Notify Player of Error without Closing Game

[1SDAN]

What would be the best method of notifying players of a null pointer exception caused by an improperly edited .cfg file without closing the game? I'm currently using a try catch expression to avoid crashes, but I'm unsure of what method is standard practice for notifying users.

[Animefan8888]

Just now, 1SDAN said:

I'm currently using a try catch expression to avoid crashes, but I'm unsure of what method is standard practice for notifying users.

Letting the game crash.

[1SDAN]

Just now, Animefan8888 said:

Letting the game crash.

That seems a bit clunky. Wouldn't it be better to send a client side chat message to the player once they log in/when the mod loads, use ConfigChangedEvent.OnConfigChangedEvent to detect a change in the .cfg filess and reload them using ConfigManager.sync(TestMod3.MODID, Config.Type.INSTANCE) so players don't have to reload the game every time they make a mistake?

[Draco18s]

6 minutes ago, 1SDAN said:

Wouldn't it be better to send a client side chat message to the player once they log in/when the mod loads

No, because the game cannot get into that state. Something went wrong.

[1SDAN]

Even in cases like changing block hardness where the game would still run fine even if it wasn't changed?

 

NOTE: Block hardness is just an example, this is for the whole Block Health thing.

Edited September 5, 2018 by 1SDAN

[jabelar]

A null value can be valid but if you're getting an actual null error then you're usually doing something wrong in your code. For example, you've mentioned reading a config file and getting a null value. Well, first of all your file parsing should handle the case of non-exiting keys/value without really going null but if it does go null then just check for null value before trying to use it. In other words, a null pointer exception happens when you USE the null value, so you can always check for null before the possible use of it.