Question

I have a class called SpriteCollection where I load the images with SDL. This class has an attribute called:

SDL_Surface* sprites[];

I think it’s right (though I’m not sure about that). In the same class I have a method:

void addNewSprite(SDL_Surface* sprite){

    this->sprites[n_sprites+1] = new SDL_Surface;
    this->sprites[n_sprites+1] = IMG_Load("spritepath.jpg");
    this->n_sprites++;
}

And another to retrieve the SDL_Surface to draw on screen:

SDL_Surface getSprite(int sprite_index){

    return this->sprites[sprite_index];
}

And to draw on the screen I’m using:

Draw(x_position, y_position, this->sprite->getSprite[0], screen);

I’m loading images normally; it’s all OK, but the IDE is returning an error about pointers and conversion between SDL_Surface and SDL_Surface *.

What am I doing wrong?

edit: the error message:

E:\cGame.cpp|71|error: cannot convert `SDL_Surface' to `SDL_Surface*' for argument `1' to `int SDL_UpperBlit(SDL_Surface*, SDL_Rect*, SDL_Surface*, SDL_Rect*)'|

Answer 1

In your getSprite function which has a return type of SDL_Surface, you’re trying to return an SDL_Surface*. Perhaps you meant:

SDL_Surface* getSprite(int sprite_index){
  return this->sprites[sprite_index];
}

In addition, these lines are very suspect:

this->sprites[n_sprites+1] = new SDL_Surface;
this->sprites[n_sprites+1] = IMG_Load("spritepath.jpg");

First you’re dynamically allocating a new SDL_Surface and storing the pointer to it. Then you’re getting rid of that pointer by assigning the result of the IMG_Load call to it. Now you’ll never be able to delete the surface because you’ve lost the pointer to it. You may think about encapsulating your sprite and using the RAII idiom to handle the allocation of the SDL_Surface.

On top of all this, you’d probably be better off using a std::vector instead of an array.