Question

I have a Player class that derives from Humanoid and Humanoid derives from Sprite like so

Sprite -> Humanoid -> Player

So far so good. Sprite has the virtual method

virtual sf::Sprite getSprite() { return sprite_; }

where sprite is an image object that can be drawn onto the screen.

Humanoid declares virtual sf::Sprite getSprite();

Player defines virtual sf::Sprite getSprite() { return sprite_; }

Sprite has a member sprite_; this is what I want to do:

1) Create a player class while passing a sprite like so

Player::Player(sf::Image image)
    : Humanoid()
{   
    sprite_.SetImage(image); // Converts sf::Image to sf::Sprite
}

2) Drawing it on the screen from my Game class like so

sf::Image playerImage;
if(!playerImage.LoadFromFile("Link/Link.png"))
    std::cin.get();

Player *player = new Player(playerImage);

/* ... */

App.Draw(player->GetSprite());

Testing the program, I have found that the player->getSprite() method is indeed called, but I fear that I may have hidden the Sprite::getSprite() method instead of actually deriving and using it. Since the Sprite class has a protected sprite_ member, I’m confused as to which sprite_ object I’m actually returning when I call the function.

Also, it seems like the image file got lost somewhere along the line, and before I post in the SFML forum I would like some confirmation as to whether or not my inheritance tree is actually correct or not.

Answer 1

If the Sprite class has a sprite_ member and none of the derived classes (Humanoid/Player) have added a member with the same name then there is only one sprite_ object for each instance and the function should work as expected. I don’t understand why you’re overriding getSprite if you give it the exact same behaviour though.