C++ Pointer/Reference Question

Not with your current setup. The best thing to do is to quit using raw pointers.

If your animations are preloaded, you can easily impliment a handle based
system that refrences the animations in the cache. This will solve all pointer
problems, and still have the effencency (For the most part) of pointers.

Also, if "main game object" can create animations (But not delete them), I
suspect a design issue, as this breaks encapsulation. Whoever is responsible
for creating animations (and adding them to the animation cache) should also
destroy them. Mabey create a manager for the animation cache?)

Cant really help you more because we dont know exactally what "Animation Cache"
is.

As Sneftel suggested, you really should not use raw pointers. I recommend
either creating a memory manager to track usage, and/or smart pointers.

Hope this helps[smile]

Thanks for the advice. I will give smart pointers a shot.

To clarify, my "animation cache" is just a place where animation data is stored so that game objects that need to play a specific animation can get a reference to it.

The animation cache creates and destroys all animations. References to the animations are requested by game objects for use.

This way, I don't have to have 100 copies of an animation object, I could have 100 game objects all referencing one animation, playing different frames of it, all at the same time.

I don't see how this model breaks encapulation.

This is the same concept as having a mesh object loaded only once but being reused through references in many objects concurrently.

Maybe my terminology needs adjustment.

Anyway, thanks again for the advice.

I see. Smart pointers seems it to be what you should use, then.