung Note 10.1 2014 edition) and did not change any setting as far as I know (rotation is on, but also tried off), I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, did not help, also tried uninstalling and deleting everything (Yes lost ALL my progress and hall of fame points AGAIN!! ), and reinstalling again, also did not help. Any help or suggestion would be appreciated cause I do not like to play in landscape at all!
Thanks

Hello. You've hit the same bug as me, but I thought it was GPG causing the trouble at first - hence the thread title.

There's a workaround in the thread (install a rotation locker - I'm using Adaptive Rotation Lock, which is a bit sketchy with Samsung firmware, but basically works).

http://digitalpinballfans.com/showt...-be-possible-to-play-without-signing-into-GPG

[MENTION=2166]Arjan[/MENTION]

Same issue, same tablet; just updated TPA to 1.36.6; portrait mode immediately activates pause game dialog, resume game cycles right back to pause dialog.


I'm about to send a trouble ticket to support@pinballarcade.com -- you might want to do the same if you haven't already. The more trouble tickets they get, the more likely they are to take notice.

Hopefully they will have a work-around or a patch before the mobile tournament ends.

Pop Sergeant said:

[MENTION=2166]Arjan[/MENTION]

Same issue, same tablet; just updated TPA to 1.36.6; portrait mode immediately activates pause game dialog, resume game cycles right back to pause dialog.


I'm about to send a trouble ticket to support@pinballarcade.com -- you might want to do the same if you haven't already. The more trouble tickets they get, the more likely they are to take notice.

Hopefully they will have a work-around or a patch before the mobile tournament ends.

Click to expand...

I already sent a bug request to farsight, but most of the time it takes a while or I don't get an answer at all....

mikehg said:

Hello. You've hit the same bug as me, but I thought it was GPG causing the trouble at first - hence the thread title.

There's a workaround in the thread (install a rotation locker - I'm using Adaptive Rotation Lock, which is a bit sketchy with Samsung firmware, but basically works).

http://digitalpinballfans.com/showt...-be-possible-to-play-without-signing-into-GPG

Click to expand...

I just installed to try, but what are your settings with this program? Whatever I try I get my screen always to landscape now, even just the homepage and also every other app! I tried adaptive lock, portrait, stock portrait, but none of them work :-(

[MENTION=2166]Arjan[/MENTION],

mikehg has a good solution, see his post. I just tried it and it worked.

Download the free version of Adaptive Rotation Lock from the google play store and install.

Set it to PORTRAIT.

Exit the app.

Please note, this also turned off my devices auto-rotate and I had to re-activate it to get TPA to launch in portrait.

First try resulted in a force close of TPA but killing TPA from the open apps and re-starting it worked.
[MENTION=4099]mikehg[/MENTION],

Many thanks for the work-around and for being so quick to offer one up.

Thanks.

Arjan said:

I just installed to try, but what are your settings with this program? Whatever I try I get my screen always to landscape now, even just the homepage and also every other app! I tried adaptive lock, portrait, stock portrait, but none of them work :-(

Click to expand...

I had the same issue first try. It turned off my devices auto-rotate when I set it to portrait -- after I turned the device auto-rotate back on it solved the TPA issue.

Pop Sergeant said:

I had the same issue first try. It turned off my devices auto-rotate when I set it to portrait -- after I turned the device auto-rotate back on it solved the TPA issue.

Click to expand...

Kept trying some more and have it set to force auto now, this seems to work ok, also for the rest of my apps and it also keeps rotating my screen in regular use so that seems to be the best solution for me, thanks!

edit: only strange thing is that it shows the text in the buttons far too large in TPA, but that doesn't bother me too much... hope Farsight will make an update so that it works normal again...

Yep, if you're going to use Adaptive Rotation Lock you'll have to run it before playing TPA - I find 'Inverse portrait' works for me - then once you've finished, open its menu and select 'Disable'. That should hand control back to the firmware's rotation settings.

I guess other rotation lockers will work too, that's just one I've got experience with (though it doesn't play very well with the Samsung firmware, it works better than many of them. I think there's something really weird about rotation in TouchWiz).

Arjan said:

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, did not help, also tried uninstalling and deleting everything (Yes lost ALL my progress and hall of fame points AGAIN!! ), and reinstalling again, also did not help.

Click to expand...

http://jaredmorgs.github.io/Pinball_Arcade_Users_Guide_Android/#Google_Play_Services covers how this feature works. It is definitely unintuitive for users.

Pop Sergeant said:

I had the same issue first try. It turned off my devices auto-rotate when I set it to portrait -- after I turned the device auto-rotate back on it solved the TPA issue.

Click to expand...

I think I read this too fast the first time - are you saying that having run ARL, you've now disabled it, and your problem is permanently gone?

That's weird. Though gifthorses and mouths, I guess... Don't fiddle with it

mikehg said:

I think I read this too fast the first time - are you saying that having run ARL, you've now disabled it, and your problem is permanently gone?

That's weird. Though gifthorses and mouths, I guess... Don't fiddle with it

Click to expand...

No, I didn't explain well. Sorry. . I was trying to say that when I installed ARL and set it to force portrait, ARL deactivated my device's auto-rotate setting. While ARL was active in Portrait mode and my device's auto-rotate was off, everything on my device was forced to landscape for some strange reason -- probably the "not playing well with Samsung" issues you wrote about. Anyway, the solution wasn't to deactivate ARL, but to just manually turn my device's auto-rotate back "on" -- that resolved the issue all around.

I didn't want to take a chance messing around with it any further while I was trying to get a few mobile tournament scores submitted in the little time I had available, but I think I'll try Arjan's approach and set ARL to "auto" the next time I use it.

The strange thing about this whole situation is that this never happened before the latest TPA release, and I'm a pretty heavy user in my spare time, but I get the impression from your previous posts that it's been a known issue since February 2015.

Oh, well, good to go now and that's all that really matters in the end, but I do hope it gets patched at some point.

Thanks again, Mike -- your suggestion saved the day.

No worries

Yes, something about the interaction between Sammy's rotation, GPG and TPA has been an intermittent issue for me for a while. One possibly related symptom is that during a game, occasionally it will freeze and bring up up the 'sign in to GPG' screen. Hitting cancel brings you back to the pause menu (this probably only happens like this to me because I don't sign in - if you do, perhaps it'll just pause?).

If you restart the game, there is a chance it'll be running far too fast. Pause it again, then minimise TPA using the device's 'Home' button. Go into recent applications, and re-open TPA. You should be able to continue from where you left off, running at the correct speed.

I vaguely remember reading all of this might have *something* to do with rotating the device in the 'wrong' direction, and rotating it the other way might mitigate it. I haven't bothered digging though, since the ARL solution works well enough for me, and the random pauses only happen occasionally - if indeed they're related at all.

My tablet is doing the same thing. Asus transform. Didn't have this problem two days ago. WTF? I emailed farsight and haven't heard anything about it yet. Really pisses me off as we have a weekly competition at work and the winner for the week picks the next table. I CANT PLAY IN LANDSCAPE !!!! I really hope this is fixed soon. And no I really don't want to download an app to keep my screen from rotating as I shouldn't have to. Grrrr

Oh I haven't even noticed this bug because I'm always using ultimate rotation control app. I like to have my samsung upside down when playing portrait, that way I don't hit any back key or anything by accident. You set it specific for your different apps. Never interferes with any other apps

This is getting fixed ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Just pushed a new update with the portrait bug fix in to the google play store. It should be available to download in a few hours. Please post here and let me know whether the update fixes the problem for you.

Thanks!

rottenrobert13 said:

My tablet is doing the same thing. Asus transform. Didn't have this problem two days ago. WTF? I emailed farsight and haven't heard anything about it yet. Really pisses me off as we have a weekly competition at work and the winner for the week picks the next table. I CANT PLAY IN LANDSCAPE !!!! I really hope this is fixed soon. And no I really don't want to download an app to keep my screen from rotating as I shouldn't have to. Grrrr

Click to expand...

What OS?

Thanks for the quick fix Scumble373, all working fine again on the SM-P900.

@Scumble373

Patch corrected portrait issue.

Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2014 - 10.1 (SM-P-600)

OS: Android 4.4.2

Thank you very much for figuring it out and pushing it through.