Respawning Powerups

[Saint Sloth]

I'm new to game maker. I was following along with the Shaun Spalding platformer tutorial and did everything hid did and it turned out alright. I made a two test levels, had someone playtest them, and decided that to stupid-proof my game I need to make powerups re-spawn about 2 seconds after the alarm on them runs out. My issue is that it doesn't respawn after the alarm goes off, but the alarm deletes itself after I close the object properties folder. Here's what I have, I hope it's enough to understand.

The object file's name: obj_powerup

In a create event:
exist = 1
ypos = obj_powerup.y;
xpos = obj_powerup.x;

In a collision with player file:
with(obj_player_1)
{
jumpspeed = jumpspeed_powerup;
sprite_index = spr_player1_blue;
alarm[0] = 300;
}

instance_destroy();
exist = exist-1;

In a step file:
if (exist < 1)
{
alarm[0] = 420;
instance_create (xpos,ypos,obj_powerup);
}

Any thoughts on how to fix my issue (the item not respawning/the alarm deleting itself)?

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

Have you put any code in the Alarm event? An empty event generally does nothing and will be removed when you close the object window.

 

[Saint Sloth]

Have you put any code in the Alarm event? An empty event generally does nothing and will be removed when you close the object window.

So the clock stopped disappearing. I have a piece of code in there that's just "///empty" so it doesn't get deleted, but how do I trigger the alarm to start running after the power up has been consumed?

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

The alarm itself doesn't do anything when it triggers. You have to put some code in the alarm, code for what you want to happen when the alarm reaches 0.