Bugs, problems and improvement suggestions. Please fix these, people still play on Mobile =/

[Ludovicus]

I love DST, and playing it got me to download (buy) the offline version on computer and, more recently, on my phone.

Sadly, the phone version can be quite glitchy and problematic at times. I've seen a lot of people complaining about these same or similar problems on google play and here on forums. I'm creating a new thread though because a lot of them are closed/old. I also want to list everything I've experienced in one place.

 

Problem 01

This is the worst one so far to me, and the one that can be the most annoying and even ruin a playthrough (already died a few times because of it):

Sometimes it just glitches when selecting the inventory and I can't click anything anymore except the virtual stick. When it happens all I can do to solve it is force close the game and reopen, losing the progress since last autosave. I can wait it autosave before doing so to avoid losing progress, but sometimes it can take a while, and might not even be possible to do without dying to hunger or other things that show up.

The way this glitch often happens is when i'm with full inventory and try to hold an extra item from the floor with my finger and drag it to the inventory. I usually fail to do what i was attempting to do (like refuel something) and then it bugs. It can happen in other ways too and it's usually involving dragging an item around/near the inventory;

Problem 02

Another big one that just happened to me a couple hours before editing this post is the ruins entrance glitch.

The first few times i got into the ruins i had no problem. But then i went to another cave, and another ruins entrance within the same world (aparently there are multiple caves and ruins which are not linked to each other, differently from DST). And in this second ruins my glitch happened exactly as someone else explained in another post: Game crash in entering Cave level 2

It was exactly the same as RobotCoyote said. I had to use the same "solution" suggested by Jawara to be able to keep playing. But the problem number 1 happened again sortly after. So, instead of reopening the game, i just closed it and started considering asking for a refund... Gosh, it's a problem from over an year ago...

Problem 03

Sometimes the screen will be really glitchy when i leave the game and go back to it sortly after to resume the gameplay. It unglitches by going back and forth from homescreen/other apps to the game. It seems to be a problem caused by the rotating screen, as my home screen usually is set to always be on portrait mode. If my phone is on landscape mode before switching back to the game, this glitch usually doesn't occur;

Problem 04

There's a constant vertical black line by the virtual stick (for some reason it's only on the base game DS. Shipwrecked doesn't have it);

Problem 05

Not a bug, but I've seen someone talking about this and i agree with that person: it's sad having no way to backup the game. Most games back up with google. On the pc version we can just copy our world's files. From what i heard, we can't really do it on mobile.

 

Other suggestions that could improve the game imo:

1. Adding a save button, instead of only save and quit and/or being able to change how often the game will autosave (like being able to make it happen more often). This would help a bit while the first problem isn't solved.
2. This might be a hard one to get done, but i've been thinking about this for so, so long: Why not make it all one game, and then make it in a way to export it to other platforms easily for each update. I find weird some of the differences between DST and DS PC, even though they are mostly acceptable. But what i find even weirder are the differences between DS PC and DS PE, and how there are two games for PE instead of 1 with DLCs like in PC. I understand that you're focusing on content for DST and not so much for the other games, but please don't forget about them. And making it easy to "export" the computer DS content updates to mobile would be amazing, so it'd update about as often as the computer version (if it's even possible).
3. I said the above because the mobile version is a bit behind in some things compared to the computer version. An example is the Magiluminescence (Yellow) amulet (the one with small light that makes you run 20% faster). I saw another post saying we can't refuel it with nightmare fuel (or anything at all) and I just tested it and i really couldn't. And this is sad =/
4. WX-78 loses its lightning charges when you reload the game. Not sure if this is supposed to happen, but that's not how DST works so...

 

Just solving the first two major problems would make playing it on phone so much better and worth the money and time investment. The problems i faced on my playthroughs were already enough to leave me almost giving up on the mobile version for a while. And i've seen people talking about other bugs that i'm afraid too see happening to me. It's frustrating to feel like this probably won't be receiving much support for some more months, or years, to come.

 

Model number: SM-A71SF

Android version: 10

 

Screen glitch from going to home screen then going back to game:

 

The vertical line present on the virtual stick:

The screenshot's image quality seems to be low/lowered, so the vertical black pixels line almost vanishes 'cuz of how thin it is. But it's very visible on my phone.

 

At last, but the worst:

This a screenshot taken right after i collected light bulbs with my inventory full. I pressed and held the pick up button so i could move the item around my screen and i tried to refuel the miner hat like i usually do. But it failed to do so, the item fell on the floor and from that point onward i couldn't interact with anything except the virtual stick. Note how the 2 interaction buttons are darker.

 

The game can be played -that is, casually-. But it is unplayable if you aim to explore and go into the wild and dangerous places to get the stuff done, fight bosses, get the rare stuff and all. Even from a casual standpoint, you could be constantly losing progress in your base and/or dying to simple things like hunger and cold/heat because of this bug. If you instantly reopen the game, you may loose up to 8 minutes of progress, if you wait up you could be there for up to 8 minutes losing your health to starvation and other things.

 

TL;DR: Every minute playing DSPE equals a bit sadder 'cuz of so many bugs. It needs a bit of attention from developer and get things fixed.