I''m kinda doing something like you said now.. but indeed a litle different.
My graphics class now has an array of Images. The header contains an enum with all the image IDs. I use an enum because it''s very easy to maintain.. like this:
enum ImageIDs
{ IMG_UNDEFINED = 0, // Initial image id
IMG_BACKGROUND,
IMG_BLOCK,
MAX_IMAGES // Nr of Images to load
}
The MAX_IMAGES is used to determine the length of the image array. IMG_UNDEFINED is the initial value for all images.
the image array is an object array.. like this:
CDDrawImage m_theDDrawImage[MAX_IMAGES];
To use IMG_BACKGROUND and IMG_BLOCK, I only have to initialize the DDrawImage in the array. Like this:
m_theDDrawImage[IMG_UNDEFINED].SetProperties("UNDEFINED.BMP", false, 0 );
m_theDDrawImage[IMG_BACKGROUND].SetProperties("BACKGROUND.BMP", false, 0 );
m_theDDrawImage[IMG_BLOCK].SetProperties("BLOCK.BMP", false, 0 );
The difference between your and my version is that yours handles memory better. Because all my image classes are always in memory. Which is ok for small games, but it will have to change for bigger projects. It would then indeed become a pointer array instead of an object array.
and it was indeed a huge pile of work to change my old code into this new format.. but I still think it was worth it
