What could be causing my scene to freeze in beginning?

jrobert

Hi!

Yesterday I was working on the first level scene of my platformer which has been working nicely. I didn't do anything special, only added some background elements and some collectibles - nothing that should affect anything very much.

However, when I next hit preview, nothing was suddenly working. The scene has freezed. It opens the initial view but doesn't spawn the character or play any animations - absolutely nothing is functioning.

I can't figure out what's causing this. I have run into situations where I've messed up some attributes or gestures, but usually the scene then loads tilted with something flickering over the screen. This one's different, it's just dead. I've been trying to eliminate it by taking away actors one by one, but nothing seems to help it.

Also this problem is only in this scene, others work like they did before.

What could be causing an issue like this? Is there a "freeze game" attribute that I've accidentally hit? Or did something just get tangled up under the hood?

It's not such a big deal if I have to compose the scene all over again, but I'm worried if this is something that GameSalad will do again. Has this happened to others? Or am I most likely missing something?

I'm working on a Mac with OS X Sierra.

Thanks for any input!
Jimmy

Japster

I've done this in the past, and I've found if some illegal (or unfinished) expressions are in there, the engine just stops at that point when running.

First and foremost, I'd advise disabling 'chunks' of newly-amended logic in any actors you might suspect, and, if you're pretty new to this - maybe even duplicate the scene to another scene (ALT-Drag in Scenes page of your project), set that scene as your active scene, then remove any suspect/complex logic actors until it fires up properly(ish) again...

Same goes for that other weird behaviour when trying to run your project (flickering screens, etc) - generally caused by illegal expressions or possibly dodgy timer etc timings, logic, etc...

Don't forget changing GAME attribute values (causing conditions to be executed that might contain the error(s), that may not have ran before) can cause the same sort of issues... - Done that before!

In short, don't panic just yet - I used to, until I realised it was always a stupid mistake with my logic, and narrowing down to it...

It might well be something different, but I've personally always been able to suss it out and figure out what bit of logic I added caused it, then smack my forehead...

jrobert

Thank you Japster! Turns out this is exactly the case, I had my jump through platforms set up with some bad logic. For some reason they worked so far though.

I'm slowly getting better at assuming it must be me instead of blaming the system.

Japster

@jrobert said:
Thank you Japster! Turns out this is exactly the case, I had my jump through platforms set up with some bad logic. For some reason they worked so far though.

I'm slowly getting better at assuming it must be me instead of blaming the system.

Excellent! - Glad to help, and of course, well done for tracking it down quickly - back on track - always a good feeling!

PS - Also, be wary of inadvertently double-clicking attributes in expressions, and missing that you've done it! - GS converts them to straight text when you do that - which looks fine outside of the expression editor, but which means nothing to GS, and will also cause your logic to fail... ...again, I've done this myself too, early on...