Checking a local in Lua

Question

I'm very new to Lua as well as coding in general. This code is part of a script that runs a timer to check for keypresses. I'm having trouble getting this part of the script to work. The first part works fine - it prints the message and sets the local to 1 - but despite having set the local to 1 when I press N it always returns the "no saved camera position available" message. What am I doing wrong?

  local campossaved

--(...other code that doesn't access the local "campossaved"...)

 -- save camera position (hotkey B) --wip
if (isKeyPressed(VK_B)) then
    print("Saved camera position.")
    campossaved = 1
 end


 -- load camera position (hotkey N) --wip
if (isKeyPressed(VK_N)) then
  if (campossaved == 1) then
    print("Loaded camera position.")
    else
      print("No saved camera position available.")
    end
 end

Answer 1

you say it's run in a timer loop. I'm guessing it's a scope issue, and campossaved is getting reinitialized as nil every time it runs that timer loop, so pressing B only sets it for that 1/60th of a second, or however fast your game loop runs. you'll need to make sure that local campossaved forward declaration is created before your timer is called

local campossaved

--function timer(delta)

    -- save camera position (hotkey B)
    if isKeyPressed(VK_B) then
        print("Saved camera position.")
        campossaved = true
    end

    -- load camera position (hotkey N)
    if isKeyPressed(VK_N) then
        if campossaved then
            print("Loaded camera position.")
        else
            print("No saved camera position available.")
        end
    end

--end