In which I talk about std::map

I’ve dabbled with std::map(s) in C++ already, yes. But for some reason it just never sticks, so here I am writing a tad bit about it in hopes I will remember it better this time ?!

Here’s the problem: When making a 2D game, often times you want to be able to have multiple types of animation on a component, and play a specific animation under specific gameplay conditions. But I didn’t have that!

Since I already mentioned std::map, the solution presents itself as std::map<std::string, AnimationClip*> m_AnimationList.

Now the question is: How to add and retrieve content from the map?

Luckily, adding something to a std::map is as simple as a function call.

void AddAnimationClip(std::string AnimationName, AnimationClip* Clip) { m_AnimationList.emplace(AnimationName, Clip); }

And here’s how I retrieve a specific Animation Clip:

AnimationClip* GetAnimationClip(std::string ClipID) {
	if (m_AnimationList.count(ClipID) != 0) {
		return m_AnimationList[ClipID];
	}
}

And finally, to play an animation I just have a pointer to the current animation being played, and that’s where all the logic and sprites come from: m_CurrentAnimation = m_AnimationList[AnimationName].

Now, it’s beyond this short post to talk about unordered maps, whether you should be using strings as a key or not, so maybe in the future I can briefly bring that up?!