[solved] Persistent dictionary disappearing upon restart :(

[PyTom]

You are not allowed to have side effects in screens. If you have side effects in screens, you'll have this problem.

[kivik]

Yeah looks like screen predict is going to mess this up big time, I think you need to wrap this around a function or a label to add your pic to the list instead of doing it within the screen. It's the problem of mixing logic with screens unfortunately!

You should be able to do a find in folder and replace, change all call screen show_pic to your function call or label.

You also want to add a condition statement if you want to stop the same pic being appended constantly:

Code: Select all

if pic not in persistent.seen_list:
    persistent.seen_list.append(pic)

[philat]

Your tester doesn't show that any problem with persistent getting reset, just the fact that you shouldn't use python that way inside screens.

As for the latter question, are you actually calling the screen manually? You said this is some sort of gallery-related thing, so that seemed unlikely. The point of asking for a recreation was to see how you're fitting everything together. But anyway. If you're actually just calling the screen from renpy script, you can just use an on "show" action.

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screen show_pic(pic, x = None, y = None, proportional = True, bg = "#000"):
    on "show" action AddToSet(persistent.seen_list, pic)
    # everything else

[goldo]

Your tester doesn't show that any problem with persistent getting reset, just the fact that you shouldn't use python that way inside screens.

As for the latter question, are you actually calling the screen manually? You said this is some sort of gallery-related thing, so that seemed unlikely. The point of asking for a recreation was to see how you're fitting everything together. But anyway. If you're actually just calling the screen from renpy script, you can just use an on "show" action.

Code: Select all

screen show_pic(pic, x = None, y = None, proportional = True, bg = "#000"):
    on "show" action AddToSet(persistent.seen_list, pic)
    # everything else

Brilliant, I didn't know the 'on "show"' statement, it is exactly what I was looking for! Thank you!

It works just fine with the test game.

Unfortunately, when I try to use it within the actual game, it throws an error when returning to the main menu:

Edit: The error was because some objects were mistakenly included in the list. Now it works, but the persistent list is still being killed when restarting. I have to keep looking


Edit 2:



Amazing! I finally got it to work!!!

The problem was coming from one of the screen I work with, which was getting an im.Scale input as a picture. I think storing that kind of object threw it off.

Anyway, I disabled that part of the code, and the rest works, which is what I needed for the CG gallery anyway.

Thanks to everyone who pitched in!!!

[Ocelot]

Can you post a minimal example which still exhibits your problem?
https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve
http://sscce.org/

Do you have something, anything accessing that dictionary aside from your Show screen? Maybe a debug screen with purpose of clearing persistent data? Maybe ability for player to start from scratch? Maybe you unconditionally add stuff which should always be unlocked to dictionary in your script?

Can you save and do saves persist after restart? Maybe there are permission problems preventing data to be written on disc.

[goldo]

Thanks Ocelot, actually it works now! I'll see if I can still reproduce that problem on a test game, for science

[kivik]

Just to chip in again - have you checked to make sure you're not constantly adding to the persistent list with dups? My understanding is that AddToSet() won't check for duplicates so your persistent list will just keep growing and growing every time your player replays the game. Maybe a Function() action that triggers your own function, which checks for dups first would be worth implementing?

[goldo]

So, here is the whole story.

Some of the pictures were accessed through a very simple screen like this:

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screen show_img(img):
    on "show" action Function(unlock_pic, img) # This is how the game tracks that this particular picture has been seen.
        
    add img

Most of the time, this screen would receive the name of a renpy image as the img argument, but every once in a while, it would get passed a ProportionalScale object, such as:

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show screen show_img(ProportionalScale("items/apples.png", 500, 500))

Now, even though it would work exactly as a renpy image within the screen, it's still not a native renpy object.

I think that's why it doesn't save as a persistent variable. I have tested this independently, and any list or dict containing a ProportionalScale object is getting scrapped upon restart, although strangely no error message is shown.

So that's the long and short of it.

Thanks everyone for your help!