The program is not looping again after the first

Question

I am making a simon says game with corona sdk, using Lua as my main language, and I have wrote several functions. When I run my code, it successfully goes through the first loop, but after it's my turn to click the box, and after I click the CORRECT box, the program just stops and gives me a game over (after stating that it was correct), instead of looping over again and adding another pattern index to the pattern with a random number... thus asking for the user's input in the following order again.

I have set the initial values to these:

started = false
pattern = true
gameOver = false
repeating = true

Here are part of my code: Start function:

function start()
    --fix pat--
    pat = {}
    random = math.random(9)
    patternIndex = 0
    light = 2
    clicked = 0
    count = 0
end

wait function:

function wait(seconds)
    local _start = os.time()
    local _end = _start+seconds
    while (_end ~= os.time()) do
    end
end

clickedNot function:

function clickedNot()

if(clicked ~= 0) then
    --if ur right--
    if(pat[patternIndex]  == clicked) then
        print("ur right!")
        print("patternIndex: "..patternIndex)
        patternIndex = patternIndex + 1
        print("patternIndex after ++: "..patternIndex)
        print(table.getn(pat))
        print("light: "..light)
        repeating = true

    end
    if(pat[patternIndex] ~= clicked) then
            gameOver = true
            gameoverText = display.newText("Game Over!", 0, 0, native.systemFont, 40)
            gameoverText.x = display.contentWidth/2
            gameoverText.y = display.contentWidth/4
            gameoverText:setTextColor(255,110,110) 
            print("Game Over")
    end

end
end

Here, I call the function above:

function onTouchListener(event)

    if (pattern == false and gameOver == false) then


            if(event.target == btnclick1) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 1
            elseif(event.target == btnclick2) then           
                count = 1
                clicked = 2
            elseif(event.target == btnclick3) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 3
            elseif(event.target == btnclick4) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 4
            elseif(event.target == btnclick5) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 5
            elseif(event.target == btnclick6) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 6
            elseif(event.target == btnclick7) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 7
            elseif(event.target == btnclick8) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 8
            elseif(event.target == btnclick9) then
                count = 1
                clicked = 9
            end

            paint()
            clickedNot()




    elseif (gameOver == true) then
            start()
            gameOver = false
    end    
end
btnclick1: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick2: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick3: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick4: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick5: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick6: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick7: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick8: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)
btnclick9: addEventListener( "touch", onTouchListener)

Finally, here is the main function with the algorithm of 'looping'

 function starting(event)

    if (event.phase == "began") then

        startText.isVisible = false



        if (started == false) then
            started = true
        end
        start()

        count = count + 1
        onTouchListener(event)

        ---------------------------------
           print("count: "..count)

        while (repeating == true) do
            print("repeatedddd")


            if (started == true) then
                print("hello")



                --if started--
                ----------------------------------------------

                if(count%20 == count - math.floor(count/20)*20) then
                    clicked = 0

                    while(light >= 0) do

                        light = light - 1
                        print(light)

                    end


                end

                if (pattern == true) then



                    if (light <= 0) then
                        wait(1)

                        if (patternIndex >= table.getn(pat)) then

                            --randomizes lights--
                            clicked = math.random(0,8)+1
                            table.insert(pat,clicked)
                            patternIndex = 1
                            pattern = false
                            print ("box: "..clicked)
                            print("element 1 in pattern: "..pat[1])
                            wait(1)
                            print("your turn")
                            print("size of array: "..table.getn(pat))
                            repeating = false






                        else
                            clicked = pat[patternIndex] 
                            patternIndex = patternIndex + 1
                            print("lights up random box")
                            print (clicked)
                            wait(1)


                        end



                        light = 1

                    end

                elseif (patternIndex == table.getn(pat)) then

                    pattern = true
                    patternIndex = 0
                    light = 2
                    wait(1)
                    print("your turn ended")
                    print(pat[patternIndex])

                end
            end
        end
    end   
 end

 startText: addEventListener( "touch", starting)

Please ignore the print statements as it was used to debug the problem! Thanks!

Answer 1

Corona SDK is an event driven application. You should not use looping in this manner to make things work. Buttons generate events then you make things happen. People touch things and then you do more work.

If you need the traditional "Game loop" where things happen over time, you can either user a timer to fire at specific intervals, or you can create an "enterFrame" event that fires every screen update.