I've seen it before a couple of times and am somewhat familiar with the issue. I personally dug into someone's project once to help them track down the root of the issue and recover from it (mostly successfully), which gave me a good idea of what causes it.
Please do as Nocturne says and file a report before following any of the advice I'm about to provide. This has been a persistent issue for a while now, and getting it resolved for good would be a massive relief for everyone involved. Having a sample of a project that exhibits the problem will be very valuable to the developers in finding out the cause and subsequently fixing it.
So, to summarize, this usually has something to do with one of the project files including a line that looks like this:
GML:
{"roomId":{"name":"","path":"",},},
instead of the way it should be:
Code:
{"roomId":{"name":"rm_myroom","path":"rooms/path/to/rm_myroom.yy",},},
hence "blank ID reference". This example uses a room, but it could also be a sprite, an object, a subimage of a sprite... and the like.
This causes GM to throw a hissy fit and may also confuse the everloving heck out of the compiler.
Here are some links to topics related to this issue, showcasing a few ways this can manifest itself:
I am dealing with continuous crashes on my project in many different areas, it is random, I am doing nothing, resize a window, collide etc and the game will crash, also my output will list about 40 of this message when loading project. Core Resources : Info - Blank IdReference found - could be...
forum.yoyogames.com
When i opend up my game i get the "Blank IdReference found - could be that the project is corrupt." in the output window. I look back into my folders and my objects sprites etc are all there. When i try adding existing or even just dragging the .yy or the folder into the ide it gives me that...
forum.yoyogames.com
Hello forum! This is a tutorial and recap on how to fix the "Blank IdReference found - could be that the project is corrupt" when you already tried everything and nothing works BUT your project still compiles and nothing seems to fail because of this. What do I mean with that? No black...
forum.yoyogames.com
Maybe one of these will be the cause in your case. Otherwise, a project-wide search in a text editor (usually named something like "find in files") of your choice (Notepad++ and Sublime Text are capable of this, if you lack options) for
may help you track down the source of the issue, as this is something most if not all cases seem to have in common.