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Calling a function from a component on another component controlled object in C++?

by Dave Calabrese · in Torque Game Builder · 11/29/2009 (2:26 am) · 1 replies

NOTE: This has been duplicated from my response in the TorqueX forums at www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/56233

I'm trying to do this on the C++ side and I'm getting some funky errors. Here is how I'm setting things up... (did some searching in the forums and didn't see any responses, so hopefully I didn't miss someone already explaining this!)

First, I have a gCurrentPlayer object which is an extern so I can easily use it from anywhere in the engine, as almost all the game code hinges off of it. So at the top of another component that I want to access function from the player component, I do:

extern t2dSceneObject* gCurrentPlayer;

And of course, gCurrentPlayer is assigned in the playerComponent.cpp file.

Now is where I get a little stuck. I can see 2 ways to do this, and I'm having problems with both. The first is of course just to call functions on the gCurrentPlayer object...

gCurrentPlayer->doMyFunkyFunctions();

As one might expect, this complains that doMyFunkyFunctions() is not a method in t2dSceneObject. Ok, that makes sense. So I try and grab the behavior from the gCurrentPlayer object so I can do things with that..

playerComponent* activePlayer = gCurrentPlayer->getComponent<playerComponent>();

And this gives me the error of "error C2275: 'playerComponent' : illegal use of this type as an expression"

So, how does one call methods on a component controlled object from inside another component on the C++ side?
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Associate Phillip O'Shea
Violent Tulip
#1
11/29/2009 (4:32 am)
Unless you created your own getComponent method to handle the template type, then you are going to need to change how getComponent works in TGB.
// Add this to the SimComponent class declaration (SimComponent.h).
template<class T> T* getComponent( void );

// Add this to SimComponent.cpp
template<class T> T* SimComponent::getComponent( void )
{
    for( SimComponentIterator nItr = mComponentList.begin(); nItr != mComponentList.end(); nItr++ )
    {
        // Cast to Template.
        T *component = dynamic_cast<T*>( *nItr );
        // Valid?
        if ( component )
        {
            // Return Component.
            return component;
        }
    }

    // No Component of Specified Type.
    return NULL;
}
I've not tested it out, but it looks like it should work.