Question

is this ok? im basically replacing a call to a single function referencing globals, by a class encapsulating all game entities and logic, the following is how i would like to call the new class in main, was just wondering what is the general c++ guru consensus on this.

class thingy
{
public:
    thingy()
    {
        loop();
    }
    void loop()
    {
        while(true)
        {
            //do stuff

            //if (something)
                //break out
        }
    }
};

int main (int argc, char * const argv[]) 
{
    thingy();
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

It’s not common to have a constructor that contains the game/events/… loop, the usual way to do stuff like that is to use the constructor to set up the object, and then provide a separate method that starts the lengthy elaboration.

Something like this:

class thingy
{
public:
    thingy()
    {
        // setup the class in a coherent state
    }

    void loop()
    {
        // ...
    }
};

int main (int argc, char * const argv[]) 
{
    thingy theThingy;
    // the main has the opportunity to do something else
    // between the instantiation and the loop
    ...
    theThingy.loop();
    return 0;
}

Actually, almost any GUI framework provides an “application” object that behaves just like that; taking e.g. the Qt framework:

int main(...)
{
    QApplication app(...);
    // ... perform other initialization tasks ...
    return app.exec(); // starts the event loop, typically returns only at the end of the execution
}