I'm slowly putting together another game and right now, I'm experiencing the weirdest bug I've seen yet! At first I thought it was a problem with how I was using std::map, but I've moved added a single line of code (call to a function), and now the code fails trying to call a constructor of a class.
Here's the basic rundown in the code:
bool Level::SpawnEntity(std::string scriptname, Vector2D& pos)
{
static unsigned int lastID = 0;
Entity* ent = new Entity(mLog); // After I added SpawnEntity to the Update function, this line started failing
if(!ent->Spawn(mImageHeap, scriptname, pos))
{
mLog->PrintError("Entity " + scriptname + " failed to load.\n\n");
mLog->WriteToFile();
return false;
}
std::cout << ent << std::endl;
mEntityList.insert( std::pair<unsigned int, Entity*>(lastID++, ent));
return true;
}
int Level::Update()
{
const float frameTime = 1000/30;
sf::Clock frameCounter;
Vector2D pos(0.0,0.0);
SpawnEntity("default", pos); // I have added this line to double check that only certain functions in std::map fail
// I broke down the for loop into separate pieces to check where the code fails
std::cout << "Counter Reset\n";
std::map<unsigned int, Entity*>::iterator it = mEntityList.begin(); // and it turns out it failed here, but I tried calling size() as well and that failed also
std::cout << "iterator initialized\n";
while(it == mEntityList.end()) {
std::cout << "iteration\n";
(*it).second->ResetCounter();
std::cout << "next iteration\n";
it++;
}
// I have yet to reach any of the code below
}
Now I honestly have no idea what to do. Can anyone give me an idea as to where to go from here?
If the code tends to break when you first touch a member of the class, it could indicate that the Level instance you are calling Update() on is invalid. Perhaps it has been deleted, or was never initialised to begin with. Worst case scenario you have memory corruption, and some other code could be writing over your class and invalidating its map.
Other than that, you haven't really explained the problem in enough detail. What does "it failed" mean? Did you get a runtime error? If so, what was the exact text of the error? Or were you expecting behaviour X, but observed behaviour Y? If so, be detailed about what behaviour X and Y consist of.
One way to debug really weird errors is to make a minimal example program that demonstrates the problem. Copy your code somewhere else, and start eliminating irrelevant code. Comment out the code bit by bit until it goes from failing to working, or until you have a short, one file program that succinctly shows the problems.
If you get it working, you can comment in the code you had just removed, and do a binary search by commenting out portions of that code until you get down to a few lines that isolate the problem. If you don't get it working, it should be down to a small program that you can paste here that we can compile and run and help you with.
Wow, you guys are pros if I ever saw any. It turns out I was calling functions of a null pointer. It would have never come to my mind that such thing could happen. Turns out that when I created a Level instance I forgot to actually do anything with the pointer so I was calling the member functions on a bogus instance. I find it a little odd that the code didn't crash at calling the Update function but rather fails at trying to call functions from inside the Update functions.
Check out this article. It explains not only how your crash happened precisely the way it did, but how we're able to figure out what's going wrong without even seeing the error message ;-)
Cool thanks! I've actually seen the article before but obviously I haven't quite learned anything from it. I'll be sure to take notes this time around ^.^
