I’m 14 and have been learning java for about 4/5 months. I’m coding a game now called super mario winshine and i wanted to know if it is good practice to have a class that is mostly static variables.
The class is the one that holds all the information for the game’s level/world. Since I only need one version of this class, and lots of other classes will be using it, I choose to make all the variables static. Is this good practice?
I have considered the fact that i could keep the variables “non-static” and just clone the main object i use for that class, but I thought i would rather sacrifice “O-O” for memory in this case.
As soon as you want to have two or more worlds this will fail. Say, when your first release is a runaway success and you want to add the “parallel universe” expansion set.
In my experience, 90% of the time when marketing says “oh, don’t worry, there will only be one Application/Window/Database/User” they are wrong.
ADDED
I would also avoid using a true Singleton pattern with World.getInstance() etc. Those are for the rare cases where it really is an essential requirement that there only be one of something. In your case, you are using it as a convenience, not a requirement.
There is no perfect fix, YMMV, but I’d consider a single static method, something like
and then you call real (non-static) methods on the World that is returned. For V1 of your program, allow null to mean “the default world”.
Some might put that method into a class named WorldManager, or, perhaps showing my age, a more clever name like Amber. 🙂