First let me say hello, as this is my first post on gamedev.net -- now to jump straight to the good stuff (aka code): I'm writing a simple little program to try out some new design patterns and have run into a conundrum on how to go about some details. The language is C++, and the compiler is MS Visual 2003. I realize that I'm not using some of these in the classic way (The factory doesn't so much construct as provide a consistent reference point for a mesh and creating new reference points for example) so bear with me as I haven't come up with a better name for some of these yet. I'll try and be as concise as possible in describing this. class Game { vector<ModelFactory*> Factories; // holds list of all the model factories. } class ModelFactory { public: Model& create(location, orientation, etc.); private: int modelcount; } class Model { private: ModelFactory* origin; // the factory that made it } The long of the short is that I want the ModelFactory to unload itself if no models are using it -- I've considered 2 ways to do this thus far: ~Model { if(0== --(origin->modelcount) { delete origin; } } and a similar method where the factory has a 'remove' method (probably needing to be passed a model pointer and checking if its origin == itself) Unfortunately both of these involve either friending or making a get method on something I don't want directly exposed. There is also the problem of the vector above needing to be informed when a modelfactory is deleted. But since I don't want to tie modelfactory to the game class I don't see a way to go about this with any elegence whatsoever. Any suggestions or thoughts?

Futhermore, check out the Loki Library by Andrei Alexandrescu.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/loki-lib/

Kuphryn