c++ battle game code help

Hi, I started a battle game today for practice and maybe im blind but I cannot see why this does not work.

Code:

void town()
{
	int placechoice, life, maxLife;

	life = 100;
	maxLife = 200;

	system("CLS");
	cout << "Life = " << life << endl << endl;
	cout << "Welcome to the townsquare." << endl;
	cout << "1. Go into the forest" << endl;
	cout << "2. Go to the shop" << endl;
	cin >> placechoice;

	if (placechoice == 1)
		introforest();
	else if (placechoice == 2)
		shop(life, maxLife);
}

void shop(int &life, int &maxLife)
{
	int shopchoice;

	system("CLS");
	cout << "Welcome to my store, I am the shopkeeper Alkhaza." << endl;
	cout << "What would you like?" << endl;
	cout << "1. Free Healing" << endl;
	cout << "2. Leave shop" << endl;
	cin >> shopchoice;

	if (shopchoice == 2)
		town();
	else if (shopchoice == 1)
	{
		system("CLS");
		life = maxLife;
		cout << "You have been healed for no fee!" << endl;
		cout << "Goodluck on your adventures" << endl;
		system("PAUSE");
		town();
	}
}

Well here is the problem.........
I am testing changing the life when you heal, but for some reason it never sets it to 200, it stays 100. Any suggestions would be gladly appreciated. Thanks guys.

Since you are using indirect recursion, the variable scope and initialization comes into play. Look at how your declaring and initializing the variables.

If you can get a debugger, step through the code and you will see exactly what is happening. Or you could do it by hand, it only took me a minute to trace through statement by statement to see what is going to happen...and don't skip a line when reading. Thats probably your problem, your making assumptions because you wrote the code. Read it like someone else wrote it and your have better luck.

Hrmmm.......I tested it and it does change the life in the shop function, but when it goes back to the town function it does not change the value of life. Because it is reference, shouldnt it permanantly change it? Or am I backwards?

Code:

        if (shopchoice == 2)
		// town();  no need to call town
                // when you exit this function, control returns to caller
                // which is town()
                return;
	else if (shopchoice == 1)
	{
		system("CLS");
		life = maxLife;
		cout << "You have been healed for no fee!" << endl;
		cout << "Goodluck on your adventures" << endl;
		system("PAUSE");
		// town();
                return;
	}

can u say, "infinite loop?"

Its not quite an inifinite loop because the user can always choose not to go to the shop, but the stack might not ever unwind properly. It is an example of indirect recursion , which is certaintly not desired by Siggy. Siggy, were you able to realize your error or do you need some more clarification?