Fixing Attempt to Index Global "Player" Error

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 01:44:22 UTC

Hi, I'm very new to Pico-8 and coding in general. I've been following some tutorials on how to work in Pico-8, which go over basic elements using separate projects. In order to further my understanding of how the pieces fit together, I wanted to try to incorporate each tutorial into one project. I'm having some trouble though, because my code throws an error when I try to refer to my player class.

This is the code I have in Tab 0, the original code to set up movement and directional sprites for the player:

function _init()
	player={
		x=63,
		y=63,
		fx=false,
		fy=false,
		sp=1,
		speed=1
	}

end

function _update()

--player movement--
	if btn(➡️) then
	player.x+=player.speed
	player.sp=9
	player.fx=false
	player.fy=false
	end

	if btn(⬅️) then
	player.x-=player.speed
	player.sp=9
	player.fx=true
	player.fy=false
	end

	if btn(⬇️) then
	player.y+=player.speed
	player.sp=1
	end

	if btn(⬆️) then
	player.y-=player.speed
	player.sp=5
	end

	if mget(flr((player.x+4)/8),flr((player.y+4)/8))==33
	then
		player.speed=1.2
	else
		player.speed=1
	end

end

function _draw()
	cls(3)
	map()
	spr(player.sp,player.x, player.y,1,1,player.fx, player.fy)
	print(mget(flr((player.x+4)/8),flr((player.y+4)/8)))
end

That all works fine, but when I add code from the animation tutorial into Tab 1, it throws
RUNTIME ERROR LINE 15 TAB 1
IF PLAYER.SP<LAST_FRAME THEN
ATTEMPT TO INDEX GLOBAL 'PLAYER'
(A NIL VALUE)

function _init()

	stimer=0
	ani_speed=10
	first_frame=1
	last_frame=4

end

function _update()
--player animation--
	if stimer < ani_speed then
	stimer+=1
	else
		if player.sp < last_frame then
		player.sp+=1
		else
			player.sp=first_frame
		end
	stimer=0
	end

end

function _draw()

end

(There aren't spaces before and after my '<' signs in the code, I added those so it would display correctly here.)

For some reason, it doesn't recognize the class I defined. I tried putting the code into Tab 0 instead, to the same effect. What am I doing wrong here? I was under the impression that defining variables under a class allows you to change those variables by referencing as CLASS.VAR. Any advice would be appreciated.

Lozenge [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Fixing Attempt to Index Global "Player" Error