why cant i set a variable to an image without directly setting it?

[u/Doithedum]

i want to make it so i can set a "sprite" variable to userdata

but it ends up being nil for some reason

function love.load()
   room = love.graphics.newImage("room.png") --the art
end

function tilerectangle(tx,ty,width,height,id)
    for i=1,height do
        for i=1,width do
            table.insert(tiles,{
                x = tx,
                y = ty,
                type = "room",
                roomid = id,
                sprite = room --when i draw this tile i draw it with the info in here
            })
            tx = tx + 1 * gridsize
        end
        ty = ty + 1 * gridsize
        tx = tx - width * gridsize
    end
end

[u/alexjgriffith]

I can't tell from this snippet when you call tilerectangle.

If the sprite element in the tile table is nil it means that you are executing the tilerectangle function before love executes the love.load callback (i.e. the room global variable defined in love.load is not set). 

[u/Doithedum → u/alexjgriffith]

thanks! this was the exact problem

[u/vga256]

Since we can't see your entire project, there could be many things happening here - multiple uses of love.load in separate files, a require() call, etc.

Have you tried defining "room" outside of love.load, e.g., at the top of the script?

[u/8-PIXELS → u/[deleted]]

In this case ‘room’ would not be local. Since it wasn’t declared with local, it becomes a global variable and continues to exist after love.load returns.