[Plib-users] ref counting problem

[McEvoy, N. <nic...@ds...>]

I'm currently having some trouble with ref() counters in my PLIB game.

My game contains a bunch of manager classes:
- MaterialManager: creates/destroys materials (ie. ssgSimpleState)
- ModelManager: creates/destroys models (ie. ssgEntity)
- EntityManager: creates/destroys game entities (ie. ssgBranch)

Each manager class calls ref() for each PLIB object it creates and ssgDeRefDelete() when it destroys the object.

These classes are created & destroyed on loading and exiting levels in the game.

The problem comes in my MaterialManager class that has a list of ssgSimpleState.  The MaterialManager sets a ssgSetAppStateCallback() and thus supplies ssgSimpleState on loading AC3D Models.

My problem is that I get an exception after loading and exiting different levels a few times ... it seems to be in ssgLoaderOptions::createLeaf() ... their seems to be shared_states with 'invalid' pointers (actually to be truthful I might be deleting the states when their ref() counters are not zero :-(  ... before you say "well that's your problem" ... there is a reason for this ... I don't actually want the ssgSimpleState objects to hang around ... I know what I'm doing is wrong ... but I'm not quite sure what ssgLoaderOptions is doing ... why is it keeping the shared_states ?  can I clear it ?  or is my game logic all wrong ?).

What should I do ?  Should I really create/destroy my materials each level ... or should I load them ONCE only for the whole game ?  Each level uses quite different materials ... so I would like to destroy them ... but I'm not quite sure what ssgLoaderOptions is doing hanging onto the states ?

Any ideas ?

Nick