Destroyed FlxFlicker error

[MSGhero]

Manually destroying a FlxFlicker and making a new one on the same object causes an error because the _boundObjects reference isn't removed. timer is null, and stopFlicker via ForceRestart doesn't check for null.

This is solved if destroy calls stop and if stop is given null checks. If destroy isn't intended to be used in this way, stop should be publicly accessible so a user can stop the flicker via the flicker itself and not solely via the object being flickered.

ff = FlxFlicker.flicker(obj, ...);
// onComplete
ff.destroy();
// later
FlxFlicker.flicker(obj, ...);
// error, object is "still flickering" but the existing flicker has been destroyed

Latest dev

[Gama11]

Yeah, you shouldn't expect that an object is still usable after you call destroy() on it.. (imagine that for FlxSprite).

[MSGhero]

I can make a PR, but what's better: adding stop to destroy or making stop public, or both? Destroy doesn't currently stop the timer from executing more callbacks, and it doesn't free up the object map reference.

[Gama11]

Why do you need stop() to be public, isn't that what FlxFlicker.stopFlickering() is for?

[MSGhero]

So you don't have to go through the static object map to stop the FlxFlicker if you already have a reference to it. Since flicker returns the FlxFlicker object, it's not unreasonable that someone would hold on to the reference and do things directly with it.

[Gama11]

Right.. I'm not really a huge fan of this API, it probably shouldn't be in core Flixel to begin with... But I don't really see any harm in making stop() public. destroy() should properly clean things up as well.

[MSGhero]

stop() already calls destroy() through _pool.put(this), so this is trickier than I thought without causing a stack overflow... destroy() is more like a private helper to stop(), except it has to be public because of the interface.

destroy() should never be called by the user, basically, if that's possible to ensure for the public API. Otherwise, there will be some duplicated code since destroy calls stop/release/put calls destroy ...

[Gama11]

I wouldn't worry about it then.