Cleanest way to Spawn Creatures Within a Plugin?

A little tired, so please pardon anything that is incoherent. I'll help clarify any questions in the morning.

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I have an ArrayList: (inherited - cleaned to contain only Creatures)

Code:

ArrayList<LivingEntity> group;

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I have a method:

Code:

public void spawnAllScattered(CraftWorld world, double minX,
        double maxX, double minY, double maxY, double minZ, double maxZ) {}

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The body of the method would go something like this:

Code:

public void spawnAllScattered(CraftWorld world, double minX,
        double maxX, double minY, double maxY, double minZ, double maxZ) {
    for (LivingEntity le : group) {
        ... spawn le at random point within given area ...
    }
}

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How can I spawn a LivingEntity in the cleanest way possible? I want to avoid the large if/else statement checking if the LivingEntity is an instance of a class (see below) or using purely Strings to identify the Creature's class.

Code:

if (le instanceof CraftPig) {
    ... spawn pig ...
} else if (le instanceof CraftZombie) {
    ... spawn zombie ...
} else if (etc.) {
    ... spawn etc. ...
}

Many thanks in advance for the help!

JMEYER

 

Use a switch statement instead if...else if

 

You have a few options.

If you REALLY dont want multiple if-else, just get the objects name and hash it down to a single letter.. then you can use a single character literal in a switch. Problem with this, is it is more work then just using the if..else..if.. as Java does not support string constants in switch statement, unlike simular languages like C#

If you wanted to liver like Danger Man, you could use the objects hash codes.. but that can be trippy as you never really know if you will get a hash colision.

Another possible way is to boil each object down to an enum value and use that in a switch.. but like I said, its less work to just use the if..else conditionals.

 

Enums are not my strong suit, but that sounds much more elegant. Is there a way to directly have the -class- correspond to a String?

My plugin will require me to take a list of monsters from a SQLite database. I'll have to both add the monsters to the ArrayList using a similar if/else. Then spawn them using that same if/else.

 

@Luck how to use switch statement over instanceof? AFAIK switch in java only support integers.

 

Someone beat you: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/npcspawner-lib-spawn-basic-npcs.3298/