I need help fixing some bugs at runtime.

[Mr. Beam]

So I hit Play, and this happens:

c:\Users\Kurt\Desktop\GameDevTools\MiniKid\Sprites\MiniKid.cs(74,14) : error CS1501: No overload for method 'IsInputPressed' takes 1 arguments
c:\Users\Kurt\Desktop\GameDevTools\MiniKid\GameForm.cs(118,7) : warning CS0618: 'System.Windows.Forms.Form.AutoScale' is obsolete: 'This property has been deprecated. Use the AutoScaleMode property instead.  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=14202'

How Do I fix them? Thanks in advance.

[durnurd]

Open up your "MiniKid" sprite definition, open up the Rules tab, and find a rule that calls "IsInputPressed" and make sure both parameters (Input and InitialOnly) are filled in.

Perhaps another feature that could be added is verification of rules in plans and sprites by the IDE so it's easier to find issues.  Like, highlight sprites and plans with bad rules in red, and when you open them, highlight the specific rules in red that are not filled in correctly.  Or some way to automatically jump to broken rules, or something.

[Vincent]

Wow durnurd, highlighting elements that fail to compile in the IDE is a great idea!!!

That would make things so much easier for newcomers!  I wonder if it's a lot of work to implement...

[bluemonkmn]

The complicated part is figuring out which sprite or plan rule was generated for a particular line of source code where the error occurred, but if I generated a map at the same time I'm generating the code, I could look it up quickly and easily then if errors occurred during compile... hmmm... :nerd:
I'm not sure if there's a way to generate that map, though.  The code generator uses the .NET framework to generate code from the rules, and I'm not sure if it tells me which lines of generated code are associated with which objects that I gave it.  Still worth investigating, though.

[durnurd]

I looked through it just a bit, but couldn't find anything immediately useful.  One thing I thought of was that it does give the line number, so you could use the generator to generate code for each object individually and compare the output of the generator to the content of the line number given.  Presumably a "Contains" would be sufficient and broad enough that you could just use Generator.GenerateCodeFromExpression(invokeResult,...) just before trying to turn the expression into a specific kind of statement (inside of GenerateRules).  Of course, multiple rules might contain the same text, but we're only looking for errors, so wherever that text is, it's probably equally wrong.  Or you could use the text from specific statements, but that gets a bit hairy when combining ifs, ands, ors, etc.

Presumably this would only be done when an error is found, and only for the sprites or plans that errors were found in.

Edit: I got a mockup of this working.  I added a bad rule to a sprite, it found the correct sprite and the correct rule.  Then as I was browsing I found the SpriteRuleRow has a RowError property, which I set to the text of the error.  I'm sure something more useful could be done instead, but fancy enough, it actually works.  I was then able to check HasErrors inside of PopulateRules in SpriteDefinition.cs and set the text color to red.  I'm pretty impressed at how that all just worked!  Must be a sign of a well-designed application .  The next step would be to change the error display into something that can contain links to the bad rules.

[durnurd]

I replaced the textbox in the LogView with a webview, made the compiler output html with links, and in the LogView I have a navigating handler (probably a bad place for it) that intercepts clicked links and opens the correct sprite and selects the specific rule that's a problem.  Pretty nifty, although it's probably a bit brittle right now, and it only applies to sprite rules.  That is, if there's something wrong with states, or with plan rules, or anything else, it won't output linked errors.  But as a proof of concept, it works quite well.

I imagine it would be quite easy to output linked errors to custom code objects that set the cursor at the exact right place, seeing as how the error gives line number and column number.

[bluemonkmn]

It occurred to me that the generated code for sprite rules and plan rules always outputs the rule name in a comment above the line(s) of code associated with the rule... oh, unless it's an "and" or "or" rule.  Think there's any way we could reliably use that... maybe I could update the code generator to output all the "and" and "or" rule names above the associated "if", then we could locate a rule by name first (and maybe by text on the line second?).  I haven't taken the time to look into this much yet (I'm too addicted to Little Big Planet 2 ) but hopefully I can get involved soon.  I certainly don't want brittle code going into SGDK2, but if you think you have something as well-structured and reliable as the rest of the SGDK2 code, I'd by happy to review it and include it in the next release if it looks good.

BTW, I think the "RowError" property is intended for reporting errors related to database operations and restrictions.  I'm surprised that was editable, but if that works, I suppose it's not an entirely bad solution.

[durnurd]

I happened to use the RowError because it was there and easy to edit.  If I were going to actually do something useful, I'd probably put an actual property on the SpriteRuleRow class I could use... if I knew how to do that.