Question

I want a attribute in my Hero class to have a Portrait attribute for his/her image. What object type should I use in this case?

public class Hero
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string HeroType { get; set; }
    public int StartingHP { get; set; }
    public int StartingMana { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, string> Spells { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, string> Items { get; set; }        
}

Answer 1

In WPF, you should use the ImageSource class, like this:

public class Hero {
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string HeroType { get; set; }
    public int StartingHP { get; set; }
    public int StartingMana { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, string> Spells { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, string> Items { get; set; } 
    public ImageSource Portrait { get; set; }
}

You can read an image from a file like this:

myHero.Portrait = new BitmapImage(new Uri(filePath, UriKind.Absolute));

You can use the Image class from System.Drawing.dll. For example:

public class Hero {
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string HeroType { get; set; }
    public int StartingHP { get; set; }
    public int StartingMana { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, string> Spells { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, string> Items { get; set; } 
    public Image Portrait { get; set; }
}

To load the image, call Image.FromFile(path). If you have an image in a stream (eg, from a database or web service, you can call Image.FromStream(stream).

If you have all of the images at compile time, you can put them in a ResX file; you can get an image from the designer-generated code file like this: myHero.Portrait = SomeResXFile.Portrait1.