Game Dev Story: Naming your game studio blank spaces crashes the game!

Date: 01/09/2014

Description:

By accident, I found a very easy way to crash the app GameDev Story on the Kindle Fire.  Game Dev Story is an interesting idea for a game, and I recommend downloading it to try it out.

I actually found this bug while trying to reproduce a bug I encountered the very first time I started a new game.

This bug is much easier to show than it is to describe, so please see the attached screenshots.

Here’s the crash in a nutshell:  You are given the option at the start of the game to name your new game development company.  If you name your company with ten blank spaces (ten presses of the spacebar) the game will crash shortly after it begins.

I’ve gotten this crash to reproduce ten times out of ten attempts.

If you start a game with a company name of ten blank spaces, the default UI that greets the user at the start of the game disappears.  If you tap the screen an error message appears that says “An error has occurred.”

Selecting “OK” out of this error message kicks the user out of the game.

Steps to reproduce:

1.     Download and launch Game Dev Story

2.     Select “New Game”

3.     From the “Company Name” pop-up, delete “Sunny Studios”

4.     As a company name, enter in ten presses of the spacebar (ten blank spaces)

5.     With ten blank spaces entered as a company name, press “Confirm”

6.     Once the new game has begun, tap the screen

Result:  The app Game Dev Story will crash into an error message if the user starts a new game by naming their new video game studio with ten presses of the spacebar (ten empty spaces)

Expected:  The app Game Dev Story should not crash into an error message if the user starts a new game by naming their new video game studio with ten presses of the spacebar (ten empty spaces)

Extra Note:  I actually ran into a bug that prohibited from beginning a new game – something to do with the name of the new studio that I was trying to create.  If I hadn’t ran into that bug I wouldn’t have played around with this at all, and wouldn’t have even bothered to write this down!  

Download Game Dev Story onto the Kindle Fire.

Select "New Game"

Delete "Sunny Studios" which is the default name inside of the "Company Name" pop-up box

Enter in ten presses of the spacebar, and then select "confirm" 

Confirm a Company Name that is ten blank spaces

Once you start playing the game, most of the UI that is normally there has disappeared.  Tap the screen

As you as you touch the screen, an error message appears 

The game crashes