Saved information being overwritten very selectively?

Help
,
1

Godot Version

4.2.2

Question

Hi!
I’ve been working in godot for a few months now on a personal project, and I’ve recently started to use custom resources to contain possible data for things like Items and NPCs. For the NPCs I’ve got a generic CrewMember resource with arrays of possible names and stats etc. as well as a function which picks things at random and passes them back to a script as a dictionary. Perhaps this isn’t quite how resources are meant to be used, but I’ve already got save/loading working with dictionaries, so I wanted to stick with that.

Weird thing though. As I save the data to my crew dictionary, one of the entries of data gets overwritten (“stats”), not all of the entries in the dictionary, just this one that is a dictionary itself. Every time I roll a new character and save that data to the crew dictionary, the new “stats” overwrites all other characters stats.

Does this have something to do with Resources? Dictionaries? I have this working via a class with arrays of possible data, but switching it to a resource seems to have done something weird. Any insight would be appreciated, or I’ll have to switch back to my old, less-flexible method.

The Function for reference, and it’s printout:

func new_crew(num : int):
	#Create new characters in the amount indicated
	for i in num:
		var crew_member_data = crew_resource.create_character()
		crew_member_data["order"] = str(i)
		var new_name = crew_member_data["name"]
		_characters_SAVE[new_name] = crew_member_data
		print(new_name)
		print("resource ", crew_member_data) # This is correct!
		for key in _characters_SAVE:
			print("saved  : ", _characters_SAVE[key]) # This is correct UNTIL a new character is added, and then it's only correct for the newest character.

McNameFace
resource { "name": "McNameFace", "pronouns": 2, "role": 1, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 0, "StatB": 1, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 0 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "0" }
saved  : { "name": "McNameFace", "pronouns": 2, "role": 1, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 0, "StatB": 1, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 0 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "0" }
Dr. Name
resource { "name": "Dr. Name", "pronouns": 3, "role": 0, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonA.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "1" }
saved  : { "name": "McNameFace", "pronouns": 2, "role": 1, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "0" }
saved  : { "name": "Dr. Name", "pronouns": 3, "role": 0, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonA.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "1" }
Namesdottir
resource { "name": "Namesdottir", "pronouns": 1, "role": 8, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 0, "StatB": 1, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 0 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "2" }
saved  : { "name": "McNameFace", "pronouns": 2, "role": 1, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 0, "StatB": 1, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 0 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "0" }
saved  : { "name": "Dr. Name", "pronouns": 3, "role": 0, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonA.png", "stats": { "StatA": 0, "StatB": 1, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 0 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "1" }
saved  : { "name": "Namesdottir", "pronouns": 1, "role": 8, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 0, "StatB": 1, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 0 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "2" }
Namey
resource { "name": "Namey", "pronouns": 1, "role": 7, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "3" }
saved  : { "name": "McNameFace", "pronouns": 2, "role": 1, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "0" }
saved  : { "name": "Dr. Name", "pronouns": 3, "role": 0, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonA.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "1" }
saved  : { "name": "Namesdottir", "pronouns": 1, "role": 8, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "2" }
saved  : { "name": "Namey", "pronouns": 1, "role": 7, "icon": "res://Icons/buttonB.png", "stats": { "StatA": 1, "StatB": 0, "StatC": 0, "StatD": 0, "StatE": 1 }, "scores": {  }, "order": "3" }
2

What is wrong? The prints make sense, what do you expect to happen?

3

Can you show the code that actually creates the stats? I’m wondering if they’re all ending up with a reference to the same dictionary, which then gets edited each time a new character is added.

4

Here is the Resource script, which is called as ‘crew_resource.create_character’. I think what you’re saying sounds right, but I can’t track down how it’s happening, since I redefine the variable ‘new_stats’ each time. Also it works fine for the other parameters, role, icon, pronouns etc, so I don’t understand why just the stats are holding some a reference but not the others?

extends Resource

enum E_PRONOUNS {RANDOM, SHE, HE, THEY}
enum E_ROLE {RANDOM, ASTRONOMER, POLITICIAN, CEO, INVENTOR, BIOLOGIST, COLONIST, CIVILIAN, PIRATE, COMPANION}

var ICONS = ["res://Icons/button1.png", "res://Icons/button2.png", "res://Icons/button3.png", "res://Icons/buttonA.png", "res://Icons/buttonB.png"]

@export_category("Details")
@export var name : Array[String]
@export var pronouns : E_PRONOUNS
@export var role : E_ROLE
var icon 
var stats = {"StatA" : 0, "StatB" : 0, "StatC" : 0, "StatD" : 0, "StatE" : 0}
var stats_range = [0, 1]

func create_character():
	var new_stats = stats
	for key in new_stats:
		new_stats[key] = stats_range.pick_random()
		
	var new_role = role
	if role == E_ROLE.RANDOM:
		new_role = E_ROLE.values().pick_random()
		
	var new_pronouns = pronouns
	if pronouns == E_PRONOUNS.RANDOM:
		new_pronouns = E_PRONOUNS.values().pick_random()
	
	var unique_name
	if name.size() != 1:
		var i = randi_range(0, name.size() - 1)
		unique_name = name[i]
		name.pop_at(i)
	else:
		unique_name = name[0]
		
	var data_out = {
		"name" : unique_name,
		"pronouns" :new_pronouns,
		"role" : new_role,
		"icon" : ICONS.pick_random(),
		"stats" : new_stats,
		"scores" : {}
	}
	return data_out
5

Yeah, so, dictionaries are passed by reference, so new_stats = stats just means that new_stats becomes a reference to the same dictionary as stats. You can get around this by doing new_stats = stats.duplicate()

2 Likes
6

That makes sense, thank you sooooo much!

7

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.