Yay for the music note ... Anyways...
So I have a list of spells in a file. Like say:

//name, MP Req
Kill Monsters, 999
Kill People, 999
Yo Mamma, 999
You`re A Lil` Girl, 0

Right, but I want these to call their own functions to calculate damage/look cool/whatever. So... how do I do that? Is there a way without a big ass switch (or in this case a huge string of (else)ifs for the name)? Can I like say:

//name, MP Req, function()
Kill Monsters, 999, KillMonsters
Kill People, 999, KillPeople
Yo Mamma, 999, YoMamma
You`re A Lil` Girl, 0, LilGirl

Except that's all hard to do and possibley impossible . Any ideas/comments/random stuff welcome!

It seems to me you might be able to do some sort of struct with function pointers... I would normally work that idea into workable code and post the code, but I don't really feel like working it out right now because i'm lazy But anyway, thats all I really do, just think of some sort of seemingly good option and work it out. Usually they work, but in this case I'm not sure. You'll just have to experiment with that one...

Something like this, I think he suggested:

Yes, it's basically a big if/else statement, but it's a very compact big if/else statement..

Use reflection to call the correct method. That should work well if you know what class will hold your methods. And if you use Java, of course.

But generally speaking, it's not that good if each attack uses it's own way to calc damage anyway.

Just specify the to-hit-chance, the damage, the type of attack / type of damage, any secondary effects and possible state changes (stunned 50%, confused 10%, etc.) for example.

That way you can just read in the data and use it. It makes it also more easy tweak these values later on.

KittyCat was thinking exactly like what I was thinking, I was just too lazy at the time to think it out thourghougly like he did.

I personally like the map idea, myself. That would have never occurred to me, because I had no idea you could do that.... very interseting.

Aha! Great. It works beautifully! Thank you. I'm still sad that I have to use std::strings, but what'cha gonna do (except over-ride the global == operator, which will lead to my next question). And since we're on the subject, here's why I hate std::strings: sizeof(std::string) == 28, sizeof(char *) == 4 . Anyways, so I tried to over-ride the global ==operator and I did it like this (for char *s only)

bool operator==(const char *left, const char *right){
  if(!stricmp(left, right))
    return true;
  return false;
}

And it says this:

main.cpp(6): error C2803: 'operator ==' must have at least one formal parameter of class type

Whassat mean? If this is impossible, I'll settle for using std::strings, but this just seems easier

EDIT: Also, what do you think, should I load the list from the file each time in battle, this way I don't have to keep track of the spells the first way, but the second way is quicker.

You overload operators for user defined types and <b>const char looks like a built-in type for me

So you dislike std::string 'cause it's 24 bytes bigger? How unfair

Those 24 extra bytes are worth it IMO and they won't hurt that much.

Think about common implementations that need temp char []s for storing stuff, most of those implementations like to use 512 bytes + 4 of the pointer = 516 bytes, and, in most cases, they use less than 40 of those 512 bytes... so... is std::string still that bad?

What if they need 512 or more bytes?

Also remember that asking for the length of a C-string (a very common "task") has linear complexity while asking for the length of a std::string always takes constant time.

It'sn't that bad after all, is it?

Well, c_str() doesn't return the internal data of std::string, it's just a copy, and even if it returned the internal data stored in std::string, the return type is <b>const char , so you can't modify it.

As I said, <b>const char is a built-in type and you can only overload operators for the types you create.

It wouldn't be smart to allow the user change the meaning of those operators for built-in types, like making:

int a = 2, b = 7, c = 9;
c = c + a * b; // <--

get a totally different meaning.

Well there's another down point to std::strings...
And the rest of your post makes sense.

ROS: That makes sense... I was gonna say I didn't recignize any of that!

ACTUALLY I'm not. I assume data rerutns the data in char * format? And copy...? No one said anything about this...

Well that's no good, I can't send the thing to a function! The reason I wanted it was instead of having a huge ass buffer. So I can't even do this? See strings ARE stupid

No, you can't send it to a function, properly. You can't do this:

fgets(some_std_string, 99999, some_file);

Now can yah? You can't do it with anything! None of std::strings members!

EDIT: As to not get a post cap. F**K IOSTREAMS! DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THOSE DUMB A*S THINGS!

Of course it is Java. I even said so in my first post mentioning reflection

Um... if you want to do that, you should just define your spells in an external file, not hardcode a function call.

Take a look at the spell descriptions of freely available RPG systems, say d20 or GURPS light or Fudge or whatever.

What you'll see is that these description classify a spell by its range, the number of targets, how the spell is targeted, what "schools of magic" the spell belongs to, how the traget can defend itself and finally also the damage that is made (if any) and if the state of the target can be affected.

For a computer game, you will also need to add some description on how the spell effect looks and sounds.
That means you might have a list of graphic styles for missles, beams, auras cunjuration of monsters, etc.

Oh, reading through some of the pen&paper RPGs will also give you an idea how you can create a system in which you can explain both magic and normall attacks using just a few stats.