godot: Scene corruption after forced reboot on Linux

thanks to @isaaccp I just found this issue here, I created almost the same issue #86154

I debugged this as much as I can.

First some workarounds that helped with loading:

• reload by Project -> Reload Project
• if that doesn’t help first close all open scenes and/or scripts and try the reload again
• the “corrupted” scene doesn’t load because it could not parse an attached script, so comment out the whole script (or any preload statement )and then reload

So, like just said, the underlying reason is that a script failed to parse during load of the scene and then the scene stays corrupted until you reload the project. One specific condition I found to cause this is using the preload statement. preload is followed through while parsing during opening the project. This will fail to parse if the preload in a chain leads back to the scene that’s not yet instantiated because currently being loaded. There may be other conditions.

The bad thing about this is that a user will think all their work is ruined even though there are some easy fixes to load the scenes again.

What I already suggested in #86154 is to change the loading in the editor such that scripts are parsed after the scene has been instantiated. The necessary code edits are too far reaching that I don’t yet dare creating a pull request, yet.

Here is the live video though I think the video will only be valid on Twitch for 7-60 days.

Here are the key points:

• ~2:00, I open Godot to the corrupted scene
• ~14:40, I git clone the code and recreated the entire Bullet.tscn
• ~22:35, I reload Godot. SAME corruption issue
• ~25:00, Godot core devs can see the pain I had of self blaming for even upgrading
• ~26:30, Decide to try to cheat around the bug. By abandoning any reference to Bullet.tscn and start a new file Test123.tscn
• ~28:45, Somehow Test123.tscn is now corrupt
• ~28:55, Corrupting Test123.tscn has now somehow uncorrupted Bullet.tscn
• ~30:35, Able to @onready and change the gdscript back to Bullet.tscn without any issue and reload Godot and have no issues now

@akien-mga I hope all the core contributors watch the ~35 minutes at 2x speed to see the level of frustration as a new Godot user hitting this kind of bug. If I recall I have some harsh words said in the stream along the lines of, “This literally makes me want to quit using Godot.”

Tested with dev snapshot 1 of 4.3 it still prints an error at load, but does fix the corruption.

bug’s already fixed, 4.3 just needs to get to a stable release

I just had the same problem.

I solve it by:

1. move the file out of the folder.
2. re-open godot editor, it reported file not found error
3. close editor.
4. re-open and move the file back in.

The script attached to my corrupted scene doesn’t have PackedScene as a variable but contains the line with preload("My Scene.tscn")

I just had the same problem and removing the .godot folder made the scene work again. I kept the old .godot folder and the differences on the .tscn file are:

Old one:

[folding]

node_unfolds=[NodePath(“.”), PackedStringArray(“Theme”, “Layout”, “Layout/Transform”), NodePath(“Button/PropertyName”), PackedStringArray(“Theme Overrides”, “Theme Overrides/font_sizes”)] resource_unfolds=[] nodes_folded=[]

new one:

[folding]

node_unfolds=[NodePath(“.”), PackedStringArray(“Layout”, “Theme”), NodePath(“Button”), PackedStringArray(“Layout”), NodePath(“Button/PropertyName”), PackedStringArray(“Layout”, “Theme Overrides”), NodePath(“Elements”), PackedStringArray(“Layout”, “Theme Overrides”), NodePath(“Elements/ElementsNames”), PackedStringArray(“Theme Overrides”), NodePath(“Elements/ElementsValues”), PackedStringArray(“Layout”)] resource_unfolds=[] nodes_folded=[]

Hope this helps.

That Bullet.tscn doesn’t seem corrupted. I can open it fine if copy pasting it to a project (after making sure to create a script at scenes/game/Bullet.gd).

Do you still get this issue after restarting the editor?

What about if you rename the .godot folder to something else, so it’s re-created? (Please keep it around at first, because if that fixes the issue, checking the diff between the two folders could give a hint at to what the problem is.)

Also had this problem (4.2.1 Linux). Following goatt1167’s comment made the scene openable again.

It is worth to point out that I had an issue with circular references - the script in the corrupted scene (scene A) was preloading another scene (scene B), but the script in scene B was also preloading scene A. An oversight and not an intentional design. I think that it could easily happen to other developers without noticing. Maybe this could be checked for and given as a warning when failing to open scenes?

Ran into the same issue. For me I was preloading the scene the script itself was attached to. The corruption message went away after changing preload to just load.

I just had the same problem. I solve it by:

1. move the file out of the folder.
2. re-open godot editor, it reported file not found error
3. close editor.
4. re-open and move the file back in.

Never mind. It didn’t work when I opened the project today. Redo the steps above will fix the corruption temporarily until the IDE is closed.

But add :ResourceType or :PackedScene has solve my problem for now.

var Card = preload("...") # old buggy code
v
v
var Card:PackedScene = preload("...") # new fix

Been experiencing this on Windows, Godot 4.2.1, For the last week. Have re-created the scene many times but the issue comes back.

The quoted post solved it for me, i.e. using explicit typing instead of inferred:

var scene := preload("res://test/scene/creeper/creeper.tscn")

becomes this:

var scene:PackedScene = preload("res://test/scene/creeper/creeper.tscn")

So my scene file is fine, there’s something happening during the load of the scene. Haven’t dared close Godot yet so don’t know if it will work long term.

Edit: Reopened Godot, the issue is back 😦

This is written in the error log:

Failed to instantiate scene state of “res://test/scene/creeper/creeper.tscn”, node count is 0. Make sure the PackedScene resource is valid.

encountering the same issue on the steam windows v4.2.1.stable.official[b09f793f5] build for my own project 😒 deleted the .godot files to refresh the cache but the issue persisted. project runs fine with the corrupted file

EDIT: After more investigations, I found that from all the opened scenes in my project, the only ones that get corrupted are the ones containing preloaded PackedScenes as const / var in the attached script.

can second this; the only thing that is preloaded in my project is the only scene thats corrupting

EDIT: After more investigations, I found that from all the opened scenes in my project, the only ones that get corrupted are the ones containing preloaded PackedScenes as const / var in the attached script.

Interesting, the scene that was corrupted on my side had a script with const variables containing PackedScenes too.