Debug special dialog

Commands·Fixed controls

Opens nothing. Outside a normal session it requests a dialog that is not compiled and hangs the paused scenario; in a normal session it does nothing at all.

Command

Type

Fixed control

Binding

/

Context

In-game with Debug_Flag enabled

Audience

Debug

Availability

Debug

The control opens no dialog in any session type, and two separate pieces have to be missing for that to be true. The routine that would draw the special dialog is an empty body sitting inside a block the compiler never reaches, and the arm of the menu loop that would have called that routine is compiled out as well. A request for the dialog therefore survives with nothing left to answer it.

What the key does still depends on the session. In a campaign game it calls the in-game menu handler directly without recording a request first, and that handler’s whole body is guarded on a request being outstanding — so with none recorded the handler returns at once and the key does nothing whatever. Every other session type, skirmish included, takes the other branch: the key records the request, swallows itself, and leaves the handler to be reached from the main loop in the ordinary way.

Outside a campaign game the request hangs the scenario

Every session that is not a campaign stores a request that no compiled arm answers. The handler pauses the scenario and then loops until the request is cleared; every arm that survives compilation clears it, and this request reaches the default arm instead, which clears nothing. The loop therefore never ends and the scenario is never resumed. The only thing that prevents it is the player already being flagged to win, lose or die when the key is pressed, which makes the handler discard the request and return before it pauses anything. The other test that would refuse a menu to a player still in the game is disarmed by a flag raised at the start of every scenario.

Developer mode and diagnostics covers the flag that arms the keys handled directly in code.

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Open issueSource revision 59fae722af8c