Editor incorrectly allows triggers in looping events

[anonymouskingBR]

I was having a problem in Construct 3 that simply wouldn’t let me see the debug properly. Every time I opened debug in new projects, it would stay at 0 FPS. However, if I opened one of my older projects, the FPS would be normal in debug mode. This only happened in debug, the preview ran normally.

I had already tried clearing cookies, restarting my computer, testing three different browsers, and even using a different PC with Windows 11 (mine is Windows 10), but the problem still happened in the same way. Scirra’s help templates like “Turret Defense” worked normally at 60 FPS in debug mode. I thought about putting my assets into that template to test it, and just by adding my assets and code, the debug dropped to 0 FPS.

Then someone on the Construct server told me that debug shows 0 FPS if nothing is moving on the screen. So I added three small squares moving with a sine behavior while there wasn’t much happening, and it worked (showing 60 FPS).

BUT in my current game, every time I press “1”, it respawns an enemy that already starts moving in a direction. In preview, this enemy respawns and moves normally. But in debug mode, at the moment it respawns, it moves a little and then the debug freezes, going back to 0 FPS.

I would like to know why my debug behaves like this.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eBhWW2sEd7smfWkPhcxlr5CDh-wxzWuA?usp=drive_link

Steps to reproduce

1. Open debug mode
2. Press 1 to respawn the enemy
3. It will move a bit and then debug mode freezes

Observed result

The enemy will move a bit and then debug mode freezes

Expected result

The enemy moves on the left and the game runs like preview mode

All additional details are included in the project.

Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge

I tested it on version r397 (the one I use) and on the latest version.

System details

View details

Platform information

Product: Construct 3 r397 (stable)
Browser: Firefox 148.0
Browser engine: Gecko
Context: browser
Operating system: Windows 10
Device type: desktop
Device pixel ratio: 1
Logical CPU cores: 12
Approx. device memory: (unavailable)
User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:148.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/148.0
Language setting: en-US
Local storage

Storage quota (approx): 56 gb
Storage usage (approx): 3.9 gb (7%)
Persistant storage: Yes
Browser support notes

This list contains missing features that are not required, but could improve performance or user experience if supported.

WebGL information

Version string: WebGL 2.0
Numeric version: 2
Supports NPOT textures: yes
Supports GPU profiling: no
Supports highp precision: yes
Vendor: Google Inc. (AMD)
Renderer: ANGLE (AMD, Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0), or similar
Major performance caveat: no
Maximum texture size: 16384
Point size range: 1 to 1024
Extensions:

EXT_color_buffer_float
EXT_float_blend
EXT_texture_compression_bptc
EXT_texture_compression_rgtc
EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
OES_draw_buffers_indexed
OES_texture_float_linear
OVR_multiview2
WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc
WEBGL_compressed_texture_s3tc_srgb
WEBGL_debug_renderer_info
WEBGL_debug_shaders
WEBGL_lose_context
WEBGL_provoking_vertex

Audio information

System sample rate: 48000 Hz
Output channels: 2
Output interpretation: speakers
Supported decode formats:

WebM Opus (audio/webm;codecs=opus)
WebM Vorbis (audio/webm;codecs=vorbis)
MPEG-4 Opus (audio/mp4;codecs=opus)
MPEG-4 AAC (audio/mp4;codecs=mp4a.40.2)
MP3 (audio/mpeg)
FLAC (audio/flac)
PCM WAV (audio/wav;codecs=1)

Supported encode formats:

WebM Opus (audio/webm;codecs=opus)

Video information

Supported decode formats:

WebM AV1 (video/webm;codecs=av01.0.00M.08)
WebM VP9 (video/webm;codecs=vp9)
WebM VP8 (video/webm;codecs=vp8)
MPEG-4 AV1 (video/mp4;codecs=av01.0.00M.08)
MPEG-4 VP9 (video/mp4;codecs=vp9)
MPEG-4 H.264 (video/mp4;codecs=avc1.420034)

Supported encode formats:

WebM VP8 (video/webm;codecs=vp8)

[DiegoScirra]

@AshleyScirra

The debugger is throwing Error: trigger cannot be used as sub-event to a loop. That should be blocked in the editor, right? It sounds like it doesn't make sense to have a trigger inside of a loop.

[anonymouskingBR]

Well, I removed the trigger and it really fixed it. I don’t know how I didn’t notice that before. Thank you very much!

[AshleyScirra]

Yeah, the real problem here is it's crashing due to a trigger being placed inside a looping condition. This is not a valid setup (there is no way to run such events). The editor should prevent that - IIRC these restrictions are actually very tricky to implement correctly which is probably why it's not been done yet, but I'll leave this issue open for that.

[F3der1co]

There is also the case where "fake" triggers can be used perfectly fine in loops and I have seen some project with events like that. While I'm not a fan of triggers in loops, disallowing it could break these projects.

[AshleyScirra]

Ah, maybe that's why we haven't done it yet - if it's not backwards compatible it's going to be very tricky to implement, and possibly so difficult it's not worth the trouble. Maybe we could impose the restriction for genuine triggers and leave "fake" triggers allowed. This will seem inconsistent as the UI makes no distinction between the two and so it will look like some things are allowed and others are disallowed arbitrarily, but that would still be better than breaking existing projects.

[DinoSystem]

I'm fine with my (massive) project broken for fixing an issue, as long as the new C3 version allows me to see exactly which events should be changed to overcome the new restriction.