Question

Please tear this code apart, make it complex and scarcely readable, I’d rather learn the hard way once than learn the same thing many times the wrong way.

The base class is as follows:

class baseMob{
private:
    int _healthMax;
    int _healthCurrent;
    int _manaMax;
    int _manaCurrent;
    int _experiencePoints;
public:
    //Set max Hp
    void setHealthMax(int);
    //Get max Hp
    int getHealthMax();
    //Set Current Hp
    void setCurrentHealth(int);
    //Get Current Health
    int getCurrentHealth();
    //Set Max Mana
    void setMaxMana(int);
    //Get Max Mana
    int getMaxMana();
    //Set Current Mana
    void setCurrentMana(int);
    //Get Current Mana 
    int getCurrentMana();
    //getMob Exp on kill
    int getExperiencePoints();
    //Set mob Exp points
    void setExperiencePoints(int);
//leaving out the member functions for space conservation

};

The individual mob that I’m trying to create is a green slime, which I’m trying to create via the default constructor I’ve made…

   class greenSlime: private baseMob{
    public:
        greenSlime(){
            setHealthMax(100);
            setMaxMana(100);
            setCurrentHealth(100);
            setCurrentMana(100);
            setExperiencePoints(150);
        }
    };

My main function looks like this right now:

 greenSlime slime();
    for(; slime.getCurrentHealth() >= 0; slime.setCurrentHealth(-1)){
        cout << "The current health of the slime is: " << slime.getCurrentHealth() << endl;
        if (slime.getCurrentHealth() <= 0 ){
            cout << "Player is awarded with: " << slime.getExperiencePoints() << " Experience. ";
        }
    }

If anyone wants to tear this up and make me look like a jackass, I’d really appreciate the help.

The error that I’m presently getting is:

Project1.cpp:107: error: request for member getCurrentHealth' inslime’, which is of non-class type `greenSlime ()()’

Along with other errors of the same type.

Tl;Dr: Class implementation isn’t working, posted all my source when I probably could’ve posted about 1/10th of this and still made sense, and would love to have someone tell me why it’s not working and how bad I am.

Answer 1

Others have pointed out problems in terms of why your code doesn’t work. I’ll make a recommendation about program design.

When explaining inheritance, tutorials and programming classes frequently use toy examples that are very similar to your code. These examples show what inheritance is, but really aren’t very good at showing what inheritance is useful for.

I wouldn’t use inheritance in this case. I think a better design is to have a class that represents the mob type and holds all the data that is static for all that mob of that type, such as the mob name, starting/max HP, attack types, etc. And then have another class where each instance represents a specific mob and holds data that changes for that mob, such as current hp.

class Mob_type {
    string name;
    int max_hp;
    vector<shared_ptr<Attack_type>> attacks;
public:
    Mob_type(string name,int max_hp,vector<shared_ptr<Attack_type>> attacks)
    : name(name),max_hp(max_hp),attacks(attacks) {}
    int get_max_hp() const { return max_hp; }
};

class Mob {
    Mob_type const &type;
    int hp;
public:
    Mob(Mob_type const &type) : type(type), hp(type.get_max_hp()) {}
    Mob_type const &get_type() const { return type; }
    int get_hp() const { return hp; }
};

void print_health(Mob const &m) {
    cout << m.get_hp() << '/' << m.get_type().get_max_hp() << '\n';
}

int main() {
    vector<shared_ptr<Attack_type>> attacks; // ...
    Mob_type green_slime("Green Slime",50,attacks);

    Mob green_slime_A(green_slime), green_slime_B(green_slime);

    fight(green_slime_A,green_slime_B);

    cout << "A: ";
    print_health(green_slime_A);
    cout << "B: ";
    print_health(green_slime_B);

}

This way you can have a data file that contains the mob types and all you have to do to add a type is to update the data file.