NovaEngine PostUpdate failed with System.NullReferenceException

[Drunk3n-P1nky]

Unity Version: 2022.3.4f1
Target Platform: Android
Can be reproduced on Android. Editor is fine.
My setup:
I have TextBlock which represents a dialogue box. I assign strings to "Text" field. Material is always the same. The 1st string assignment works fine, the 2nd string assignment works fine and the 3rd fails. After app reboot everything works as expected. The bug cannot be reproduced anymore as I can tell. I assume the only reason this happens is TextMaterials hashmap in MaterialCache.cs on line 111 successfully finds material which is null. Further on it ends up with NullReferenceException because of attempt of retrieving shader field from null. I guess material either gets destroyed at some point or reference is null initially. I'll try to monitor the build to find some more useful information I can provide you with.

[Drunk3n-P1nky]

@adgray1 @dkonik do you have any thoughts?

[dkonik]

Sorry for the late reply! We investigated when we originally read your post, but we were unable to reproduce the issue and interpreted the last part of your post as you would follow up when you had additional information.

Unfortunately, we're still unable to reproduce the issue, so a couple of follow up questions:

1. Is this a consistent issue (i.e., do you always hit the issue on the 3rd string change)? If so, is there something different about the third string that you are using (e.g., a character that is not in the font atlas)?
2. Are you able to reproduce this using a simple setup (e.g. just a single TextBlock in a scene, and changing the string 3 times using the same exact strings you use in your dialogue box)? If so, could you either send us the repro ([email protected]) or describe the setup (including the strings, fonts, etc. that you are using).

For what it's worth in case it's useful for your debugging or providing additional information to us, the only place where materials are stored in that TextMaterials Dictionary has a call to GetInstanceID on the material before it's added. That call would throw an exception if the material was null (so it would never get added). Which means it appears that it's the first option that you described (i.e., the material seems to be getting destroyed).

We're not sure what exactly might trigger TMP or Unity to do this. Potentially something else that another part of your application/game is doing (such as changing scenes)?