Question

I’m working on a personal project for a friend and have hit a bit of a roadblock. I can continue as I am and write some really redundant code, but I feel there must be a more efficient way of doing this.

What I’m trying to do is write a method that will add three values and display the results to the text box under “Skill Modifier” header (see screenshot). I need to get the method, or a series of methods, to do that for each skill. It needs to get the Skill Modifier value for Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, etc…

The method would be something like “CalculateSM”

What I have currently:

        private void btnUpdate_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        //AM + R + MM =SM
        //AM = Ability Modifier
        //R = Rank
        //MM = Misc Modifier
        //SM = Skill Modifier

        decimal balanceMod = balanceAM.Value + balanceR.Value + balanceMM.Value;
        balanceSM.Text = balanceMod.ToString();

        decimal climbMod = climbAM.Value + climbR.Value + climbMM.Value;
        climbSM.Text = climbMod.ToString();

        //etc...
    }

Essentially the biggest issue, for me, is figuring out how to contrive a method that can deal with so many different field names and add them in the same way. I’d like to avoid copy and pasting the same two lines of code fifty times over for each and every skill.

Any ideas would be much appreciated! Thank you.

Answer 1

using fields like this is not very object-oriented. you’re probably going to want to introduce a Skills class that implements the method to calculate the final skill score and then use some Skills objects for different skills.

public class Skill
{
    int ability, rank, misc;

    public Skill(int ability, int rank, int misc)
    {
        this.ability = ability;
        this.rank = rank;
        this.misc = misc;
    }

    public int Score { get { return ability + rank + misc; }
}

Skill balance = new Skill(10, 1, 1);
textBalance.Text = balance.Score.ToString();

Skill programming = new Skill(10, 100, 0);
textProgramming.Text = programming.Score.ToString();

also, think of a clever way to tie the skills to your user controls. you’re not going to like ending up with 50 text boxes that are all alike except for a bit of a name. a first step could be to wire them all up to the same event handler, for example.