4

I have a rather large c++ program including a class "Character". In "Character.h" first the struct CharacterSettings is declared, and then the class Character (including their constructors).

Character has (among others) a CharacterSettings* settings and a Point pos. CharacterSettings has a Point preferredVelocity.

This works fine.

However, when I add any public variable to Character, the program crashes when I call this:

drawLine(character.pos, character.pos+character.settings->preferredVelocity, character.radius/3.0, 128, 80, 0);

The program crashes on this line:

Point operator + (const Point &p2) const
    { return Point(x + p2.x, y + p2.y); }

I assume it's trying to do character.pos+character.settings->preferredVelocity. The error message I get is

Unhandled exception at 0x004bc4fc in ECMCrowdSimulation.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x7f80000f.

When I look at it, p2.x and p2.y are undefined. Without the extra variable, they aren't. I have absolutely no idea what is happening, how to even begin debugging or what information you would need to help me! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: Well here is at least the Character.h file!

#pragma once

/* 
 * ECM navigation mesh / crowd simulation software
 * (c) Roland Geraerts and Wouter van Toll, Utrecht University.  
 * ---
 * Character: A single moving character in the simulation.
*/

#include "../ECM/GraphComponents/CMNode.h"
#include "VectorOperation.h"
#include "IndicativeRoute.h"
#include "float.h"

#define _USE_MATH_DEFINES
#include <math.h>

#include <vector>
using std::vector;
#include <queue>
using std::queue;

#define CHARACTER_RELAXATIONTIME 0.5f

typedef vector<CMNode>::iterator node_ptr;
class Corridor;
class CMMResult;

    struct CMEdge;
    class CMMInterface;
    class MicroInterface;
    class CMMSceneTransfer;

    struct CharacterSettings
    {
    private:
        bool index_bb_initialized, index_bb_cp_initialized, index_ir_circle_initialized, index_ir_circle_mu_initialized;
        bool index_2nd_ir_circle_initialized, index_2nd_ir_circle_mu_initialized;

    public:
        // --- Unique identifier within the simulation
        int id;

        // --- Velocity and speed
        Point preferredVelocity;// Newly computed velocity *before* local collision avoidance
        Point newVelocity;      // Newly computed velocity (+ collision avoidance), to be applied in the "next" simulation step

        float total_max_speed;  // Maximum possible speed throughout the entire simulation
        float max_speed;        // Maximum speed at this point in time
        float min_desired_speed;// Minimum speed that the character tries to reach when it is not standing still

        Point lastAttractionPoint;

        // --- IRM parameters
        CMMInterface* cmmImplementation; // the type of indicative route to follow within the corridor, e.g. "shortest path" or "weighted side".
        // Only used in WEIGHTED_SIDE:
        float sidePreference;       // bias to following a certain "side" of the corridor. Must be between -1 (left) and 1 (right).
        float sidePreferenceNoise;  // extra noise factor that will be added to sidePreference at each route element.
        // Used in WEIGHTED_SIDE and SHORTEST_PATH
        float preferred_clearance;  // Distance (m) by which the agent prefers to stay away from obstacles.

        // --- Micro simulation model (e.g. for collision avoidance between characters)
        MicroInterface* microImplementation;// the local model to use
        short micro_maxNrNeighbours;        // the number of neighbours to check in the local model
        float micro_personalSpaceRadius;    // radius of the personal space (m), on top of the character's physical radius.
                                            // Entering this disk (radius + personalSpace) is seen as a 'collision'.

        // --- Corridor/Path pointers
        node_ptr index_bb;          // point on backbone path (used for computing attraction force)
        node_ptr index_bb_cp;       // point on the backbone path(used for computing the closest point)
        curve_ptr index_ir_circle;  // index to last point on the indicative route that intersects with a circle
        float index_ir_circle_mu;   // factor wrt to point on the indicative route that intersects with a circle

        friend Character; // only the Character class can look into private members (WvT: ugly C++ practice, but it does work)

        CharacterSettings(int _id, 
            // speed
            float _total_max_speed, float _min_desired_speed,
            // type of indicative route
            CMMInterface* _cmmImplementation, float _sidePreference, float _sidePreferenceNoise, float _clearance, 
            // type of micro simulation model
            MicroInterface* _microImplementation) :

            id(_id), total_max_speed(_total_max_speed), min_desired_speed(_min_desired_speed), 
            cmmImplementation(_cmmImplementation), sidePreference(_sidePreference), sidePreferenceNoise(_sidePreferenceNoise), preferred_clearance(_clearance),
            microImplementation(_microImplementation)
        {
            // velocities
            newVelocity = Point(0, 0);
            max_speed = total_max_speed;
            preferredVelocity = Point(0, 0);

            // corridor/IRM pointers
            index_bb_initialized = false;
            index_bb_cp_initialized = false;
            index_ir_circle_initialized = false;
            index_ir_circle_mu_initialized = false;

            // default micro settings
            micro_maxNrNeighbours = 5; // default for Karamouzas 2010: 5
            micro_personalSpaceRadius = 0.0f; // default for Karamouzas 2010: 0.5
        }
    };

    class Character
    {
    public:
        Point pos;
        float radius;
        Point prevPos;
        int i;    //The thing that is pretending to be the culprit, without this, it works fine.

        // goal data
        Point goalPos;
        float goalRadius;

        // status flags
        bool reachedGoal;
        bool freeze; // whether or not the character is temporarily frozen
        bool freezeNotified;
        bool reachedDestSet;

        Point velocity; // last used velocity

        // corridor/path pointers
        Point retraction, cp;

        //Contains more detailed settings of agent
        CharacterSettings * settings;

    public:
        // --- constructor
        Character(int _id, Point &_pos, float _radius, 
            // speeds
            float _total_max_speed, float _min_desired_speed,
            // type of indicative route
            CMMInterface* _cmmImplementation, float _sidePreference, float _sidePreferenceNoise, float _clearance,
            // type of micro simulation model
            MicroInterface* _microImplementation) :

            pos(_pos), radius(_radius) 
        {
            settings = new CharacterSettings(_id, _total_max_speed, _min_desired_speed, 
                _cmmImplementation, _sidePreference, _sidePreferenceNoise, _clearance, _microImplementation); 

            velocity = Point(0, 0);
            prevPos=_pos;

            reachedGoal = true;
            freeze = false;
            freezeNotified = false;
            reachedDestSet = false;
            //isProxy = false;
        }

        // --- destructor
        void removeSettings();

        // computing the new actual velocity through an acceleration vector: Euler integration
        inline void integrateEuler(const Point &acc, float dtSim)
        {                   
            settings->newVelocity = velocity + dtSim * acc;
            trim(settings->newVelocity, settings->max_speed);
        }

        inline void updatePos(float dtSim) 
        {       
            prevPos=pos;

            // update velocity
            velocity = settings->newVelocity;

            // update position
            pos += dtSim * velocity;

            // if the character is close to its goal, it should stop moving     
            if(!reachedGoal // goal was not already reached
                && settings->lastAttractionPoint == goalPos 
                && distSqr(pos, goalPos) < 0.25)//goalRadius)
            {   
                reachedGoal = true;
                // (do not reset the velocity, so that we can keep the last walking direction)
            }
        }

        void resetIndices();
        node_ptr &getIndex_bb(Corridor &corridor);
        node_ptr &getIndex_bb_cp(Corridor &corridor);
        curve_ptr &getIndex_ir_circle(IndicativeRoute &ir);
        float &getIndex_ir_circle_mu();
        Point &getRetraction() { return retraction; }
        Point &getClosestPoint() { return cp; }

        // computing the cost of some edge (in A*), by using personal preferences
        float getEdgeCost(const CMEdge& edge, float activeFraction);

        // computing the character's area, based on its radius
        float getArea() const;


    };

The thing that makes everything crash is adding the 'int i' .

Tessa
  • 297
  • 1
  • 3
  • 10
  • Can you give us a minimal complete example? That is, can you whittle down the code to a couple of files that are small enough to post, that compile, and that reproduce the problem? There's a good chance that in so doing you'll uncover the bug yourself, and if you don't, we'll have real code to look at. – Beta Jul 31 '12 at 12:05
  • Can you post definition of `Character`, instead of describing it? – hmjd Jul 31 '12 at 12:05
  • I'm afraid some piece of your code causes undefined behavior and this may cause your code to crash at random or "illogical" places which may be completely unrelated to the root of the problem. Providing us a minimal code that reproduces it would help a lot. – ereOn Jul 31 '12 at 12:06
  • As `settings` is `CharacterSettings*`, ensure you not violating the [rule of three](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4172722/what-is-the-rule-of-three). – hmjd Jul 31 '12 at 12:09
  • 1
    Are you sure you are recompiling every file affected by this change? – Shahbaz Jul 31 '12 at 12:10
  • @Shahbaz: +1, that's exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes a change in a class declaration does not trigger the recompilation of every file that in some way depends on it, so different object modules have a different idea on how the class is laid out in memory, producing "impossible" crashes like this. – Matteo Italia Jul 31 '12 at 12:20
  • @Shahbaz: You're my hero, that was exactly the problem! Thanks so much! – Tessa Jul 31 '12 at 12:33
  • I posted it as an answer then ;) @MatteoItalia, exactly. Fortunately, I have found a way to automatically generate the dependencies. See my answer. – Shahbaz Jul 31 '12 at 12:41
  • Also, while I absolutely agree that questions are better if they provide information, I don't think this question really deserves downvotes. As you can see from the accepted answer, (1) I provided enough information for an answer and (2) it wasn't even in the code. So no, I did not need to post my 18848483 lines of code or write another program to reproduce something it would not have reproduced. :/ – Tessa Jul 31 '12 at 12:57
  • @tessa, don't get angry, you'll get the hang of stackoverflow's style. ;) You are right in the sense that no matter how much code you had provided wouldn't have identified this particular problem, but honestly I also just had a random guess, so the information really is not enough. On the other hand, if you knew the "Makefile" was the relevant information, you would have been able to solve it yourself. Anyway, I'll upvote so you won't have a negative score. – Shahbaz Jul 31 '12 at 13:12

1 Answers1

6

Usually strange problems like this happen when you have incompatibilities between files that were compiled with the older version of the header linked with those compiled with newer versions. In such cases, the layout of the object may be different (in the very least, its sizeof is different) between the two files.

Therefore, in one file it may look like everything is correct with the object, but once passed to a function in another file, you get completely random behavior.

In such cases, rebuilding the whole project solves the problem. Better still, try to fix the dependencies if you are manually writing the Makefiles. If you are using gcc/g++, you can use a command like this to generate Makefile acceptable dependencies:

g++ -MM -MG -Ipath/to/includes/that/should/be/part/of/dependency *.cpp
Shahbaz
  • 46,337
  • 19
  • 116
  • 182
  • Thank you very, very much. I was about to drop my project because I thought there was some kind of memory corruption or so. Thanks! –  Aug 08 '14 at 03:16
  • Thanks for the question and for the answer. I thought I was going nuts, adding one simple variable caused the whole program to collapse at a very strange point. And depending where in relation to the other variables I added the new one the point of crashing was somewhere completely different. – red_tiger Aug 13 '15 at 13:40