The Entity-Component pattern
We will now spend 5 minutes wallowing in the misery of an apparently unsolvable muddle. Then, we will see how the Entity-Component pattern comes to the rescue.
Why lots of diverse object types are hard to manage
This project design raises multiple problems that need to be discussed before we can start tapping away at the keyboard. The first is the diversity of the game objects. Let's consider how we might handle all the different objects.
In the previous projects, we coded a class for each object. We had classes such as Bat, Ball, Snake, and Apple. Then, in the update method, we would update them, while in the draw method, we would draw them. In the most recent project, Snake, we took a step in the right direction and had each object handle itself in both the updating and drawing phases.
We could just get started and use the same structure for this project. It would work, but a few major coding nightmares would become apparent toward the...