Okay, so I have this ENEMY class right? I guess for simplicity, the subclasses are RED, BLU, GRN.

My game wants it to be that there is a certain chance that some of these varities spawn more than others, and I store all the enemies in a vector array.

The problem here is that if I make a vector array of ENEMY pointers, I can't access the member functions that are exclusive to the RED, BLU, and GRN subclasses. I can only access the base class' member functions, and even if I've overloaded RED/BLU/GRN's functions to behave differently, they default to the base class' methods. If this is easily explainable, or if there's a solution to this problem, please let me know; otherwise, I'll post my code and we'll see what we can do.

Yeah, I declared it virtual. It's telling me the ENEMY class' move() function doesn't take only one argument, when the RED object that is in the array is supposed to.

let's say:

class ENEMY
{
   friend class RED;  

   public:
      virtual void move(param1, param2);
}

class RED : public ENEMY
{
   public:
      void move(param1);
}

int main()
{
   vector<ENEMY*> ENEMIES;
   ENEMIES.push_back(new RED);
   ENEMIES[0]->move(param1);
   return 0;
}
 

It's giving me this error:

error C2660: 'ENEMY::move' : function does not take 1 arguments

I also can't use a function exclusive to my subclass, right? If it's in this array, at least.

Is it acceptable to just have a junk parameter? I literally have no use for whatever I'd make as the second parameter.

The regular ENEMY objects require the second parameter to seed its RNG when it chooses a random direction to move in that is distinct from all the other ENEMY objects.

The RED subclass moves towards specified coordinates, and thus doesn't need a seed for any RNG.

I also can't use a function exclusive to my subclass, right? If it's in this array, at least.

Is it acceptable to just have a junk parameter? I literally have no use for whatever I'd make as the second parameter.

How long have you been programming with C++? It doesnt seem like you have a firm grasp of polymorphism. If that's the case, you might want to really brush up and get a good idea of how c++ polymorphism works before you code with it.

But to answer your question, if you're trying to find ways to hack your code to get what you want, it likely means that your design is flawed.

While casting is not usually a great idea, it sounds like maybe it could help you here. Another alternative might be a message-passing system to get the behavior out of your child classes through virtual method calls on the base.

The regular ENEMY objects require the second parameter to seed its RNG when it chooses a random direction to move in that is distinct from all the other ENEMY objects.

The RED subclass moves towards specified coordinates, and thus don't need a seed for any RNG.

Why are you trying to seed your RNG every time you're going to use it?