Re: [cadcdev-tiki] TikiBlap Demo 0.1

[Sam S. <sam...@gm...>]

On Nov 27, 2005, at 3:52 PM, Dan Potter wrote:

> - And about Drawables in lists...:
>

R.I.P 2001 - 2005 entity.h, callback.h / callback.cc, collide.h /  
collide.cc, and a host of other files related to AOE, the core of  
DreamZZT and DCBlap (and the misc 3D demos that use the DCBlap  
engine).  I took the plunge and practically rewrote DCBlap using Tiki  
Drawables!

To be honest, it wasn't as difficult as I thought, though it requires  
changing your mindset around going from C-style programming to C++  
OOP (load_world() doesn't load the objects anymore, it creates an  
object and the object loads itself from the file, etc.).  Now the  
entire game world is packed neatly into a genmenu scene, using Tiki  
selectors for messaging.

> If we turn on RTTI (I think it might work on the DC now, and might  
> be a good thing to have overall) then you can also use dynamic_cast  
> to check to make sure that a particular pointer is the class you  
> think it is, if you need to do that.
>

Right now I'm keeping my own std::list<Entity *> of Entity pointers  
so I don't lose them when they turn into Drawables in the list, but  
I'm guessing RTTI would let me enumerate genmenu's m_scene to find  
Entity-derived objects, and cast them from a Drawable pointer to an  
Entity pointer to use the Entity-specific functions?

> The type switch on creation is pretty ugly but there's no really  
> good way around that in C++
>

Yeah, I opted for the giant if/else function for now.  I figure I can  
just generate it with a shell script, like the old object-template  
creation function was.  I actually have two of them, because of what  
I assume is another C++ "feature":

create_object("Paddle") returns an Entity* which is pointing to a  
Paddle*.  If I then call ent->loadFromFile(), then  
Entity::loadFromFile() gets called, but not Paddle::loadFromFile().   
I think that's what the virtual keyword is for?  Anyway, for now I  
just have a second giant if/else called load_object() that calls  
loadFromFile before the object gets cast to an Entity*.

As for the menus, I went and recreated them as a bunch of drawables  
-- the help text is now a few labels and banners for the controller  
icons.  It looks much better, and it's easier to swap the icons out  
for PC keyboard images on the PC (though, drawing a D-Pad was a lot  
easier than drawing the arrow keys on a PC.. grr).

I've still got a long way to go with writing the new object classes,  
so nothing playable this week -- right now it's been reduced to a  
paddle that kind-of responds to the keyboard, and a ball that makes  
drawables turn red with setTint when it collides with them.

-Sam