How would I go about adding a reference to a bitmap in my sprite data structure? See I need it so I can finish my pixel-perfect collision detection routine for a bullet-to-obstacle. I need the bitmap reference so I can access the bitmap itself to get the pixels. Here is my sprite structure:

typedef struct SPRITE{
int x;
int y;
int dir;
int alive;
int width;
int height;
int xspeed;
int yspeed;
int xdelay;
int ydelay;
int xcount;
int ycount;
int framecount;
int framedelay;
int curframe;
int maxframe;
int animdir;

*collision detection variables*
int col_width;
int col_height;
int col_x_offset;
int col_y_offset;
}SPRITE;

My first thought was to add standard statement of the BITMAP type like:

BITMAP *reference;

I tried that but when I went to access it like this:

obstacle->reference;

The compiler gave me an error. Unless I'm trying to access it the wrong way...

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Is this what You meant? And what was the error returned from the compiler?

Use: obstacle.reference, not obstacle->reference.

edit: Tomasz, neither of the methods you describe work.

Sorta but not the ticket.

Like for testing purposes, I need the structure to hold the bitmap that represents the sprite. Then I want to draw the bitmap to the back buffer to make sure that the reference is holding the bitmap.

I did what you had there in the code and it compiled but when I went to run the program, it crashed at run-time.

EDIT:
I fixed it. Thanks for your help.

I added this to my sprite structure:

BITMAP *reference;

Then just set it equal to the bitmap in the animation array:

player->reference = player_images[0];

Then drew it to the buffer:

draw_sprite(buffer, player->reference, 300, 400);

The following compiles and executes for me flawlessly:

You probably didn't load it correctly. Most likely your bitmap is NULL, so when you try to use it it gives an error.