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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-10T23:54:20+00:00

In my game I have a header file that contains properties and functions for

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In my game I have a header file that contains properties and functions for seasons in my game. These properties are all static and include a float representing the current season and another float representing the current point in the transition between seasons, being zero if it isn’t transitioning.

Several functions throughout my game rely on the transition (two at this point) and one is working perfectly. Although, in another instance this isn’t working at all.

In the class responsible for controlling the background for my game, when ever the “SeasonTransition” variable is referenced it just comes up zero. But in the other class, where the variable is referenced exactly the same way, it comes up with the real value.

This is a picture after a breakpoint has been called after the game could update a few frames:
enter image description here

Once again these variables are declared in a c header file:

#import "somestuff.h"

static float SeasonTransition
etc...

This shouldn’t be doing this right? How could I fix this?

EDIT:

The Season.h file is as follows:

//GL.h contains different functions and global variables to be used anywhere in the project.
//This file, like Season.h is a singular header file with static declarations, and is setup
//the same way. I have been developing this from the start of the project and havent had any
//problems with it.
#import "GL.h"

static float currentSeason;

static float SeasonTransition;

static void UpdateSeason(){
    currentSeason += 0.0002f;

    float TransitionLength = 0.15f;
    float SeasonDepth = Clamp(currentSeason - floorf(currentSeason), 0, TransitionLength);
    float bigTL = TransitionLength / 4;
    float endTL = TransitionLength;
    float Speed2 = 0;
    float Speed1 = 1;
    float bRatio = SeasonDepth / bigTL;
    float eRatio = SeasonDepth / endTL;

    SeasonTransition = (SeasonDepth < TransitionLength) ?
    ((SeasonDepth < bigTL) ?
     (Speed1 * bRatio) + (Speed2 * (1.0f - bRatio)) :
     (Speed1 * (1.0f - eRatio)) + (Speed2 * eRatio))

    :

    Speed2;
}
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I could be wrong but I think the problem might be you don’t quit understand how include/import work. These are not quit language features but preprocessor feature. When you include somewhere in a file, your say take the entire contents of that other file and stick it in here before your start compiling. So if you include the same header file in multiple different other files you will end up with multiple version of that static variable, with out the static you will get a compiler error because you have redefined the same variable multiple times. import works almost the same except if the preprocessor determines that the included file has already be include into the destination file (could be indirectly through another include), then it will not include the file again. If you understand this you can then see that declaring static variable within you header is quit strange, because you will end up with multiple versions of that variable everywhere that header is included. Normally you want to make the variable global in which case you define it in a .c or .m file and then declare it extern in the header or you want the variable to be private then you declare it static in the .c or .m file.

    What static does is to hide the variable declaration from the linker, so the linker can not recognise that all the different declarations of the same name should be treated as the same variable.

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