Question

For an XNA engine I’m trying to make myself, I want an array/arraylist of instances that server as my game objects. If all of my game objects are parented to a GameObject class, what’s a way I can do this?

Answer 1

How about

GameObject[] gameObjects = new GameObjects[100];
GameObject[0] = new GameObject();
GameObject[1] = new GameObject();
GameObject firstGameObject = gameObjects[0];

or

List<GameObject> gameObjects = new List<GameObjects>();
gameObjects.Add(new GameObject());
gameObjects.Add(new GameObject());
GameObject firstGameObject = gameObjects[0];

The first will allocate an array with 100 elements and assign the value of the first two elements. The second will create a list where two elements are added.

The <> indicates that List<> is a generic type where you can specify the type of the element stored in the list. This creates a strongly typed collection.

Compare that to using an ArrayList:

ArrayList gameObjects = new ArrayList();
gameObjects.Add(new GameObject());
gameObjects.Add(new GameObject());
GameObject firstGameObject = (GameObject) gameObjects[0];

The ArrayList class stores Object references and to access an item in the list you have to perform a cast. That is both tedious and error prone and you should always use List<> and not ArrayList unless you are developing .NET 1 code.

To learn more about generics you can study the C# programming guide on generics on MSDN.