Question

G’day All,

If I have a number of objects called enemies on the screen, how can I put them into an array?
My initial thought was to do it at the time they were created. I put a declaration in the top of my Game.cs file:

public enemy[] enemiesArray = new enemy[5];

Then when I create the enemies I tried to add them to the array:

for (int i = 0; i < 2; ++i) // This will create 2 sprites
        {
            Vector2 position = new Vector2((i+1) * 300, (i+1) * 200);
            Vector2 direction = new Vector2(10, 10);
            float velocity = 10;
            int ID = i;

            Components.Add(new skull(this, position, direction, velocity, ID));
            skullsArray[i] = skull; // This line is wrong
        }

I have also tried to to it in the update() method using code like this:

foreach (GameComponent component1 in Components)
        {
            int index = component1.ID;
            if (component1.ToString() == "enemy")
            {
                enemiesArray[index] = component1
            }
         }

But that falls down because component1 does not have an ID. I have to assume that as the program enumerates through each GameComponent it can only access a limited range of data for the component.

In the end I want to be able to refer to my enemies as enemy[1], enemy[2], etc.

Thanks,
Andrew.

Answer 1

I don’t see why you cant use a List which works a lot like an array, but it has a variable length. Then you could do this:

List<Enemy> EnemyList;

//You have to initalize it somewhere in Initalize or LoadContent (or the constructor)

You can add enemies just like you would add components (because Components is a List<GameComponent>

EnemyList.Add(enemy);

Then you can access the enemy:

EnemyList[index].DoSomething();

EDIT: just looked at your code again and I noticed that skull doesn’t exist. Did you mean

new skull(this, position, direction, velocity, ID);

Because otherwise you are trying to add a class to the array rather than an instance of the class 🙂