Game Objects Talking To Each Other [closed]

Question

What is a good way of dealing with objects and having them talk to each other?

Up until now all my games hobby/student have been small so this problem was generally solved in a rather ugly way, which lead to tight integration and circular dependencies. Which was fine for the size of projects I was doing.

However my projects have been getting bigger in size and complexity and now I want to start re-using code, and making my head a simpler place.

The main problem I have is generally along the lines of Player needs to know about the Map and so does the Enemy, this has usually descended into setting lots of pointers and having lots of dependencies, and this becomes a mess quickly.

I have thought along the lines of a message style system. but I cant really see how this reduces the dependencies, as I would still be sending the pointers everywhere.

^{PS: I guess this has been discussed before, but I don't know what its called just the need I have.}

Answer 1

Be careful with "a message style system", it probably depends on implementation, but usually you would loose static type checking, and can then make some errors very difficult to debug. Note that calling object's methods it is already a message-like system.

Probably you are simply missing some levels of abstraction, for example for navigation a Player could use a Navigator instead of knowing all about the Map itself. You also say that this has usually descended into setting lots of pointers, what are those pointers? Probably, you are giving them to a wrong abstraction?.. Making objects know about others directly, without going through interfaces and intermediates, is a straight way to getting a tightly coupled design.

Answer 2

the generic solutions for communication between objects avoiding tight coupling:

1. Mediator pattern
2. Observer pattern

Answer 3

@kellogs suggestion of MVC is valid, and used in a few games, though its much more common in web apps and frameworks. It might be overkill and too much for this.

I would rethink your design, why does the Player need to talk to Enemies? Couldn't they both inherit from an Actor class? Why do Actors need to talk to the Map?

As I read what I wrote it starts to fit into an MVC framework...I have obviously done too much rails work lately. However, I would be willing to bet, they only need to know things like, they are colliding with another Actor, and they have a position, which should be relative to the Map anyhow.

Here is an implementation of Asteroids that I worked on. You're game may be, and probably is, complex.

Answer 4

Messaging is definitely a great way to go, but messaging systems can have a lot of differences. If you want to keep your classes nice and clean, write them to be ignorant of a messaging system and instead have them take dependencies on something simple like a 'ILocationService' which can then be implemented to publish/request information from things like the Map class. While you'll end up with more classes, they'll be small, simple and encourage clean design.

Messaging is about more than just decoupling, it also lets you move towards a more asynchronous, concurrent and reactive architecture. Patterns of Enterprise Integration by Gregor Hophe is a great book that talks about good messaging patterns. Erlang OTP or Scala's implementation of the Actor Pattern have provided me with a lot of guidance.

Answer 5

Here is a neat event system written for C++11 you can use. It uses templates and smart pointers as well as lambdas for the delegates. It's very flexible. Below you will also find an example. Email me at [e-mail] if you have questions about this.

What these classes gives you is a way to send events with arbitrary data attached to them and an easy way to directly bind functions that accept already converted argument types that the system casts and checks for correct conversion prior to calling your delegate.

Basically, every event is derived from IEventData class (you can call it IEvent if you want). Each "frame" you call ProcessEvents() at which point the event system loops through all the delegates and calls the delegates that have been supplied by other systems that have subscribed to each event type. Anyone can pick which events they would like to subscribe to, as each event type has a unique ID. You can also use lambdas to subscribe to events like this: AddListener(MyEvent::ID(), [&](shared_ptr ev){ do your thing }..

Anyway, here is the class with all the implementation:

#pragma once

#include <list>
#include <memory>
#include <map>
#include <vector>
#include <functional>

class IEventData {
public:
    typedef size_t id_t; 
    virtual id_t GetID() = 0; 
}; 

typedef std::shared_ptr<IEventData> IEventDataPtr; 
typedef std::function<void(IEventDataPtr&)> EventDelegate; 

class IEventManager {
public:
    virtual bool AddListener(IEventData::id_t id, EventDelegate proc) = 0;
    virtual bool RemoveListener(IEventData::id_t id, EventDelegate proc) = 0; 
    virtual void QueueEvent(IEventDataPtr ev) = 0; 
    virtual void ProcessEvents() = 0; 
}; 


#define DECLARE_EVENT(type) \
    static IEventData::id_t ID(){ \
        return reinterpret_cast<IEventData::id_t>(&ID); \
    } \
    IEventData::id_t GetID() override { \
        return ID(); \
    }\

class EventManager : public IEventManager {
public:
    typedef std::list<EventDelegate> EventDelegateList; 

    ~EventManager(){
    } 
    //! Adds a listener to the event. The listener should invalidate itself when it needs to be removed. 
    virtual bool AddListener(IEventData::id_t id, EventDelegate proc) override; 

    //! Removes the specified delegate from the list
    virtual bool RemoveListener(IEventData::id_t id, EventDelegate proc) override; 

    //! Queues an event to be processed during the next update
    virtual void QueueEvent(IEventDataPtr ev) override; 

    //! Processes all events
    virtual void ProcessEvents() override; 
private:
    std::list<std::shared_ptr<IEventData>> mEventQueue; 
    std::map<IEventData::id_t, EventDelegateList> mEventListeners; 

}; 

//! Helper class that automatically handles removal of individual event listeners registered using OnEvent() member function upon destruction of an object derived from this class. 
class EventListener {
public:
    //! Template function that also converts the event into the right data type before calling the event listener. 
    template<class T>
    bool OnEvent(std::function<void(std::shared_ptr<T>)> proc){
        return OnEvent(T::ID(), [&, proc](IEventDataPtr data){
            auto ev = std::dynamic_pointer_cast<T>(data); 
            if(ev) proc(ev); 
        }); 
    }
protected:
    typedef std::pair<IEventData::id_t, EventDelegate> _EvPair; 
    EventListener(std::weak_ptr<IEventManager> mgr):_els_mEventManager(mgr){

    }
    virtual ~EventListener(){
        if(_els_mEventManager.expired()) return; 
        auto em = _els_mEventManager.lock(); 
        for(auto i : _els_mLocalEvents){
            em->RemoveListener(i.first, i.second); 
        }
    }

    bool OnEvent(IEventData::id_t id, EventDelegate proc){
        if(_els_mEventManager.expired()) return false; 
        auto em = _els_mEventManager.lock(); 
        if(em->AddListener(id, proc)){
            _els_mLocalEvents.push_back(_EvPair(id, proc)); 
        }
    }
private:
    std::weak_ptr<IEventManager> _els_mEventManager; 
    std::vector<_EvPair>        _els_mLocalEvents; 
    //std::vector<_DynEvPair> mDynamicLocalEvents; 
}; 

And the Cpp file:

#include "Events.hpp"

using namespace std; 

bool EventManager::AddListener(IEventData::id_t id, EventDelegate proc){
    auto i = mEventListeners.find(id); 
    if(i == mEventListeners.end()){
        mEventListeners[id] = list<EventDelegate>(); 
    }
    auto &list = mEventListeners[id]; 
    for(auto i = list.begin(); i != list.end(); i++){
        EventDelegate &func = *i; 
        if(func.target<EventDelegate>() == proc.target<EventDelegate>()) 
            return false; 
    }
    list.push_back(proc); 
}

bool EventManager::RemoveListener(IEventData::id_t id, EventDelegate proc){
    auto j = mEventListeners.find(id); 
    if(j == mEventListeners.end()) return false; 
    auto &list = j->second; 
    for(auto i = list.begin(); i != list.end(); ++i){
        EventDelegate &func = *i; 
        if(func.target<EventDelegate>() == proc.target<EventDelegate>()) {
            list.erase(i); 
            return true; 
        }
    }
    return false; 
}

void EventManager::QueueEvent(IEventDataPtr ev) {
    mEventQueue.push_back(ev); 
}

void EventManager::ProcessEvents(){
    size_t count = mEventQueue.size(); 
    for(auto it = mEventQueue.begin(); it != mEventQueue.end(); ++it){
        printf("Processing event..\n"); 
        if(!count) break; 
        auto &i = *it; 
        auto listeners = mEventListeners.find(i->GetID()); 
        if(listeners != mEventListeners.end()){
            // Call listeners
            for(auto l : listeners->second){
                l(i); 
            }
        }
        // remove event
        it = mEventQueue.erase(it); 
        count--; 
    }
}

I use an EventListener class for the sake of convenience as base class for any class that would like to listen to events. If you derive your listening class from this class and supply it with your event manager, you can use the very convenient function OnEvent(..) to register your events. And the base class will automatically unsubscribe your derived class from all events when it is destroyed. This is very convenient since forgetting to remove a delegate from event manager when your class is destroyed will almost certainly cause your program to crash.

A neat way to get a unique type id for an event by simply declaring a static function in the class and then casting it's address into an int. Since every class will have this method on different addresses, it can be used for unique identification of class events. You can also cast typename() to an int to get a unique id if you want. There are different ways to do this.

So here is an example on how to use this:

#include <functional>
#include <memory>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <list>
#include <map>

#include "Events.hpp"
#include "Events.cpp"

using namespace std; 

class DisplayTextEvent : public IEventData {
public:
    DECLARE_EVENT(DisplayTextEvent); 

    DisplayTextEvent(const string &text){
        mStr = text; 
    }
    ~DisplayTextEvent(){
        printf("Deleted event data\n"); 
    }
    const string &GetText(){
        return mStr; 
    }
private:
    string mStr; 
}; 

class Emitter { 
public:
    Emitter(shared_ptr<IEventManager> em){
        mEmgr = em; 
    }
    void EmitEvent(){
        mEmgr->QueueEvent(shared_ptr<IEventData>(
            new DisplayTextEvent("Hello World!"))); 
    }
private:
    shared_ptr<IEventManager> mEmgr; 
}; 

class Receiver : public EventListener{
public:
    Receiver(shared_ptr<IEventManager> em) : EventListener(em){
        mEmgr = em; 

        OnEvent<DisplayTextEvent>([&](shared_ptr<DisplayTextEvent> data){
            printf("It's working: %s\n", data->GetText().c_str()); 
        }); 
    }
    ~Receiver(){
        mEmgr->RemoveListener(DisplayTextEvent::ID(), std::bind(&Receiver::OnExampleEvent, this, placeholders::_1)); 
    }
    void OnExampleEvent(IEventDataPtr &data){
        auto ev = dynamic_pointer_cast<DisplayTextEvent>(data); 
        if(!ev) return; 
        printf("Received event: %s\n", ev->GetText().c_str()); 
    }
private:
    shared_ptr<IEventManager> mEmgr; 
}; 

int main(){
    auto emgr = shared_ptr<IEventManager>(new EventManager()); 


    Emitter emit(emgr); 
    {
        Receiver receive(emgr); 

        emit.EmitEvent(); 
        emgr->ProcessEvents(); 
    }
    emit.EmitEvent(); 
    emgr->ProcessEvents(); 
    emgr = 0; 

    return 0; 
}

Answer 6

This probably does not only apply to game classes but to classes in the general sense. the MVC (model-view-controller) pattern together with your suggested message pump is all you need.

"Enemy" and "Player" will probably fit into the Model part of MVC, it does not matter much, but the rule of thumb is have all models and views interact via the controller. So, you would want to keep references (better than pointers) to (almost) all other class instances from this 'controller' class, let's name it ControlDispatcher. Add a message pump to it (varies depending on what platform you are coding for), instantiate it firstly (before any other classes and have the other objects part of it) or lastly (and have the other objects stored as references in ControlDispatcher).

Of course, the ControlDispatcher class will probably have to be split down further into more specialized controllers just to keep the code per file at around 700-800 lines (this is the limit for me at least) and it may even have more threads pumping and processing messages depending on your needs.

Cheers