Hello, I'm having a rather strange bug. I'm making puzzle game.

When the game starts(PlayState) for the first time  pieces are indeed correctly placed, but after that sometimes they appear fine and most of the time only half of each piece is present ( I'm composing them out of 2 rectangles). The other parts appear at coordinates like this : Part2: X[1] : 842150923, Y[1]: 842150691. It happens even if I don' t use rand().

I'm using a state machine:

PlayState can go to:

    - pause state

PauseState can go to:

 - Resume

- Main Menu stateMain

MenuState can go to:

- PlayState

- Exit

I'm following a  book "SDL Game Development" by Shaun Mitchell (btw It's full of bugs).

bool PlayState::onEnter() {
  
    int left_x = 600 + (rand() % static_cast<int>(750 - 600 + 1));
    int left_y = 500 + (rand() % static_cast<int>(500 - 100 + 1));
    Vec2 dimension = Vec2(100, 200);
    int right_x = left_x + 100;
    int right_y = left_y;
    Vec2 dimension_2 = Vec2(100, 200);
    SDL_Color color1 = { 255, 0, 0, 0 };
    Piece* piece = new Piece(Vec2(left_x, left_y), Vec2(right_x, right_y), dimension, dimension_2, color1);
  // Piece 2
    int i_left_x = 600 + (rand() % static_cast<int>(750 - 600 + 1));
    int i_left_y = 500 + (rand() % static_cast<int>(500 - 100 + 1));
    Vec2 dimension_i1 = Vec2(100, 100);
    int i_right_x = i_left_x;
    int i_right_y = i_left_y + 100;
    Vec2 dimension_i2 = Vec2(100, 100);
    SDL_Color color3 = { 0, 0, 255, 0 };
    Piece* piece3 = new Piece(Vec2(i_left_x, i_left_y), Vec2(i_right_x, i_right_y), dimension_i1, dimension_i2, color3);
  // and so on until I have 7 pieces.


}
// ...
void PlayState::update() {
    if (InputHandler::Instance()->isKeyDown(SDL_SCANCODE_ESCAPE)) {
        Game::Instance()->getStateMachine()->pushState(new PauseState());
    }

   for (unsigned int i = 0; i < m_pieces.size(); i++){
           m_pieces[i]->update();
}

The issue occurs when I go from  MainMenuState to PlayState after PauseState.

I'll provide additional  info if needed. Thanks in advance.

are they initialized? they might be getting initialized with (seemingly) random data

Well I'm using constructor like this:

    Piece(): 
        m_position(Vec2(0,0)),m_position2(Vec2(0,0)),
        m_dimension(Vec2(0, 0)), m_dimension2(Vec2(0,0)), 
        offset(Vec2(0,0)), offset2(Vec2(0,0)) {}

My c++ is quite bad so I'm 100% missing something.

Are you cleaning up your heap allocations when changing states, or preserving them for later? That could be causing some sort of issue, but it's hard to tell with the limited code posted. Try posting the other two states too? Also, why are you static casting an int to an int?

Code you posted seems fine at first sight, 842150923 is 0x3232340b in hex, which is not near any limit. Since it's not happening at first, I am going with accessing non-existing data (eg accessing a piece after it got deleted).

For example, in your m_pieces vector, do you remove anything from it? If you do, do you delete the data (not related to this bug, but important to do right)? Do you ensure you cannot access that old data any more?

As a test, you could fill all values of a piece with a known and unused value just before you remove it, and then remove the piece (eg in a destructor). Since those values are in removed data, you should never find them in your live data. If you find those values in your live data, you know what the problem is. Sadly, if you don't find those values, it does not mean you don't have this problem.

Code-wise, how you remove and add a piece to m_pieces could be interesting, along with how you decide which elements contain live data, although your PlayState::update suggests everything in the vector is live data.

You could consider posting the code eg at github or some other site, which works better for larger code bases.

Edit: 842150691 is 0x32323323, which also has lots of 2 and 3s. Maybe it's text? http://www.asciitable.com/

thus  0x32323323 -> 32 32 33 23 -> "223#"

           0x3232340b -> 32 32 34 0b -> "224." (0b is not a printable character)

So yeah, garbage data you're reading, likely from a previous program that used that memory

1 hour ago, cmac said:

Are you cleaning up your heap allocations when changing states, or preserving them for later? That could be causing some sort of issue, but it's hard to tell with the limited code posted. Try posting the other two states too? Also, why are you static casting an int to an int?

Well I'm calling clear on vector that holds data.

bool PlayState::onExit() {
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < m_pieces.size(); i++) {
        m_pieces[i]->clean(); // doesn't do anything. It's empty void function 
        m_pieces[i]->setOffset(Vec2(0, 0));
    }
    m_pieces.clear();
    std::cout<<"Exiting playState\n"<<std::endl;
    return true;

  
 // Here is state machine I'm Using 
  #include "InputHandler.h"

void GameStateMachine::pushState(GameState* pState) {
    m_gameStates.push_back(pState);
    m_gameStates.back()->onEnter();
}

void GameStateMachine::popState() {
    if (!m_gameStates.empty()) {
        if (m_gameStates.back()->onExit()) {
            delete m_gameStates.back();
            m_gameStates.pop_back();
        }
    }
}

void GameStateMachine::changeState(GameState* pState) {
    if (!m_gameStates.empty()) {
        if (m_gameStates.back()->getStateID() == pState->getStateID()) {
            return;
        }
        if (m_gameStates.back()->getIsValid()) {
            m_gameStates.back()->setIsValid(false); // Mark the state as invalid
        }
    }
    
    m_gameStates.push_back(pState);
    m_gameStates.back()->onEnter();
}

void GameStateMachine::update(){
    if (!m_gameStates.empty()) {
          m_gameStates.back()->update();
    }
}
void GameStateMachine::render() {
    if (!m_gameStates.empty()) {
        m_gameStates.back()->render();
    }
}

void GameStateMachine::dequeState() {
    if (!m_gameStates.empty()) {
        // If the state is invalid we proceed to dequeue the state
        if (!m_gameStates[0]->getIsValid() && m_gameStates[0]->onExit()) {
            delete m_gameStates[0];
            m_gameStates.erase(m_gameStates.begin());

            // Reset the Input handler buttons state
            // This line is extremely important, fixes an issue with the "State traveling"
            // when a button is in the position of another button in another state
            // this will prevent the accident of traveling 2 states with 1 click.
            InputHandler::Instance()->reset();
        }
    }
}
// Here is the call from MainMenuState 
  void MainMenuState::s_menuToPlay() {
    std::cout << "Play button clicked\n"<<std::endl;
    Game::Instance()->getStateMachine()->changeState(new PlayState());
}

bool MainMenuState::onExit() {
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < m_buttons.size(); i++) {
        m_buttons[i]->clean();
    }
    m_buttons.clear();
    TextureManager::Instance()->clearFromTextureMap("playbutton");
    TextureManager::Instance()->clearFromTextureMap("exitbutton");

    std::cout << "Exiting menu state\n"<<std::endl;
    return true;
}

As for the static cast, I saw post on stackoverflow, since I thought rand was causing the issue. I changed that part of code.

Read up on memory management; clearing the vector causes the pointer to go out of scope, but the data is never deleted, resulting in a memory leak.

Overall though read Alberth's post in detail, seems like he nailed the problem down.

1 hour ago, Alberth said:

Code you posted seems fine at first sight, 842150923 is 0x3232340b in hex, which is not near any limit. Since it's not happening at first, I am going with accessing non-existing data (eg accessing a piece after it got deleted).

For example, in your m_pieces vector, do you remove anything from it? If you do, do you delete the data (not related to this bug, but important to do right)? Do you ensure you cannot access that old data any more?

As a test, you could fill all values of a piece with a known and unused value just before you remove it, and then remove the piece (eg in a destructor). Since those values are in removed data, you should never find them in your live data. If you find those values in your live data, you know what the problem is. Sadly, if you don't find those values, it does not mean you don't have this problem.

Code-wise, how you remove and add a piece to m_pieces could be interesting, along with how you decide which elements contain live data, although your PlayState::update suggests everything in the vector is live data.

 

You could consider posting the code eg at github or some other site, which works better for larger code bases.

 

Edit: 842150691 is 0x32323323, which also has lots of 2 and 3s. Maybe it's text? http://www.asciitable.com/

thus  0x32323323 -> 32 32 33 23 -> "223#"

           0x3232340b -> 32 32 34 0b -> "224." (0b is not a printable character)

So yeah, garbage data you're reading, likely from a previous program that used that memory

 

I do have code on github(I've fucked up code so many times in the past ) : https://github.com/Dzuvan/Puzzle

Well I'm gonna try to test it the way you described, thanks.

Yeah everything in that vector si live data. I'm only handling pieces in PlayState.

Hi guys, I managed to fix the problem.

State machine was the culprit here. Changing state from pause to main menu didn't remove play state from stack. Once i  poped the  state while going to main menu problem went away.

Thank you all.