Question

i need some advice. i have 2 classes for a game that i am making, and those classes are:

Graphics
Sprite

the sprite class consists of an image buffer for the image, an (x, y) offset, and a width and a height. the graphics class has a buffer for the screen. the screen buffer can have things blitted to it like the image buffer for the sprite.

are there any recommended ways of blitting the sprite’s image buffer to the graphics screen buffer? i had 2 ideas:

have a method like this (in the sprite class):

void Sprite::blit(SDL_Surface* screen)
{
    // code goes here
}

or this (in the graphics class):

void Graphics::blit(Sprite sprite)
{
   // code
}

or even this (also in the graphics class):

void Graphics::blit(SDL_Surface* aSpritesImageBuffer)
{
   // code
}

there are problems with all of these tho. in both classes, i use encapsulation to hide both the sprite’s image buffer and the graphics component’s screen buffer. they are returned as a constant so no one can manipulate them without using the functions provided in the class. this is how i did it:

class Graphics
{
public:
    const getScreenBuffer() const {return screenBuffer;}
private:
    screenBuffer;
};

^ same with the sprite’s image buffer.

so if i tried (in my main class)

void handleRendering()
{
    graphics.blit(sprite.getImageBuffer());
}

that would not be very good?

or even:

void handleRendering()
{
    graphics.blit(sprite);
}

and i don’t think this is good:

void handleRendering()
{
    sprite.blit(graphics.getScreenBuffer());
}               

are there any better methods of doing this without getting errors like const to non-const? << i get an error like that.

Answer 1

I don’t know if your sprite class is only a low-level rendering element (so, basically only a wrapper around SDL_Surface*), or if it’s already the actual representation of a creature in your game. In the latter case, as an alternative to your different solutions, you could only keep an id of the bitmap in the sprite class, among other properties like coordinates, size, speed… And the actual code dependent of the rendering technology in a separate set of classes, like “Graphics”, “BitmapCollection”…

So on one side, you would have a “clean” sprite class with simple properties like position, size, speed… and on the other side, the “dirty stuff”, with low level SDL_nnn objects and calls. And one day, that id would not represent a bitmap, but for example a 3D model.

That would give something like that:

void handleRendering()
{
    graphics.blit( bitmapCollection.Get( sprite.getImageId());
}

I don’t know if the image of a sprite really has to be private or read only. Several sprites could share the same image, other classes like “SpecialEffects” could modify the sprite bitmaps, swap them, make semi-transparent following ghosts on screen and so on.