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check object type?

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check object type?, chess game example

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mjdamico	10 Jul, 2008 - 10:13 AM Post #1
New D.I.C Head Joined: 15 May, 2008 Posts: 9	I have a linked list of objects (of multiple types), and I'd like to be able to perform a variety of actions depending upon what the object type is. It's a game I'm working on, and the different types of game "pieces" will follow a variety of rules depending upon the class type. I'll use chess as an example. So I'll have a lot of different classes for each game piece type (king, queen, knight, pawn, etc.). Then I'll create a number of instances of each in order to fill the game board (black_knight_1, white_pawn_3, etc.). Now suppose the player chooses to move white_pawn_3. I would like to create some sort of conditional statement that checks the object type and handles the piece accordingly. For instance (in pseudo-code): if (white_pawn_3 is a king) then follow these rules... if (white_pawn_3 is a pawn) then follow these rules... Seems simple enough, but I'm kind of new at this. Any help is appreciated. Thanks. This post has been edited by mjdamico: 10 Jul, 2008 - 10:14 AM
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polymath	10 Jul, 2008 - 10:21 AM Post #2
D.I.C Regular Joined: 4 Apr, 2008 Posts: 407 Thanked 4 times Dream Kudos: 500 My Contributions	What i think you are talking about is checking if an object is of a certain class. If so, the easiest solution that I know of is to create bool values in each class (isKing, isQueen, etc.) and then in your constructor set the bool value to false of all the variables except for the piece (for instance, if it is a king, set isKing to true and isQueen to false). Then you would just check (if black_king_1.isKing, if black_king_1.isQueen, etc). My only question, if you can detect which variable is used (for instance, you know they clicked on the black king), couldn't you have the user's input determine which if statement to use? If you have some more pseudocode about how the interface would work that would help. I'm just going after what i think you're getting at.
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C++ Programmer	10 Jul, 2008 - 10:24 AM Post #3
New D.I.C Head Joined: 12 Jun, 2008 Posts: 29 My Contributions	I'm kinda new to, but it sounds like a pretty fun game once finished
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mjdamico	10 Jul, 2008 - 10:55 AM Post #4
New D.I.C Head Joined: 15 May, 2008 Posts: 9	QUOTE(polymath @ 10 Jul, 2008 - 11:21 AM) What i think you are talking about is checking if an object is of a certain class. If so, the easiest solution that I know of is to create bool values in each class (isKing, isQueen, etc.) and then in your constructor set the bool value to false of all the variables except for the piece (for instance, if it is a king, set isKing to true and isQueen to false). Then you would just check (if black_king_1.isKing, if black_king_1.isQueen, etc). My only question, if you can detect which variable is used (for instance, you know they clicked on the black king), couldn't you have the user's input determine which if statement to use? If you have some more pseudocode about how the interface would work that would help. I'm just going after what i think you're getting at. Thanks for the quick response. Your suggestion works. I tested it: CODE #include <iostream.h> class gamepiece { public: bool isPawn; bool isKnight; bool isQueen; //etc... }; class pawn : public gamepiece { public: pawn():gamepiece() { isPawn = 1; isKnight = 0; isQueen = 0; } }; class knight : public gamepiece { public: knight():gamepiece() { isPawn = 0; isKnight = 1; isQueen = 0; } }; int main() { knight white_pawn_1; gamepiece* selected; selected = &white_pawn_1; if(selected->isPawn) cout << "That's a pawn."; if(selected->isKnight) cout << "That's a knight."; } This will work, but it seems that things would get unwieldy if I wanted to add another class. Say I wanted to add a dragon piece. (Wouldn't chess be more exciting with dragons?) I'd have to go in and create a new bool value isDragon in the base class. Then I'd have to go into each derived class constructor and add the line isDragon = 0. If I ended up creating 50 different classes, I'd have a lot of mucking around. It would be a lot easier to be able to add one conditional statement to main. Something like CODE if( selected is a dragon) then Know what I mean? Any ideas?
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polymath	10 Jul, 2008 - 11:02 AM Post #5
D.I.C Regular Joined: 4 Apr, 2008 Posts: 407 Thanked 4 times Dream Kudos: 500 My Contributions	You could have a variable inside each class of type string, like this... cpp #include <iostream> class gamepiece { public: string piecetype; }; class pawn : public gamepiece { public: pawn():gamepiece() { piecetype="Pawn"; } }; class knight : public gamepiece { public: knight():gamepiece() { piecetype="Knight"; } }; int main() { knight white_pawn_1; gamepiece* selected; selected = &white_pawn_1; if(selected->piecetype=="Pawn") cout << "That's a pawn."; if(selected->piecetype=="Knight") cout << "That's a knight."; } That's a much better solution than the one i gave earlier. Oh, and for your includes, if you are using a c++ library, drop the .h, since sometimes it can be a little ambiguous, especially with the string library (string is c++, string.h is c, cstring is also c).
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mjdamico	10 Jul, 2008 - 11:41 AM Post #6
New D.I.C Head Joined: 15 May, 2008 Posts: 9	Yeah, now we're talking. That should work just fine. Thanks!
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polymath	10 Jul, 2008 - 01:54 PM Post #7
D.I.C Regular Joined: 4 Apr, 2008 Posts: 407 Thanked 4 times Dream Kudos: 500 My Contributions	Three things: 1. Be sure to include the string library, <string>, for that. 2. Post the code in the snippets section once you're done (I'd love to see a chess snippet) 3. Shouldn't knight white_pawn_1 be pawn white_pawn_1? This post has been edited by polymath: 10 Jul, 2008 - 01:55 PM
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baavgai	10 Jul, 2008 - 02:26 PM Post #8
Dreaming Coder Joined: 16 Oct, 2007 Posts: 1,967 Thanked 96 times Dream Kudos: 475 Expert In: C, C++, Java, C#, ASP.NET, PHP, Perl, Python, Oracle, SQL Server, MySql, HTML, JavaScript, Lua My Contributions	I wouldn't go crazy with a class for every conceivable thing. Your program may be easier to manage with just a Piece class and a Board class. Here's some code: cpp enum PieceType { PT_PAWN, PT_KNIGHT, PT_BISHOP }; class GamePiece { private: PieceType type; public: GamePiece(PieceType type) { this->type = type; } PieceType getType() const { return this->type; } string getName() const { switch (this->type) { case PT_PAWN: return "Pawn"; case PT_KNIGHT: return "Knight"; case PT_BISHOP: return "Bishop"; default: return "Oops"; } } }; Now, where you may find a different class per piece is for things like legal moves. However, it's probably just as easy to make a legal moves list and stuff it in the game piece.
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Cerolobo	10 Jul, 2008 - 03:28 PM Post #9
D.I.C Regular Joined: 5 Apr, 2008 Posts: 440 Thanked 31 times My Contributions	Actually, you might want to implement virtual functions. They make things like this a lot easier to work with. CODE #include <string> #include <iostream> class gamepiece { public: virtual std::string GetType(void) const{return "";} }; class pawn : public gamepiece { public: std::string GetType(void) const{return "Pawn";} }; class knight : public gamepiece { public: std::string GetType(void) const{return "Knight";} }; int main(void) { pawn p; knight k; gamepiece *g; g = &k; std::cout << "Game piece is a " << g->GetType() << std::endl; g = &p; std::cout << "Game piece is a " << g->GetType() << std::endl; return 0; } This way, you can easily add new game piece types, without modifying the original gamepiece class. Plus, since you wanted to preform some action based on the piece type, you could easily add addition virtual functions to actually do those checks.
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perfectly.insane

10 Jul, 2008 - 06:44 PM

Post #10

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You can also do this using integers (which would be more efficient in time-critical portions of code). Here is an example (that does not require manual numbering):

cpp


#include <iostream>

class rtti_id_factory
{
    public:
       typedef int id_type;
       static id_type get_id() 
       {
           return cur_id_++;
       }

    private:
       static id_type cur_id_;
};

rtti_id_factory::id_type rtti_id_factory::cur_id_ = 1000;

#define USE_RTTI()                                                         \
    public: virtual rtti_id_factory::id_type type() { return my_type_; }           \
            static rtti_id_factory::id_type type_id() { return my_type_; } \
    private: static rtti_id_factory::id_type my_type_; 

#define IMPLEMENT_RTTI(klass)                                              \
    rtti_id_factory::id_type klass::my_type_ = rtti_id_factory::get_id();

class my_class_1
{
    USE_RTTI();

    public:
        my_class_1() { }
        ~my_class_1() { }
};

IMPLEMENT_RTTI(my_class_1);

class my_class_2
{
    USE_RTTI();

    public:
        my_class_2() { }
        ~my_class_2() { }
};

IMPLEMENT_RTTI(my_class_2);

int main()
{
   my_class_1 mc1;
   my_class_2 mc2;
   if(mc1.type() == my_class_1::type_id()) {
       std::cout << "mc1: my_class_1" << std::endl;
   }
   if(mc1.type() == my_class_2::type_id()) {
       std::cout << "mc1: my_class_2" << std::endl;
   }

   return 0;
}

If a textual ID is desired as well as an integral one, that can be added to the preprocessor macros so that you can display the names when needed, but otherwise use simple integer comparisons when detecting object types.

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mjdamico	17 Jul, 2008 - 06:03 AM Post #11
New D.I.C Head Joined: 15 May, 2008 Posts: 9	Thanks for all of your tips. Unfortunately, it's been a week since I've had a chance to work on this code. I work full-time and go to grad school in the evening... seems I can only spare a couple hours a week to work on this game. Fortunately it's just a silly hobby. I don't expect it to show up on Xbox Live anytime soon. Full disclosure: it's really a Roguelike RPG I'm trying to put together. I was just using the chess analogy as a bit of misdirection, being that it feels cliche for a beginning programmer to be making a Roguelike game. I've got more design-related questions that I'll post in another thread...
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polymath	17 Jul, 2008 - 09:18 AM Post #12
D.I.C Regular Joined: 4 Apr, 2008 Posts: 407 Thanked 4 times Dream Kudos: 500 My Contributions	I felt so smart until all the experts came in...
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