Actives with disappearing animation not really destroyed

[JoKa]

I have a large frame and center the display on a X/Y-position somewhere in the middle of it. Then I destroy all actives which are offscreen.
Like Xpos(Active)<X Left Frame -> Destroy Active

I do this for all screen borders and it works. However, Actives with a Disappearing animation are NOT destroyed. They stay there and show the last animation frame. Of course, it's not a looped anim and the Actives are not inactivated far from window.

To verify this I made a scrolling routine to look at the playfield during runtime: the destroyed Actives are still visible, but don't react on mouseover condition. Seems somehow they ARE destroyed, meaning I can't access them. But they're included in the total number of objects and it seems they also consume memory.

I'm wondering what's the problem?!?

Edit: The destroy command is in a group of events and after testing the positions I deactivate the group. If I add a delay to allow their disappearing anim to complete, they are completely removed. However, is it ok that the triggered destruction is being interrupted by deactivating a group?

[Francois]

This is strange. Can you reduce your app to just this problem and send it to me? Thanks...

[foyzul2002]

this could be a useful post; would be good to see if there is a way to permanently destroy objects so it doesn't consume any memory.

[JoKa]

While preparing a cut-down version for Francois, I noticed this:
- blocks outside visible playfield are destroyed, so their Disappearing Animation starts
- after that the animation frame of the remaining blocks is changed manually

But the blocks which are currently being destroyed are affected by this change, too. Their Disappearing Anim is stopped and therefore the blocks stay on screen. Once I Restore/Start animation again, their Disappearing Anim is resumed and they're completely destroyed.

So I guess it's not a MMF bug, I just didn't expect the AOs which already have the status "Destroyed" still react to animation commands.

[mobichan]

As a workaround, you could try setting a flag on the blocks you want to disappear. Then check for that flag in the code that destroys the blocks. But I agree, I always expected anything that has been "destroyed" to be unaffected by any code once the disappear animation starts playing.

[Jaffob]

This is likely related to the "Inactivate if too far from window" property. If an object that is "too far from the window" has no Disappearing animation, it will be destroyed, because the Destroy action is not affected by the deactivation. However, deactivation pauses animation sequences, so if you destroy an object that does have a Disappearing animation, it won't be destroyed until you approach it again.

EDIT: Another possibility would be to avoid the Disappearing animation entirely, and use a separate sprite with that same animation instead. For example, instead of the explosion being the Disappearing animation of your bomb, create a separate explosion object at the bomb's position, and destroy the bomb immediately.

[JoKa]

@All: Thanks for your advice, usually I use separate objects for disappearing animations, guess I'll stick to this.

@Jaffob: it's not related to "Inactivate far from window", that's why it surprised me. Francois told me it's possible to stop the disappearing anim of destroyed objects, maybe he'll change it.