Giant Char or multiple Chars for console game map? - c++

Question

I'm a pretty novice c++ coder and I am starting to make a console adventure game.
My adventure game currently consists of a player character that walks around inside a console application window with an 80 character width x 40 lines.
I am not sure how to approach storing the maps for my game. Each map will consist of 80 x 40 ASCII characters with colour attributes.
Should I store each 80 x 40 map in its own char? so a single map would look something like...
int cHeight = 5; // Reduced size for this example
int cHeight = 10; // Reduced size for this example
// Set up the characters:
char map[cHeight][cWidth+1] = {
"1234567890",
"1234567890",
"1234567890",
"1234567890",
"1234567890",
};
CHAR_INFO mapA[cWidth * cHeight];
for (int y = 0; y < cHeight; ++y) {
for (int x = 0; x < cWidth; ++x) {
mapA[x + cWidth * y].Char.AsciiChar = map[y][x];
mapA[x + cWidth * y].Attributes = FOREGROUND_BLUE | Black; //I have an enum setup with background colours.
}
}
// Set up the positions:
COORD charBufSize = {cWidth,cHeight};
COORD characterPos = {0,0};
SMALL_RECT writeArea = {0,0,cWidth-1,cHeight-1};
// Write the characters:
WriteConsoleOutputA(wHnd, mapA, charBufSize, characterPos, &writeArea);
Im not sure if this is entirely the correct way to display the characters but I didn't think it was a good idea to just cout every character in the for loop.
So.. lets say my console window (in the above code) is 10 characters wide and 5 lines high.
In the above code I have a single map in the Char, so when loading each map I would put each one in their own array.
I was thinking of putting the entire map into a single Char, but then only displaying what I needed by offsetting the x and y in the for loop.
mapA[x + cWidth * y].Char.AsciiChar = map[y+offset][x+offset];
So the map would look more like this;
char map[cHeight][cWidth+1] = {
"1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ",
"1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ",
"1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ",
"1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ",
"1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ",
};
with the offset I could display '1234567890' on 5 rows separately from 'ABCDEFGHIJ' on 5 rows.
So in short I would like to know the most effective way to do this, should I have multiple Chars? Should I create a class? then I could store the characters an colours? (class' are still new to me in c++).
Should I draw the terrain only in the map and then add objects (houses, trees)?
Or just draw it all in the map manually?
I think I've just thought about this too long and need a bit of direction
Thanks!

Answer 1

The way I would do it would be to create a map of
Node* map[height][width]
This means you would create the map which are pointers to Node* elements and you could define the Node* element to be...
class Node{
char displayCharacter;
int posx,poxy
unsigned int r; //red
unsigned int g; //green
unsigned int b; //blue
unsigned int a; //alpha
display(); // This function will know how to display a node using the colour etc
};
Then you could for example if you wanted to create a house you would give it the center point of the model etc... to draw to a function
void createHouse(Node* center)
{
if((center->posh > 0)&&(center->posh< maxheight))
{
if(map[center->posy-1][center->posx]!=NULL)
{
map[center->posy-1][center->posx]->displayCharacter = '_';
map[center->posy-1][center->posx]->r = 255;
}
}
}
Then in main you would have something like...
while(true)
{
for(int i=0; i<maxheight; i++)
{
for(int j=0; j< maxwidth; j++)
{
map[i][j]->Display();
}
}
}
I hope all this sample code is of help to you and answered your question. I have not debugged or looked for any syntax errors. If there any errors in the code, you will have to fix them!
Good luck to you!