Need help with Menu and Code?

[celticknight]

Godot Version

4.2.2

Question

My question is quite complex, well, it is for me so I am hoping that seeing a code snippet from one of the functions and screenshot that things will become immediately apparent to someone more advanced than me (not very ). My mind is split a hundred different ways with things I need to fix, so, my mind cannot see what the problem might be. The code is following a tutorial that for some reason or another would not work the way it was, or, could not follow, so, was modified by me sometimes quite heavily.

The screenshot is this:

Now, the menu has been made to deliberately appear for testing purposes. Everything up to this point is fine. I can play the game albeit a bit hard with the menu , but, works. The Level Select Button really doesn’t do anything at this point. The quit button works fine, however, it is the Retry button doesn’t not work at all. I have marked out in the code with comments which code does NOT work.

this is the code:

#----------------------------------------------------------
# --  btn functions on user interface  --
#----------------------------------------------------------
func retry_btn():
	print("game manager - retry button");
	game_over_menu.set_control(false); #does not work
	
	await ui_fade.fade_to_black();
	
	#do restart/retry we need to:
	#1. unload the level
	#2. reload the level with a variables stored in the File.data script
	#first: is easy just queue.free() level1 from memory
	level1.queue_free();
	#second: Next reload same level
	#what a novel idea
	File.data.retry();
	#	turn 'resource' into a node that can be loaded into Godot
	#	aha now we change this and add the level we need
	#   level1 = load("res://Level/level_1-1.tscn").instantiate();
	level1 = load("res://Level/level_"+ str(File.data.world) + "-" +str(File.data.level) + ".tscn").instantiate();
	add_child(level1);
	spawn_player();
	
	#if I do this here: player can't be re-enabled below
	player.set_enabled(false); # turn off player control so roger can't move

	jolly_roger.roger_revive();# revive character - set w/ 3 lives (no it doesn't)
	#added
	ui.collect_coin();		#supposed to set UI coins, does not
	ui.update_skulls();		#supposed to set UI lives, does not
	
	await ui_fade.fade_to_clear();
	#turn controls back on doesn not work
	player.set_enabled(true);
	
	#pass 

So when I hit the retry button is hit it loads the level as specified, but, the UI/HUD does not update, the menu does not disappear and player movement is completely disabled, it doesn’t get re-enabled as per the code although the fades do work.

And should I hit the Retry button again the game crashes with this error:

So, I’m lost. I’m almost sure that the problem come with the loading of the level1, but, I do not know enough about this sort of thing.

Any help, any help at all would be greatly appreciated!

Regards.

[herrspaten]

What are the children of the level1-scene? and what is the parent of the player and the ui?
If you queue_free() a node you also queue_free() all their children

[celticknight]

Good question. This are all the contents of the level1 scene and there are a LOT of them especially things like in the decorations:

[herrspaten]

DO you add the player as a child of level_1?

[celticknight]

Sorry, for the late reply, life decided that it really wanted to get in the way …

This is something that I should’ve sent as part of the question but totally forgot to mention, there is a “Game Scene”, the master scene that controls everything in a general sense that has the player script “Jolly Roger” along with a player script don’t ask, I didn’t write the tutorial, anyway, this adds the level1 scene. Here:

So, what I think is happening, think, is that the Level 1 scene is being destroyed and then when ‘reloading’ it is having trouble finding everything, in particular the User Interface also in Level1 (with the prefix ‘ui’) and that is why things aren’t updating and in the end causing the crash. Do you think that this would be the case of the problems. If so, I could load that User Interface into the master scene, with a whole host of other problems. Or, do you think it could be something else

[celticknight]

Another thing I have just found it that if I hit the “Retry” button first to reload the screen and the the “Quit” button I get this error:

To quote Rachel Zegler, weird!

[herrspaten]

you have to reassign your ui when you load the level again since its also a new ui

[celticknight]

@herrspaten

you have to reassign your ui

I am not sure what you mean by reassign. Would you please explain this a little?

[herrspaten]

When you queue_free your level, your ui also gets queued_free.
This leads to your reference of ui in your game-scene to be “null”.
That means you have to set the value of the “ui”-property again when you reload the level. e.g.:

	level1 = load("res://Level/level_"+ str(File.data.world) + "-" +str(File.data.level) + ".tscn").instantiate();
	add_child(level1);
    ui = level1.ui

The same is for all the properties you have referencing something in the level1-scene

[celticknight]

@herrspaten

That means you have to set the value of the “ui”-property again when you reload the level.

Okay, wow … that throws a real spanner into the works!

@herrspaten

ui = level1.ui

I tried what you suggested with the code above and the game crashed at that line. Then I went through and changed all the previously set onready vars with this, to ‘see’ if it would work:

	level1 = load("res://Level/level_"+ str(File.data.world) + "-" +str(File.data.level) + ".tscn").instantiate();
	add_child(level1);
	#ui = level1.ui;
	
	ui 				= $"Level_1-1/user_interface"
	ui_fade 		= $"Level_1-1/user_interface/Fade"
	health 			= $"Level_1-1/user_interface/health_gauge"
	game_over_menu	= $"Level_1-1/user_interface/game_over_menu"

And no good! I accidentally got hit by an enemy after pushing the retry and the hero code crashed when it accessed the UI code for the health gauge.

So, it looks like I will need to factor out the UI scene and put it in as part of the “Game Master” scene as I call it and see if that works - I’m optimistic that it will - but I’ve been wrong many times . Otherwise, it’s start over from scratch time .

Thanks for the help. Without you I would still be scratching my head wondering what to do.

Regards.

[herrspaten]

Theres also the option to not delete the level and instantiate it new, but to have a reset-method that resets everything inside the level

[celticknight]

That’s an interesting option - really interesting . Unfortunately it’s a little above my current paygrade. I will be making a backup so if what I am doing fails (still somewhat optimistic), I will be able to come back to it and try and learn a little more about it.

Thankyou greatly for responding. It’s been a big help .

Cheers.

[celticknight]

Just to let anyone whose interested know.

I did the conversion of the user_interface scene and script and it went “incredibly” smoothly. There were 22 instances of the scene that needed changing, but, after I found all of them it worked first go. I mean I was feeling somewhat optimistic, but, I thought I would take at least of couple of hours of tinkering.

Anyway, crisis solved.

Regards.