Unity stops responding when i ask it to execute the same function for the third time

Questions & Answers
1

I’ve built a function that allows me to generate an instance of a class, which is then added to a list and that list generates a series of buttons. At ‘midnight’ on ‘Sunday night’, I need it to generate six of these in a row ie. getting me six instances of the class, each of which will generate a button. But it’s not working.

It is perfectly fine if I only ask it to generate two instances, but when I put a third instance in, the editor freezes at ‘midnight’. I’ve checked it via generating through a button, and again it will allow the first two but not the third, even when there is a pause between commands. The same thing happens if there’s a combination of button and timed generation. Is there any reason that this would happen?

Edit 1: This is the part of my script that I think might be responsible (ie. the whole system works perfectly fine without it but when this is called as part of the class-generating function, the above happens).

Setting the variables at various points earlier in the script:

public static string[] agentstats = {"seduction", "sneakiness", "sniperskills", "deception", "combat"};
initialskillpoints = 70;

Actual function:

void CalculateAgentStats () {
		print ("Calculating Stats");
		string statname;
		for (int i = 0; i < initialskillpoints; i++) {
			statname = agentstats [Random.Range (0, agentstats.Length)];
			switch (statname) {
			case "seduction":
				if (seduction == 20) {
					i -= 1;
					break;
				} 
				else
				{
					seduction ++;
					break;
				}
			case "sneakiness":
				if (sneakiness == 20) {
					i-= 1;
					break;
				}
				else
				{
					sneakiness ++;
					break;
				}
			case "sniperskills":
				if (sniperskills == 20) {
					i-= 1;
					break;
				} 
				else
				{
					sniperskills ++;
					break;
				}
			case "deception":
				if (deception == 20) {
					i-= 1;
					break;
				} else
				{
					deception ++;
					break;
				}
			case "combat":
				if (combat == 20) {
					i-= 1;
					break;
				} 
				else
				{
					combat ++;
					break;
				}
			}
		}
	}

Edit 2:
So, a bit more work debugging/crashing Unity found me the problem but I don’t know how to fix it. The problem is the “i -= 1” line. I think it’s causing a potential infinite loop because if you had epically bad luck with your randomization, you could get caught in a i++, i-=1 circle. But the odds of that (first getting to 20, and then forever randomly choosing that same stat) are so low that I can’t see why Unity would object to it.

Can anyone explain this, and tell me how I could get this same functionality to work (ie. if a stat has already reached 20, it can’t go any higher and the loop needs to go again).

2

Good point with the hint to the i-=1, didn’t even notice that when i first looked at it.

It’s in fact pretty dangerous to rely on random generation when there’s the possibilty of non-usable results so that you have to generate a new option again until you find one. A lot of people also do that with pooling systems which may end up having a used-up pool which cannot offer any object anymore and so they’ll run the risk to freeze the game or get huge framedrops.

In your case, you could make a local list in that method which stores all the entries again. As soon as one hits 20, remove the entry from the list. The result would be, that you won’t generate the one that has already 20 skill points, so you restrict the random generation to the others which are left in the list.

An implementation detail: I’d personally use something else than strings, as you have to do (at least) 70 comparisons per agent with your method.
Maybe there’s also another way to distribute the skill points.