gsap timeline autoRemoveChildren: true makes animations tweak out

[Kobold Taskmaster]

I have a gsap.timeline() I'm using for animation in a Phaser game.

I have events which I receive from a server and I timeline.to(sprite, { x: ..., y:... }) them to move them around.

I also have some fake tweens like timeline.to({ duration: 0.5 }, {onComplete: () => {}})

 

Everything is working perfectly, until I set the {autoRemoveChildren: true} setting for the timeline.

Then the movement animations don't play for the duration of the fake tweens.

And afterward, any further timeline.to movements applied happen instantly (sprite just teleports to end location).

 

I've linked a codepen where I try to reproduce the error, but I'm actually unable to.  I'm going to keep winding back my program to something closer to the codepen to see what's wrong. But in the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions on beginning to debug this based on clues I've given?

I've attached some videos...

See the Pen qBwWOjM by koboldtaskmaster (@koboldtaskmaster) on CodePen

[Kobold Taskmaster]

I'm using a workaround now where I just check if the timeline is active when I go to add more tweens to it. If it's not active, I clear() it.

Not sure if this is a bad practice or not...

[GreenSock]

It looks to me like it's working as expected. Why are you setting autoRemoveChildren: true anyway? 

 

Let's say you've got a 1-second tween in a timeline with autoRemoveChildren: true and then you do a setTimeout() so that 1 second later, you add more tweens to that timeline. Well at that point the first tween has completed and been REMOVED, thus the duration of that timeline is 0, so you add new stuff in there but the startTime of that timeline was 1 second ago (meaning the global playhead would be 1 second past the start of that timeline), so when you add a new 1-second tween into that timeline, it'd simply render at its very end because the new timeline's duration expanded out to 1 second, but the global timeline playhead is already at the end of that. Of course you could simply call restart() on that timeline if you want it to adjust its startTime such that its very start is wherever the global timeline's playhead currently is. 

[Kobold Taskmaster]

Hmm, ok, I think the way you explained it makes sense...

And I guess I didn't get the purpose of autoRemoveChildren. I thought it was to just not keep stacking memory on a persistent timeline if I never need to seek/replay.

Thanks!