Possible bug with let_me_alone function

Hi,

I've noticed a possible bug with let_me_alone function. In many of my games, when I finish a level (or user wants to go back to main menu) I execute let_me_alone() process in order to kill all running processes and load next level (or main menu level).

In some cases, after running let_me_alone process and running debugger I see a negative number of running processes. This makes next "frame" command to exit game (I guess is because it has an inconsistent number of processes to render). I attach some screenshots. I'll try to create a sample program to reproduce the error. I detected It running New-Pacman game (http://div-arena.co.uk/forum2/viewthread.php?tid=151) by:

1) Ener 1st level
2) Play a while until pacman shield disappears
3) Open debugger and add a break at "menu_principal" process
4) Hit "Esc" key to go back to main menu
5) You'll see negative processes and when rendering next frame program crashes

I'm compiling games with latest nightly build under Windows 7.

Any help will be appreciated!

Thanks

Josep

Hi Josep

From what I can see, the let_me_alone is inside a function - functions by their very nature are self terminating and are used to grab quick pieces of information/return certain results rather than keeping on running in the background, so what's likely happening is your function there is self terminating and then there's nothing to keep the program running. If you use let_me_alone inside a process with a Loop and Frame you should be fine

As the documentation states, stop_scroll sends a kill signal to all its inner processes. The same is done by let_me_alone procedure, but for all processes except the one who calls it. It seems there's a conflict between these two calls which returns a negative number of processes (maybe counts scroll process delete twice), and DIV DX fails when you start the process which returns the process counter back to 0.

The workaround for this code (in my case) was to run only stop_scroll and call let_me_alone only before an exclusive process (like rendering a new level or showing main menu).

Even though I made it work, this is an issue related to stop_scroll or let_me_alone. One of those two functions (when called sequentially) decreases process counter below 0 and should be fixed to avoid further errors. Hope this gives you enough info for the fix.

I'll be glad to help if you need further info!!