Thread: Object Creation at Run Time

Both are good choices and would both work fine for what you are trying to do. I'm not sure about vectors being slow but I have heard that too. However, in a relatively simple arcade game there aren't going to be any insane graphic effects and whatnot that will eat your fps, so a vector won't kill you if it is slower. Linked lists can be a little complicated, however they would probably work fine for what you are trying to do.

Vectors are almost as fast as normal arrays (I say almost, because there is a little difference in time but it is very very small).

You could use some other kind of STL container if you don't want to use linked lists.

A vector should be as fast as an array except for at creation. Also resizing the vector will cause a performance hit. If you know how many objects your are going to have ahead of time you can use the .reserve(size_t count) funtion of the container class.

Use std::list as it has way better adding/removing time complexity than std::vector. The advantage of std::vector is that you have random access but if removing elements the indices would be changed anyway.