UE 4.27.2 android app shows black screen (Google PAD)

Development Platform & Builds Mobile
1

Hey,
I’m trying to roll out my mobile game on the play store for closed testing.
The game size is roughly 700mb, well over the APK size limit of 150mb, so I am resorting to using the Google PAD plugin to generate an .AAB that google will accept.

But the plugin that I NEED to use seems to cause a black screen upon launching that never changes, the app doesn’t even stop responding.

But disabling the plugin negates the black screen issue and installing the game onto my phone by running the generated install_PROJECTNAME.bat file works flawlessly (all tough it shows dated android UI during the installation process). But obviously this won’t do, as now the AAB is 87mb and won’t work after uploading. (the obb with all of it’s pak files exists in the same folder, but they’re not at all related to each other in this case i guess)

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So my questions are: What could be the possible causes for this?
how can I debug this?
are there any alternatives?
Is something outdated? (I’m assuming that because 4.27.2 is not being updated anymore)

Some info:

Minimum SDK version is 26.
Target SDK version is 34.
Using a Samsung S23 (Android 14) to test the game
Using android studio 4.0
Build configuration is set to Shipping.

I also saw somewhere that wrongly configured Keystore files/fingerprints/certificates are a common cause for this.

And I did notice that the SHA-1 certificate fingerprint for my key.keystore file and Client ID on the google cloud platform differs from the App signing Key certificate SHA-1 certificate fingerprint in the App signing section of the google developer console for my game, All tough I’m not sure if that’s a possible issue or if I’m working with outdated engine versions.

Here’s the SHA-1 for both the keystore file and the Client ID. Both start with EF.
image

The one in the google dev console starts with 8F.

image
image932×370 25.3 KB

This could be a leading problem, but I’m not certain.

I’m giving myself a 2 month deadline from now to fix this issue, and if I don’t, I’ll have to shelve the project because I’ve spent over a year on this project already and It’s not even fun working on it anymore because of issues like this. I’m this close, but there’s always that last obstacle.
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Any help or suggestion would of course be appreciated. I’d be very thankful.

2

I should also mention that I’m using install-time delivery for everything, so nothing has to be download at runtime after installation.

3

UPDATE:
I received a Pre-launch report from google today and all phones that were tested on were launched successfully into the main menu and were running Android SDK’s bellow 34.

My newer phone is a S23 (SDK 34), and it show’s a black screen.

I picked up a very dated S8 that i have (SDK 28) and it launched flawlesly. Some google play related issues, but that’s not the point.

The point is that phones with SDK 34 can’t launch my game that uses Google PAD.
Anything bellow, like SDK 33 does.
Got a friend who also has an S23 to try it, same thing.
Got a friend who has a phone with SDK 33, same results as with my S8. success.

So, now that there’s a general idea of what’s wrong, could anyone suggest if:

the Google PAD plugin for 4.27.2 is outdated and doesn’t work anymore on newer android versions?

or

there’s something wrong with the newer android version that refuse to communicate with the plugin?

I’d be very thankful for any given direction or clue as to which one is closer to the problem.

4

same problem have you founded solution ?

1 Like
5

solved
instead of google pad
use this plugin
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/play-services-play-asset-delivery

6

This has supposedly been fixed in 5.4.4
All tough I haven’t tried it since I’ve already canned my project.

0:24 It’s mentioned that all new apps you must update to 5.4.4 which includes android 14 compatibility with SDK 34.

Hope this helps someone.