Question

I have a game with 2 players. They have almost same beginning data and of course it changes in the course of the game.

I am guessing I need some king of constructor object that I will replicate and then modify, also I need it to be JSON for easy ajax sending.

Is there a design pattern that can help me? I prefer not to use database since I need the data only for a single game instance.

This is the structure I use now for one player:

player = {
    "active" : true,
    "room" : openRoom,
    "id" : playerID,
    "name": username,
    "hp" : 5,
    "units" : {
        1 : {
            "id" : 1,
            "hp" : 3,
            "row" : 1,
            "square" : 1
        },
        2 : {
            "id" : 2,
            "hp" : 4,
            "row" : 2,
            "square" : 1
        },
        3 : {
            "id" : 3,
            "hp" : 5,
            "row" : 3,
            "square" : 1
        }
    }
};

Answer 1

There are several design patterns regarding object instantiation and initialization. However, you don’t seem to need any inheritance or “property sharing” techniques, so a very simple function that returns a new object should fit well as a constructor. You even can use object literals in coding it.

An example of two constructor functions, each with some parameters:

function makePlayer(id, name, units) {
    return {
        "active" : true,
        "room" : openRoom,
        "id" : id,
        "name": name,
        "hp" : 5,
        "units" : units
    };
}
var uuid = 1;
function makeUnit(row) {
    return {
        "id" : uuid++,
        "hp" : 3,
        "row" : row,
        "square" : 1
    };
}
var player = makePlayer(playerId, username, [makeUnit(2), makeUnit(4), makeUnit(3)]);
var jsonstring = JSON.stringify(player);