Total Newbie needing very basic help

Gunzar

Let me start by saying that I have had no prior experience in programming, so I'm coming at this blind. So, right now I'm following a tutorial, where they showed how to make a button change the text of a label, and then how to make a clock with a label and the node.set_process() function. So (naturally) I wanted to make a clock that started counting, but that reset after pressing a button. After some failed tries I lowered my goal to making a label that first shows some text, and after pressing a button shows the time passed since starting the scene. Here is what I came up with, but when I press the button, nothing happens, can someone please help me understand this a little better and maybe even show me how to make one that works?

extends Panel

var accum=0

func _ready(): set_process(true)

func _process(delta): accum += delta

func _on_button_pressed(): get_node("Label").set_text(str(accum))

func ready1(): get_node("Button").connect("pressed",self,"on_button_pressed")

Thank you.

NeoD

I suggest you to move the last line to _ready(). Every code under _ready will be executed when the scene start.

Does the debbuger dock displays an error message ?

Somnivore

func _ready1() is not a callback to my knowledge, and nowhere else in the code is the function called. There are certain special functions you can create which are called automatically by the engine, e.g. _ready and _process (after you enable it in ready). Outside of that a normal function needs to be called from somewhere or it won't do anything, it's just a named block of instructions you can use whenever you need to. Because _ready1() is never called by anything, the instruction to connect the node with a signal never occurs, thus your function connected to that signal, func _on_button_pressed() isn't called either. The only thing that happens here is that accum is added by delta.

Gunzar

Oh wow, I had totally missunderstood how functions work, but I understand it a bit more now I think. Moving everything from the func _ready1() to func _ready() fixed it. Thank you very much for the quick and insightful answers. I'm sure I will be back with more questions soon.

Gunzar

Although, for some reason the debugger does show an error message whenever the button is pressed.

"Error calling method from signal 'pressed': 'Panel(sayhello.gd)::_on_Button_pressed': Method not found."

The program works fine, but this message always shows up, can someone explain why?

Also, on an unrelated note, what exactly does extends Panel do? The code works even if I remove it, so what does it do and when do I need it?

NeoD

Maybe you forgot to remove an older signal.

extends Panel instruction means that script is an extension for a Panel node. This script have access to every functions of a Panel. If you go in the integrated documentation and search for the "Panel" class you'll see everything your Panel can do. Generally you don't need to write this instruction yourself, Godot add this automatically when you create a script from a node. I'm surprised to see that you can remove it. I'm not used to the latest Godot changes.