Wizards with Rockets Event Callbacks

This is my first post about my game, Wizards with Rockets! For those that don't know, Wizards with Rockets (wwr) is a top-down multiplayer shooter with AI bots, written in C.

In wwr, the collision system checks for collisions every frame. On a collision, you may want something to happen, eg, player reduces health by a certain amount. The problem is that a collision can happen over many frames, and thus the action you want to take would be called many times.

To resolve this, I implemented an event system in C. On a collision, it makes a call to the event system to register an event, named with a string.

bool collision = rect_collision(&rockets[i].obj, player_ptr, rocket_collide_dirs, bgnd);
if(collision){
    //player_take_hit(); -- old method called every collision frame
    register_collision(&rockets[i].obj, player_ptr, rocket_collide_dirs,    "rocket-player collision");
} else {
    remove_collision(&rockets[i].obj, player_ptr);
}

As the code shows, it registers a collision, passing in the objects, collision directions and the event name string.

In the file gameobject.h, it contains the function definition for register_collision()

bool added_collision = false;
a->col_info.name = NAME;
a->col_info.collision_dirs = col_dirs;
b->col_info.name = NAME;
// Look through each per-object collision
for(int i = 0; i < MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS; i++){
    // If collision already addded
    if(a->collisions[i] == &b->col_info){
        // skip
        added_collision = true;
        i = MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS;
    }
}
// Bind collision objects from a->b
if(!added_collision){
    for(int i = 0; i < MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS; i++){
        if(a->collisions[i] == NULL){
            // add object b's collision info
            a->collisions[i] = &b->col_info;
            added_collision = true;
            i = MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS;
            // Call collision event by string name
            call_collision_callback(NAME);
            printf("Added new collision (a) %s\n", NAME);
        }
    }
}
// After successful collision add
if(added_collision){        
    for(int i = 0;i < MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS; i++){
        // If collision already binded
        if(b->collisions[i] == &a->col_info){
            // skip
            added_collision = true;
            i = MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS;
        }
    }
    // bind from b->a
    if(!added_collision){
        for(int i=0; i < MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS; i++){
            if(b->collisions[i] == NULL){
                // add object b's collision info
                b->collisions[i] = &a->col_info;
                added_collision = true;
                i = MAX_PER_OBJECT_COLLISIONS;
                printf("Added new collision (b) %s\n", NAME);
            }
        }
    }
}

In short, both objects are bound to each other if not already and the event callback gets called (only once) .

Before the call_collision_callback can be called, it needs to be registered first.

void register_collision_callback(const char * event_str, void (* callback)()){
    bool added_callback = false;

    // look through all potential collision events
    for(int i = 0; i < MAX_COLLISION_EVENTS; i++){
        // if callback already added 
        if((collision_cb_names[i][0] != 0) && (strcmp(collision_cb_names, event_str) == 0)){
            added_callback = true;          
            i = MAX_COLLISION_EVENTS;
        }

    }
    // if not added, add it in an empty spot
    if(!added_callback){
        for(int i = 0; i < MAX_COLLISION_EVENTS; i++){
            // found an empty string
            if(collision_cb_names[i][0] == 0){
                strcpy(collision_cb_names[i], event_str);
                collision_callbacks[i] = callback;
                i = MAX_COLLISION_EVENTS;
            }
        }
    }
}

It's rather, simple. It checks if it has already been added (compare strings) and adds the function to an array of functions as declared in gameobject.h-

void (*collision_callbacks[MAX_COLLISION_EVENTS])();

Now, to call an event callback (as described above in register_collision)

void call_collision_callback(const char * cb_str){
    for(int i = 0; i < MAX_COLLISION_EVENTS; i++){
        // if array name is not empty and names match, call the appropriate function
        if(collision_cb_names[i][0] != 0 && strcmp(collision_cb_names[i], cb_str) == 0){
            (*collision_callbacks[i])();
            i = MAX_COLLISION_EVENTS;
        }
    }
}

And that's it. There's much more to my code.

There's room for improvement - eg hash table to improve performance. And adding event data. But I'm just glad that it's working :)