Debugging wiring¶

Most wiring mistakes fail quietly: the door just stays shut. Check in this order, from the quickest check to the most thorough.

Tip

A door or trigger that does not even block the player was built without its definition, which is not a wiring mistake. See Entities that do nothing.

1. The Issues panel¶

Open the Issues tab, next to Outliner and History on the left. It flags outputs aimed at a targetname no entity has, and inputs the target's class does not have. A typo in a targetname is the most common reason a door stays shut.

The Issues panel with one error: Output triggered targets unknown entity 'hall_lihgt' on trigger_once, with a Fix button

Click an issue to select its entity and frame it in the views, then correct the name in the Inspector.

Warning

Fix on a missing target does not guess the right name, it deletes the connection. For a typo, fix the name by hand instead.

2. The Logic graph¶

In the Logic graph a target nobody has shows up as a red node with a dashed red wire, saying no entity has this name.

The Logic graph: the triggered output of trigger_once runs along a dashed red wire to a red node hall_lihgt, no entity has this name

Simulate fires an output on paper and highlights the whole chain, see Simulate.

3. F3 in game¶

Add a TrenchDotDebugOverlay node to your scene in Godot, or add it as an autoload. Run the game and press F3: it lists outputs as they fire and draws every Area3D volume with its targetname, so you see whether a trigger never fired or fired at nothing.

Toggle it again after spawning triggers, volumes are collected when it turns on. The key is the overlay's toggle_key property.

4. Logging¶

Place a logic_debug entity and tick its trace_all box in the Inspector. Every output that fires is then printed to the Godot output.

From code, connect to TrenchDotIO.events().fired, which is emitted for every output, including ones whose target resolved to nothing.

TrenchDotIO.events().fired.connect(func(source, output, target, input, parameter):
    print(source.name, ".", output, " -> ", target, ".", input))

What each mistake looks like¶

Mistake	Symptom	Fix
Target resolves to nothing	`[TD I/O] <node>.<output>: target '<name>' matches no node` the first time it fires	Make the target match the entity's targetname exactly, case included
Target has no such input	`[TD I/O] <node> has no input '<name>'` in the Godot output	Pick an input the target's class has, see the Entity reference
Output the entity never emits	`[TD I/O] <node> has no signal '<output>'` once, when the map is built	Pick an output the class has, or fire it from code with `TrenchDotIO.fire_output()`
Entity spawned or renamed at runtime	Not found by its targetname	Call `TrenchDotIO.invalidate()`, see Runtime changes