Problems with conditions

MPCav

Hello, can anyone help me with this? I'm starting to get desperate! This is a re-post of a post I made in the 0.9.7 update thread.

After eagerly downloading GS 0.9.7 I can report that the issues which were introduced into my game in 0.9.6 are STILL THERE.

However I can report that from using the debugger, it seems to be a problem which I cannot fix.

Here is the issue

I set a global variable, which is picked up within a condition in another actor. This triggers most of the time, but sometimes it does not, which breaks my game. I put a log debug command in to check the variable was being set - it was being set. I also put another log debug variable within the condition, so that I could test it was being triggered. Most of the time, when the condition triggered, it logged the correct debug information. When the bug occured, the condition was not being triggered, even though the variable was being correctly set.

I am a loss about this now. I have been working full time on this project for 5 months now, but have not been able to progress for the last 3 weeks due to this issue (and other issues that I suspect are related, but I have yet to investigate them with the debugger).

For me at lest, this is turning out to be a terribly costly situation. I can ill afford a week out, never mind a couple of months, and I suspect it will be several weeks before a fix is issued. I did notice on one of the posts about GameSalad 0.9.6 that both timers and attributes were 'broken'. I saw no mention of a fix to these issues in the release notes.

Apologies if this is posted in the wrong place, I just hope it reaches the right people.

gyroscope

Hi, sorry to hear you've got probs; Timers can be a bit iffy sometimes but in the main, they're fine. Not sure how you've used the Timers with reference to your attributes; and I've not heard of any problems associated with attributes...

It seems to me that if your Rules are working 60, 70, 80% of the time, then there's not a bug as such; I'm guessing that your Rules are quite complex, maybe somewhere, sometimes, something else (another attribute) is triggering the global variable (attribute)?

Another possibility - though I guess this is a long-shot and doesn't sound applicable here - is that one of your game/scene attributes isn't the correct type? Or you've a scene attribute when you need a game.attibute somewhere?

Difficult to help without seeing your Rules. I hope you get it sorted soon - and keep your faith in GS!

PS with respect, it's probably best to speak GS terms rather than traditional programming terms; myself - and others perhaps - might be able to help a bit faster without having to "translate", if you get my meaning! ;-)

MPCav

Hi there, thanks for the reply. It's not timers that are the problem it's conditions. to better explain the problem:

I have a variable (boolean) called "BigRockDestroyed"

and a condition:

When BigRockDestroyed
LogDebugStatement <print the variable BigRockDestroyed>
// following this, the code which spawns the actors, which is irrelevant to this example

Also I have another LogDebugStatement which prints the status of BigRockDestroyed

Most of the time it works. The big rock is destroyed and the correct actors are spawned. Happy days. About 3/4 times the actors are not spawned. When this happens, the debug log text is not printed either. This means that the condition is - for some reason - not triggering.

I've not changed this behaviour for months, however this issue (and others involving a much more complicated embedded condition) appeared from the very moment I ran 0.9.6.

Any help appreciated, however I suspect that this is an issue with gamesalad itself. Fingers crossed that someone will have an idea that will help me though.

MPCav

sorry a mistake there, about 3/4 times the actors ARE spawned

gyroscope

So your condition:
When BigRockDestroyed is true?
Spawn actor(s)

Do you then use - straight after the spawning (or possibly even after "When BigRockDestroyed is true"), a change attribute BigRockDestroyed back to false?

MPCav

Nope.

However I have just noticed that with every re-start of my level, my memory usage goes up by about 5mb. Additionally I don't think that I have seen this problem on a 'clean boot' of my game... although I will have to keep looking out for this to prove.

gyroscope

gyroscope said:
So your condition:
When BigRockDestroyed is true?
Spawn actor(s)

MPCav said:
Nope.

MPCav said:

I have a variable (boolean) called "BigRockDestroyed"

and a condition:

When BigRockDestroyed
LogDebugStatement <print the variable BigRockDestroyed>
// following this, the code which spawns the actors, which is irrelevant to this example

Then sorry, I don't understand.

MPCav

No worries, thanks for trying.

I'm wondering if there is anyone at GS that I can contact directly, perhaps even send them my GS project for debugging?

Krogothic

I can only offer basic advice on how I would trouble shoot this. I would make actors to display the spawn counts, times destroyed and monitor them on screen, also anything that can effect the trigger.

What device are you testing on ? I do not count the viewer as a good testing platform as there is some many bugs with randoms, timers, and spawns its really a joke.

I just do a beta build and test it out bugs that the viewer has does not seem to show up on the devices.

As far as actors spawning for me it does seem to be working fine and i have about 84 different spawns, (does not work well in viewer works prolly 60-80% of the time but on the device it never misses.)

If you have to have actors displaying all the variables on screen while you play and track it down your self.

Last option besides trying to pay someone here, is to offer a beta test and see how it performs under different device.

I hope this help a little )

Good Luck

Krogothic

MPCav

Hi there

I'm testing on iPhone, a 3g iPod, iPad and viewer. All exhibit the same behavior. I am not actually spawning anything as everything in my game is re-cycled.

When a round re-starts, everything re-loads. I just left it running with the AI continuously winning matches. The memory usage for the game went up to 205.6mb and then the iPhone crashed.

MPCav

Ah apologies I did not take in your post properly at first Krogothic. I have been using the viewer on all devices, yeah. I will give a debug build a try and post my findings.

MPCav

Unfortunately, the problems are still present in the ad-hoc build of the game ;(

MPCav

Thanks for the help chaps, it's much appreciated even if we have not fixed the problem yet you have all been very supportive.

Is there a GS dev who can shed some light on this?

MPCav

hi there,

I've just downloaded 0.9.7.1 and this issue is still there. Is there anyone from the GS dev team that can help me out with this? It's causing me a real headache with the development of my game, and there seems to be nothing I can do!

MPCav

I've just ran a very old version of my project (from about 4 months ago). This project was pretty much the core gameplay and when I set it up it was working flawlessly. Because I make incremental backups, this file has not been changed.

This issue is still occuring, even in this build. I really need a solution to this - the livelyhood of my family depends on me bringing this game to store and at the moment, it does not look like it will happen.

I need help badly. I have paid for pro membership, where is the 'priority support'? is there a different channel I should be using or something?

MPCav

Is anyone else having similar issues?

MPCav

If anyone else is having the problem detailed in this post, could you please reply to this thread?

I'm worried that I may be the only person with this issue!

http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=30333&replies=16#post-225869