[Captain Vimes]

Well, since DevX is the most experienced person here when it comes to my game engine, I guess this question is mostly geared towards him. But if anyone else has any input, it would be greatly appreciated.

I am currently designing a Sprite subclass for all the short-lived objects in the world; most commonly, explosions resulting from the death of an enemy alien or whatever. I don't want them to hang around forever, so I'm making the DyingSprite class.

The basic thing is that it's a Sprite class that just sits in one spot and plays its animation. But when the Update(float deltaTime) function is called for the DyingSprite, it also adds the deltaTime value to the timer_ variable. When timer_ is greater than or equal to the deathTime_ variable, which is set when the DyingSprite is created, the Sprite removes itself from the game.
Here's the thing, though: I don't know how to make a Sprite remove itself from the game engine's SpriteManager. The only thing I could come up with was this:

- Take the Sprite class and add a pointer to the game engine
- Also add an integer that stores the Sprite's game engine index
-When the DyingSprite dies, have it call engine_->DeleteSprite(index_)

Would this work? Or is there another, easier way to get rid of a Sprite without mangling the class?
_________________
"Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness."
- Terry Pratchett

[Hajo]

I don't know your engine, but maybe I can give an idea.

In many cases an object can't safely delete itself, because it's code would still be executed in the moment of deletion, and this causes all kinds of troubles.

A clean way is to have a second class where a dying object can register to be deleted and which regularly (e.g. after a frame is drawn) deletes all registered objects.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

yeah, I do pretty much what hajo said.

I have a flag on the sprite called IsDead, and I set it to true when I want it gone (in your case, when the time is up). Then, the code which calls update on it, would do this:

[DeveloperX]

[Captain Vimes]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I'm trying to implement them right now. I'll let you know how it goes.
_________________
"Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness."
- Terry Pratchett