Gem box will take a full update to fix.

I was on twitter and saw this picture (see attached photos)Attachment 27523 and let me say I'm disappointed. Something as simple as a gem box should be able to be fixed in 15 minutes, but Supercell has to take an entire update to fix it? I saw pictures on the forum of people clearing the gem box and getting gems and it seemed to work perfectly fine. There are also screenshots of people who have the gem box in game and it isn't crashing anyone's game. The gem box is literally one line of code, believe it or not, that fills the parameters in the obstacles.csv file. Unfortunately, Supercell got smart and encrypted their files so I can't confirm if they changed it or not, but it is highly likely they haven't changed the format. The reasons are quite obvious why they took it down. 1. Spawn rate was too high 2. Gave to many gems. I can't be completely certain, but I'm pretty sure that they can fix those two things without an update. Until the mods/devs give a different reason other than "there were issues with the gem box" know one really knows why it was removed. A company as big as Supercell should not spend 2 months on an update and have a key feature not working. This makes the company seem unprofessional and also makes players mad. They can add more gems to obstacles working fine, but have one obstacle not work? One thing to keep in mind is they added the christmas tree last update without any trouble so I assume they can get the gem box working fine without issues too. Hopefully they fix this soon and sorry for having horrible english and writing skillz.

Oh well, I hope its in the next update. :)

I wish that they didn't have to reduce spawn rate or gems at all.

It's funny how things like gem boxes, nexting and builders lag take the longest amount of time to fix. :rolleyes:

Not cool. So if you remove a gem box and it does it every day then you could get 280 gems a season and i need it.

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Originally Posted by afronife

Not cool. So if you remove a gem box and it does it every day then you could get 280 gems a season and i need it.

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It won't spawn everyday

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Originally Posted by MrMatthew

I was on twitter and saw this picture (see attached photos)Attachment 27523 and let me say I'm disappointed. Something as simple as a gem box should be able to be fixed in 15 minutes, but Supercell has to take an entire update to fix it? I saw pictures on the forum of people clearing the gem box and getting gems and it seemed to work perfectly fine. There are also screenshots of people who have the gem box in game and it isn't crashing anyone's game. The gem box is literally one line of code, believe it or not, that fills the parameters in the obstacles.csv file. Unfortunately, Supercell got smart and encrypted their files so I can't confirm if they changed it or not, but it is highly likely they haven't changed the format. The reasons are quite obvious why they took it down. 1. Spawn rate was too high 2. Gave to many gems. I can't be completely certain, but I'm pretty sure that they can fix those two things without an update. Until the mods/devs give a different reason other than "there were issues with the gem box" know one really knows why it was removed. A company as big as Supercell should not spend 2 months on an update and have a key feature not working. This makes the company seem unprofessional and also makes players mad. They can add more gems to obstacles working fine, but have one obstacle not work? One thing to keep in mind is they added the christmas tree last update without any trouble so I assume they can get the gem box working fine without issues too. Hopefully they fix this soon and sorry for having horrible english and writing skillz.

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I don't know man. Thus far, I've been trying to think "if I was the poor intern who caught this bug on release day, how hard could it be?" I don't know how they designed the game in respect to obstacles, but I do know software. Software is notorious for taking things that look easy and making them the hardest thing in the world to fix without breaking something else in the system. Ask any Computer Science/Software Engineering student. Nothing is what it seems.

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Originally Posted by facescraper

It's funny how things like gem boxes, nexting and builders lag take the longest amount of time to fix. :rolleyes:

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True dat. Pretty sad. I would be happy if the next update just fixed these 3 issues.

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Originally Posted by facescraper

It's funny how things like gem boxes, nexting and builders lag take the longest amount of time to fix. :rolleyes:

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If it benefits SuperCell = priority
If it benefits players = delay

:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Atropos

I don't know man. Thus far, I've been trying to think "if I was the poor intern who caught this bug on release day, how hard could it be?" I don't know how they designed the game in respect to obstacles, but I do know software. Software is notorious for taking things that look easy and making them the hardest thing in the world to fix without breaking something else in the system. Ask any Computer Science/Software Engineering student. Nothing is what it seems.

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Exactly, good point. It is hard to Fix one thing without breaking another.

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Originally Posted by Atropos

I don't know man. Thus far, I've been trying to think "if I was the poor intern who caught this bug on release day, how hard could it be?" I don't know how they designed the game in respect to obstacles, but I do know software. Software is notorious for taking things that look easy and making them the hardest thing in the world to fix without breaking something else in the system. Ask any Computer Science/Software Engineering student. Nothing is what it seems.

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I have edited the files multiple times and it didnt break the game. It would break the game if it didn't match up with the server (ex. Changing the amount of gems you get for one achievment). And you gotta remember these are basically just text files that meets parameters. Its pretty easy coding if you ask me.

Don't know why people complain with the comment "one line of code"

I'm sorry are you a programmer? Are you as talented as these guys?

If you are...then please make your own successful game with easy solutions and updates which are made up of "one line of code"

You can't simply add a line of code. I've made games (simple ones) and I'm a web designer.

I can add a simple one line of code into the game/site but it has a knock on affect

So it's not always as simple as adding a few words of code to fix or update something

So please stop suggesthing everything is as simple as a line of code.

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Originally Posted by GREGORY

Don't know why people complain with the comment "one line of code"

I'm sorry are you a programmer? Are you as talented as these guys?

If you are...then please make your own successful game with easy solutions and updates which are made up of "one line of code"

You can't simply add a line of code. I've made games (simple ones) and I'm a web designer.

I can add a simple one line of code into the game/site but it has a knock on affect

So it's not always as simple as adding a few words of code to fix or update something

So please stop suggesthing everything is as simple as a line of code.

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Haha I have looked at the code and one line is all you need, for the client at least. Not sure about server so won't comment on that. You gotta remember they have added Christmas trees and stuff in the past and those worked.

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Originally Posted by GREGORY

Don't know why people complain with the comment "one line of code"

I'm sorry are you a programmer? Are you as talented as these guys?

If you are...then please make your own successful game with easy solutions and updates which are made up of "one line of code"

You can't simply add a line of code. I've made games (simple ones) and I'm a web designer.

I can add a simple one line of code into the game/site but it has a knock on affect

So it's not always as simple as adding a few words of code to fix or update something

So please stop suggesthing everything is as simple as a line of code.

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Agreed. Some people needs to get their facts straight. If it was that simple, everyone would be programmers so there will not be such a high demand of them. It just reminds me of when people think you are computer literate, they assume you know every single thing about computers, software, hardware, technical stuff, everything.

I studied programming before and its not pretty, I have pretty much given up as I felt it would really shorten my lifespan.

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Originally Posted by afronife

Not cool. So if you remove a gem box and it does it every day then you could get 280 gems a season and i need it.

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Pretend its a month earlier sneak peak? I heard the spawn rate was 1% of an obstacle. so, if you get an obstacle every 8 hours, its 3 a day. Given 1% then it would be once a month. If you expected it to be daily then thats def wrong. Not sure about 1%, but def a lot lower than daily

Agreed with other posters. I have no tech saavy whatsoever but I deal with programers daily and my gf is a web designer. I think I'll believe them when they say it is more than one line of code! Also, I've already gotten over 22 gems from my trees and bushes since the change. I'm more than happy with that for now!

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Originally Posted by MrMatthew

I have edited the files multiple times and it didnt break the game. It would break the game if it didn't match up with the server (ex. Changing the amount of gems you get for one achievment). And you gotta remember these are basically just text files that meets parameters. Its pretty easy coding if you ask me.

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Yeah, that makes sense. With as much money goes into this game, its reasonable to suspect that someone(s) actually came up with a sufficient architecture to plan for everything. Chances are that its a one-liner like you said. My thoughts kind of go for the 48 basement build lack of design of two best friends in high school... "Hey dude, wanna make a game and call it 'Clash of Clans?'" With the way things are going, it seems that there are two options on the table:
1.) gem boxes have some fundamentally different aspect from all other obstacles that we don't know about. Bugs ensue.
2.) gem boxes are the carrot on the stick. Free gems?! LOL, YOU THOUGHT!

Still better than the time bug which takes a freaking infinite amount of updates to fix.

Of course it is easy to fix! (I dont believe it was even broken to begin with)

You call the obstacle subroutine with 3 parameters: probability, #gems and image.
This subroutine is in perfect working order.

It doesn't matter if it's 1 line or 100. Any lines require them to push out another client update.

I'm guessing it has something to do with their random number generator. As you probably know: in computer systems it is very difficult to generate truly (or very close to) random numbers. And if it's one thing I've noticed in the game, it is that their random number generator can behave very awkard sometimes. Take the spawning of christmas trees for example, I'd to to see the distribution statistic on that one :)

So: one line of of code may add an obstacle, the spawn rate and associated reward probably isn't, unless it's a fixed number like an achievement reward.

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Originally Posted by LunarisBE

I'm guessing it has something to do with their random number generator. As you probably know: in computer systems it is very difficult to generate truly (or very close to) random numbers. And if it's one thing I've noticed in the game, it is that their random number generator can behave very awkard sometimes. Take the spawning of christmas trees for example, I'd to to see the distribution statistic on that one :)

So: one line of of code may add an obstacle, the spawn rate and associated reward probably isn't, unless it's a fixed number like an achievement reward.

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I would be very very surprised if they were not using an API for random number generation. The OS most certainly provides that.

As for Christmas tree spawns, humans expect randomness to be synonymous with an even distribution. This is true somewhat for macro views of things. However on micro views of things, randomness can be very clumpy. It is perfectly logical and sensical for one person to get 7 trees and another person to get 0 and have there be nothing wrong with the random number generation.

I find it actually amusing that to produce systems that humans feel are random (even distributions) a decidedly non random process must be employed.

Wow a sneak peak already that was fast.



1500 posts!!!!!

To be honest I am over this whole issue of the gem box... I enjoy the game as it is and we get gems from trees anyway so why continue complaining... If they add it in then woop-dee-doo if not well then we continue playing on

So many bedroom developers.

I'd recommend getting some real life commercial development before stating its one line of code that could be implemented easily.

Funny...
Ooo...

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Originally Posted by kieron

To be honest I am over this whole issue of the gem box... I enjoy the game as it is and we get gems from trees anyway so why continue complaining... If they add it in then woop-dee-doo if not well then we continue playing on

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yep i agree with every word
OP - if this was so simple im sure supercell would fix it already
just enjoy the game and we'll get it next update
im also a bit disspointed , but complaining about it won't help

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Originally Posted by dahimi

As for Christmas tree spawns, humans expect randomness to be synonymous with an even distribution. This is true somewhat for macro views of things. However on micro views of things, randomness can be very clumpy. It is perfectly logical and sensical for one person to get 7 trees and another person to get 0 and have there be nothing wrong with the random number generation.

I find it actually amusing that to produce systems that humans feel are random (even distributions) a decidedly non random process must be employed.

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This is very true, it's been demonstrated loads of times. Actual random sequences and human perception of random sequences are very different. Didn't Apple have to fudge it's shuffle function on the Ipod to make it appear to randomly select tracks.

On topic, I don't think they said it would take a month to fix, but the reason the fix will not be released is because it would need another update to implement the fix. For the sake of efficiency it makes sense to wait to the next update. Seems reasonable to me.

If this is all that easy to you, maybe you should make your own game :) I'm getting sick and tired of people looking down on SC. They are a company with professionals, and if they say it takes time to fix a bug that has to do with the gem box, then give them time. Be happy with the game as it is or leave the game and find another place to be grumpy.

The amount of professed knowhow, conspiracy theories and general paranoia in this thread is both annoying and a little worrying..

Hey Guys. Looks like that tweet has been misinterpreted a bit. We're still looking into the gem box issue. We're hoping it is fixable with a future maintenance, but if not, it will have to be fixed in the next update.

No final decision/conclusion has been made on this as of yet.

Good job, rather have a game with complete updates or features then for example a gem box which users can abuse.

Hopefully no later than the next update.

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Originally Posted by dahimi

It doesn't matter if it's 1 line or 100. Any lines require them to push out another client update.

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Not true actually. They do it all the time by sending out new game settings and the client downloading them.

it doesn't take a month OR MORE to fix a code that is already in the game. this is evidence that they're pinching the gems.

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Originally Posted by MrMatthew

Not true actually. They do it all the time by sending out new game settings and the client downloading them.

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But you have no idea what the fix is or how it can be deployed.

regardless, the fact remains that if you want to break a development cycle to push out a bug fix it still has to be planned. If you do it as a one-off you still have to test it, arrange staff, schedule a release, possibly recode into multiple other versions...blah blah blah.

All of which then pushes back other work.

if its a server side fix then yes it's easier and probably worth dropping in. If it needs a client update then you just hold it into the next scheduled release.

there's no hidden agenda going on here, it's called 'running a software company'.

Lol at all the fake self professed programmers who say this will not take changing just one line of code. Truth is you just need to change one variable. Any half decent programmer will not be hardcoding numbers like drop rate into the main code and instead will assign it to a variable which you can change at one place which everywhere is calling it from.

No the truth is that you do not know the source of the problem and are assuming the new functionality is cloned from the existing code that spawns objects.

Id be interested to hear how changing a spawn rate variable is going to solve the issue, given that the symptoms of the issue are that boxes are spawned and some do not contain gems (there are possibley other issues I havent heard of)

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Originally Posted by Braddeller

Lol at all the fake self professed programmers who say this will not take changing just one line of code. Truth is you just need to change one variable. Any half decent programmer will not be hardcoding numbers like drop rate into the main code and instead will assign it to a variable which you can change at one place which everywhere is calling it from.

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Well thats nice of you to explain that. However, a half decent programmer would actually assign such a value to a parameter, usually in a database or a control script on the server, thereby meaning you wouldn't have to change any code at all.

Which kind of implies that your over-simplistic solution is not the actual problem.

Yeah. I'm just glad that it will be up at all. It's a good thing that supercell is giving us more opportunities to have gems.

This is not necessarily true. However we can be sure that it is certain that the current gem box behavior does not conform to the way it was designed to be, so it has to be changed. If this means lowering something, so be it, it has never been meant to be high anyway.

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Originally Posted by Yusef

Exactly, good point. It is hard to Fix one thing without breaking another.

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Originally Posted by MrMatthew

Not true actually. They do it all the time by sending out new game settings and the client downloading them.

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Those are not code changes.

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Originally Posted by Braddeller

Lol at all the fake self professed programmers who say this will not take changing just one line of code. Truth is you just need to change one variable. Any half decent programmer will not be hardcoding numbers like drop rate into the main code and instead will assign it to a variable which you can change at one place which everywhere is calling it from.

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What makes you think drop rate or frequency is the problem? The fact that they simply didn't just do maintenance kind of indicates that most likely isn't it.

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Originally Posted by dahimi

What makes you think drop rate or frequency is the problem? The fact that they simply didn't just do maintenance kind of indicates that most likely isn't it.

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I was starting to think it was just me who missed something confirming the problem.

Am I right in saying that the community is arguing about how difficult a problem is to fix without knowing what the problem is?

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Originally Posted by Kirky

I was starting to think it was just me who missed something confirming the problem.

Am I right in saying that the community is arguing about how difficult a problem is to fix without knowing what the problem is?

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You got it. Just another day in la la land.

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Originally Posted by SuperSteve[Supercell]

Hey Guys. Looks like that tweet has been misinterpreted a bit. We're still looking into the gem box issue. We're hoping it is fixable with a future maintenance, but if not, it will have to be fixed in the next update.

No final decision/conclusion has been made on this as of yet.

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Cheers for the update

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Originally Posted by SuperSteve[Supercell]

Hey Guys. Looks like that tweet has been misinterpreted a bit. We're still looking into the gem box issue. We're hoping it is fixable with a future maintenance, but if not, it will have to be fixed in the next update.

No final decision/conclusion has been made on this as of yet.

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Good news at last!:)

So many pessimists here it's making me, a pessimist, sick. I know nothing about programming, but I know one thing about programming that 90% of posters on this thread don't.

you have no idea what the problem is, so saying 'this fix it.' Or saying 'no this wi fix it.' Is completely ludicrous.

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Originally Posted by daz258

If it benefits SuperCell = priority
If it benefits players = delay

:rolleyes:

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A very accurate statement about the game for sure

Haven't checked if anyone posted it, but they have done a mini-update before, so you would hope this is what it will be.

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Originally Posted by jhusby9

A very accurate statement about the game for sure

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There was a bug where when you queued troops in the barracks and the dequeued them you got more elixir back than you were supposed to. They didn't fix that until the next update was released either.

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Originally Posted by daz258

If it benefits SuperCell = priority
If it benefits players = delay

:rolleyes:

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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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Originally Posted by dahimi

There was a bug where when you queued troops in the barracks and the dequeued them you got more elixir back than you were supposed to. They didn't fix that until the next update was released either.

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I vaguely remember that. Weren't there complaints about SC taking away from the players then as well? No wait, maybe it was a SC conspiracy to force us to gem our elixer.

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Originally Posted by MrMatthew

Something as simple as a gem box should be able to be fixed in 15 minutes, but Supercell has to take an entire update to fix it? .

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It's probably 15 minutes for the programmer to fix, but it's probably client-side code (the app tht you download on your phone), as suppose to server-side code, which can be fixed with just a maintainence break.

Apple typically takes 5-7 business days to review updates (for indie developers), but Supercell can probably jam that through with request for Expedited Review (next business day).

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Originally Posted by VincentVegas

So many bedroom developers.

I'd recommend getting some real life commercial development before stating its one line of code that could be implemented easily.

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I cant speak for the others but I have 20+ years of experience programming in everything from assembler to high level languages.... PC, midrange and mainframes.

Does anyone remember when the minion texture switched with levels 1 and 2 to 3 and 4? I put a video on the forum how supercell could fix it but it was taken down because it used iFile. Believe it or not, they can do simple fixes but choose not to.

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Originally Posted by MrMatthew

Does anyone remember when the minion texture switched with levels 1 and 2 to 3 and 4? I put a video on the forum how supercell could fix it but it was taken down because it used iFile. Believe it or not, they can do simple fixes but choose not to.

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Yeah i remember that. All they had to do was change 4 numbers

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Originally Posted by facescraper

It's funny how things like gem boxes, nexting and builders lag take the longest amount of time to fix. :rolleyes:

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Where's the damn LIKE button when you need it! ;)