Update loop breaks

Unity Engine
1

So, I have a script that creates a GameObject with Photon.Instantiate, and when I run the script, everything works fine until the first GameObject spawns. The update loop breaks, and I do not see any more logs for the value of i anymore. Code:

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
using Photon.Pun;
public class spawnMultiple : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GameObject spawnItem;
    public float minX;
    public float maxX;

    public float minZ;
    public float maxZ;
    private int i = 0;
    private void Update()
    {
        i += 1;
        Debug.Log(i);
        if (i == 1000)
        {
            i = 0;
            Vector3 randomPos = new Vector3(Random.Range(minX, maxX), 70, Random.Range(minZ, maxZ));
            PhotonNetwork.Instantiate(spawnItem.name, randomPos, Quaternion.identity);

        }
    }
}

When i = 1000, the Debug.Log stops working and the Update loop just stops.

2

Make another debug spew in Update() that ALWAYS fires and always prints i… maybe your script got destroyed / disabled.

You must find a way to get the information you need in order to reason about what the problem is.

What is often happening in these cases is one of the following:

  • the code you think is executing is not actually executing at all
  • the code is executing far EARLIER or LATER than you think
  • the code is executing far LESS OFTEN than you think
  • the code is executing far MORE OFTEN than you think
  • the code is executing on another GameObject than you think it is
  • you’re getting an error or warning and you haven’t noticed it in the console window

To help gain more insight into your problem, I recommend liberally sprinkling Debug.Log() statements through your code to display information in realtime.

Doing this should help you answer these types of questions:

  • is this code even running? which parts are running? how often does it run? what order does it run in?
  • what are the values of the variables involved? Are they initialized? Are the values reasonable?
  • are you meeting ALL the requirements to receive callbacks such as triggers / colliders (review the documentation)

Knowing this information will help you reason about the behavior you are seeing.

You can also supply a second argument to Debug.Log() and when you click the message, it will highlight the object in scene, such as Debug.Log("Problem!",this);

If your problem would benefit from in-scene or in-game visualization, Debug.DrawRay() or Debug.DrawLine() can help you visualize things like rays (used in raycasting) or distances.

You can also call Debug.Break() to pause the Editor when certain interesting pieces of code run, and then study the scene manually, looking for all the parts, where they are, what scripts are on them, etc.

You can also call GameObject.CreatePrimitive() to emplace debug-marker-ish objects in the scene at runtime.

You could also just display various important quantities in UI Text elements to watch them change as you play the game.

If you are running a mobile device you can also view the console output. Google for how on your particular mobile target, such as this answer or iOS: How To - Capturing Device Logs on iOS or this answer for Android: How To - Capturing Device Logs on Android

Another useful approach is to temporarily strip out everything besides what is necessary to prove your issue. This can simplify and isolate compounding effects of other items in your scene or prefab.

Here’s an example of putting in a laser-focused Debug.Log() and how that can save you a TON of time wallowing around speculating what might be going wrong:

3

Thank you for that advice, and I found ONE line of code that made the error. The simple line 20. i = 0;
I have no idea why.

4

Thank you so much @Kurt-Dekker Now i made some changes and the code works great.

5

That would not have broken your code. Perhaps you did not save it in between tests.

1 Like
6

Well, my guess is that the Console was set to collapse. So once those 1000 frames has passed no new logs would appear in the console since Unity would group identical logs. So make sure you turn off “collapse” in the console window.

Though just logging a single number is in general bad. If you do this at 2 or more points it quickly gets really messy to actually correlate the log entry with the line of code that produced it.

1 Like