Class Organization

I have a question regarding the way I want to organize my game. Right now, the game is pretty much finisihed, but the code is pretty ugly. Here is one scenario that I would like help on, and then I can probably apply that to the rest.

Lets say there is one main class, called Person. There are two sub classes that inherit from Person, called Gunner and Fighter. Pretty much as follows:

Code:

---

class Person
{
public:
    char Name[100];
    int x_pos;
    int y_pos;
};

class Gunner : public Person
{
public:
    int amount_of_bullets;
    // random other attributes
};

class Fighter : public Person
{
public:
    char weapon_type[100];
    // random other attributes
};

---

Everything is nice and dandy right now. Then we have a class called Army, and it holds a vector of Persons, like so:

Code:

---

class Army
{
public:
    vector<Person> m_arUnits;
};

---

Now, the problem I am having is this: If you declare things like this:

Code:

---

Fighter Herc;
Gunner Guns;
Army Phalanx;

Phalanx.m_arUnits.push_back(Herc);
Phalanx.m_arUnits.push_back(Guns);

---

You only have access to the Person attributes when you iterate through the vector. I want to be able to access the other things like weapon_type and amount_of_bullets. So basically my question is: Is there anything I can store the information in so I can access specific data relative to the current class? If not, can anyone give me advice on how to set up this scenario so that it can be organized and efficient, and also has room for growth?

Thanks for any help,

Khelder

create a boolean variable in the Person class, but do not initialize it. Initialize it in the Gunner and Fighter classes.

a 1 can stand for a Fighter, and a 0 can stand for a Gunner.

Then, when you iterate, check that boolean variable (you should be able to check it since it was originally created in the Person class, even though it was not initialized there).

If it is a 1, typecast into a Fighter, otherwise, typecast into a Gunner.

Typecasting should allow you to access those fields you need to access that are specific to Fighter and Gunner.

I tried typecasting, like this:

Code:

---

cout << ((Fighter *)Phalanx.m_arUnits[0])->weapontype << endl;

---

On the plus side, the Fighters attributes became accessible. On the other hand, the following two errors wont go away.

1)
error C2440: 'type cast' : cannot convert from 'std::allocator<_Ty>::value_type' to 'Fighter'
with
[
_Ty=Person
]

2)
error C2227: left of '->weapontype' must point to class/struct/union

The second error is because of the first, but how can I fix the first. I checked other projects where I typecast a lot, and I did it the way in my example above. Am I doing something wrong, or is it impossible to organize things the way i am trying to?


Thanks as always for any help,

Khelder

try this and see if it works, not sure if it will or not, but try it anyways:

Code:

---

cout << ((Fighter)Phalanx.m_arUnits[0])->weapontype << endl;

---

That gives the same error also. Thanks for trying though. I think what I am trying to do may not be possible. I may just need a different vector for each type.

Khelder

Try making your base class abstract, and then define everything in the children classes.

The vector should hold pointers, not objects.

A good idea is to define a virtual function process() in the base class which is run once per frame and is defined differently for each different object.

I think you may have a slicing problem.

Change
vector<Person> m_arUnits;
to
vector<Person*> m_arUnits

Lets say that you have a class A and a class B that inherits from A.
There is no way to cast an object of A into B. The only way do it is by using pointers.

A *a;
B b;

a=&b;

((B*)a)->....

What is the benefit to a vector holding pointers rather than objects?

Ill see if I can organize it some way so that virtual functions can do what I want them to do.

Thanks for the ideas,

Khelder

Excellent! Pointers and virtual functions fixed my problem. Thanks for the help!

Khelder