Mac Steam Version - some achievements broken?

Purduecoz

I'm noticing that the achievements that 'count' certain items like pieces of gum picked up don't seem to be counting. I'm playing through the Mac version. Anyone else experiencing this problem?

I'll try out the PC version and see if it's got the same issue for me.

Thanks,
Purduecoz

divisionten

Since this is a technical issue, I'm moving it to support.

SpotsMcDots

Yep! I had this problem last night. I've tried both collecting all the pieces in a row, and separating them between saves. It simply does not count. I can say that all the other achievements on the Mac do work though.

It appears to be a Mac only problem. The PC version will award the achievement.

Blitzci

I've been able to get the achievement on my Mac. The counter might not count up, but the game should award the achievement when you pick up 25 pieces.

Can anyone say for certain that they're not getting the achievement when they pick up 25 pieces? Keep in mind you start with 6, so even if you use no gum you won't get the achievement until you have 31 pieces.

SpotsMcDots

I can say for certain that I was not receiving it at the time. I'm positive because I used the same method that was not unlocking on the Mac to unlock the achievement on a PC.

I would go in and out of Valda's Inn farming pieces of gum in the street over the required amount.

However since the achievement is now unlocked I can't test it further. It was possible that it was a Steam issue that has since corrected itself. However without a way to re-lock the achievement I can't say if the problem is still persisting or not.

I had one theory that it might have had to do with picking up the pieces of gum too fast. That the counter only incremented each time the "you picked up a piece of gum!" notification showed up. If you went too fast it was possible to pick up two or three pieces of gum per individual notification. In those cases, you gained two or three pieces of gum. However, only one would count towards the progress in the achievement.

Though again, I can't test it further.

Seg

The progress bar for achievements is purely cosmetic. Updating that number is a separate API call from awarding achievements.

Technically, one could have a 25/25 on their Steam stat page yet not be awarded the achievement as they are two separate calls. Conversely, one can have 0/25 on the stat page and still get awarded the attachment.

What I fear is that the stat updating function isn't working on Mac. While this doesn't affect achievements, it does effect a feature that will get rolled out soon...

The game is sending a lot more stats about usage beyond the achievement progress. It's also tracking number of submissions per puzzle, in total, points awarded, a lot of things. This will result in pages not only tracking your individual progress, but globally aggregated stats. Have you ever imagined how much taxpayer money is being spend by all players? You'll know soon!

However, if the stat update isn't working at all on Mac, then not only will the indicial stat pages be blank, but not counted in the global aggregate. Mac users won't be contributing to the global data.

This is really depressing for me.

SpotsMcDots

I understand what you are saying about the status bar being purely cosmetic. However, I still feel there was some issue with the achievement at least around the 5th. You can also look at this other thread where another user expressed that they had collected 36 pieces of gum and did not receive the achievement.

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25749

However, I also did note that I seemed to be having some similar achievement issues with other games around this time - including an achievement in portal. It seemed odd that after three full play throughs - one specifically to get this achievement - I was unable to obtain it. Really all that matters is that the achievement works now though.

i found a friend who still has this achievement locked willing to let me test it. It will at least allow us to see if the achievement is in fact working - or potentially another issue is at large.

It will at least give me some peace of mind. I actually enjoy testing, and it was killing me to be unable to lock the achievement and try to diagnose it further. =P

SpotsMcDots

I think I found the real issue. First off it appears the achievement unlocks at 30 pieces of gum collected rather than 25. Secondly, there appears to be a bug where under certain conditions gum spawning completely stops for the remainder of the game - making the achievement impossible to obtain for the rest of that particular play through.

I still need to test it further, but playing through the game twice with a few quick gum farming sessions seems to be my limit. I thought I'd go ahead and post about it to see if there may be some input about the possible scenario.

Also I noticed that none of the statistics are updating - as you worried Seg. There are a few time the statistics do update, but these occasions are rare. The only one I can confirm is that when "Keep Scoggins Beautiful" is unlocked, one of the statistics is set to 25. If you are really interested I can keep track of them during a playthrough and provide which updates are working when.

SpotsMcDots

After playing through for the achievement on several copies of the game, the achievement definitely unlocks at 30 and not 25. This means a player has to actually reach a minimum of 36 pieces of gum to unlock the achievement on the mac.

Also I've found it is possible to have a save file bug and gum production to completely cease in the game. However I have not found a sure fire way to reproduce the save file issue.

Telltale's QA testers may have extra tools to analyze the issue, but here is a bugged save file where gum appears to have stopped spawning early in the game.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3990981/save1.save

SpotsMcDots

Bumping this since it still is broken, with the reason found.