Question

I am in the process of creating a very simple component based game engine. I have an entity class that stores a list of components to iterate through.

The entity class also stores info like name, position, scale whatever.What I need is for each component to store a reference to the entity instance that owns it. I originally tried using the “this” keyword but it doesnt work as you cannot use it in assignments.

void Entity::addComponent(Component *theComponent){
    components.push_back(theComponent);
    theComponent->ownerEntity = this;
}

How can the component store a pointer to its owner?

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: The component class has pretty much nothing in it as its intended to be inherited but here is its declaration:

class Entity;

class Component
{
    public:
        Component();
        virtual void Update();
        Entity *ownerEntity;
    protected:
    private:

};

When Making a component if I try and access the owner entity like so:

rotation = ownerEntity->GetRotation;

I get this error:

error: argument of type 'float (Entity::)()' does not match 'float'

Answer 1

rotation = ownerEntity->GetRotation;

should be:

rotation = ownerEntity->GetRotation();

to call the function.