Question

I have an arraylist of entities. The Entity class has

public void update(int delta, Level level, ArrayList<Entity> entities){
    //do stuff
}

a subclass of entity, Player, has a function overriding it

public void update(int delta, Level level, ArrayList<Entity> entities){
    //do player specific stuff
    super.update(delta, level, entities);
}

when I call the player objects update function from an arraylist of entities, like this:

for(Entity entity : entities)            //contains an object of Player
    entity.update(delta, level, entities);

it calls the entity function directly and the player specific stuff doesnt happen, however if I call it like this:

((Player)entities.get(0)).update(delta, level, entities);

it does. I thought I understood the problem but I tried the following code

private static class Foo{
    public void print(){
        System.out.println("I AM FOO");
    }
}
private static class Bar extends Foo{
    public void print(){
        System.out.println("i am bar");
        super.print();
    }
}
public static void main(String[] args){
    ArrayList<Foo> foos = new ArrayList<Foo>();
    foos.add(new Foo());
    foos.add(new Bar());
    for(Foo leFoo: foos)
        leFoo.print();
}

and it actually calls the print function from Bar when the object is a bar. I’m kinda lost at this point.

Answer 1

Since you have multiple Level classes, you have to ensure that the Player.update() method signature references the correct one (in order to override successfully):

public class Player {

  @Override
  public void update(int delta, game.level.Level level, ArrayList<Entity> entities) { ... }
}