Blitz Basic - NEWTYPES

[gazj82]

Happy new year all!

I need some help with NEWTYPES in blitz basic.

Here is some of my code

.variables
DEFTYPE .w
NEWTYPE .sprite
x.w
y.w
oldx.w
oldy.w
frame.w
speed.w
direction.w
olddirection.w
End NEWTYPE
DEFTYPE .sprite player
DEFTYPE .sprite enemy1
DEFTYPE .sprite enemy2

Now player works fine, just as expected. The trouble is I want to have two (or more) of the same enemy following the same code using a for loop. When I used to use dim'd arrays for this I could do this easily. How can I reference the right enemyX in a for loop. I guess it would be something like this.

for ene=1 to 2
enemy(ene)\x + 1
next ene

Surely there must be a way of doing this and I just don't know the syntax?

[earok]

That looks just fine to me (except next ene is redundant though? just use next?). Do remember that arrays are zero indexed though. Here's an example (truncated) from an actual game project of mine.

NEWTYPE .Entity
ID.b
X.q
Y.q
End NEWTYPE

Dim Players.Entity(4)
for i = 0 to 3
Players(i)\ID=i
Players(i)\Y=300
next

[Daedalus]

Arrays are zero indexed, but also count the index of the amount they're DIM'd to. For example, Players.Entity(4) has 5 elements, indexed 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4.

This is not the case for arrays *within* Newtypes (e.g. Players\skill[1] will only have a [0] index), but arrays of primitives and Newtypes have n+1 members.

As for another way of doing it, there isn't really. The data you want to access is within an array, so you must provide an index. However, there is a compiler shortcut you can use: the Usepath command. This tells the compiler the default Newtype root to use, and can include variables. So, to borrow earok's example:

Dim Players.Entity(4)

Usepath Players(i)

for i = 0 to 3
\ID=i
\Y=300
next

Finally, the variable with the Next keyword is optional, but I make a habit of including it anyway, since it helps avoid potential bugs when you have a number of nested loops. But that's just me - I also like to use the enforced type declarations of AmiBlitz3 too

[gazj82]

Should have replied ages ago. Thanks Earok your post got me moving again. I did no dim'd arrays start at 0.

Thank you for your help to Deadalus