A Simple Game Editor in C# - Game Coding Complete - page 762

void ModifyActor ( BSTR bstrActorModificationXML )
{

std::string actorModificationXML =
ws2s(std::wstring(bstrActorModificationXML,
SysStringLen(bstrActorModificationXML)));

TiXmlDocument doc;
doc.Parse(actorModificationXML.c_str());
TiXmlElement* pRoot = doc.RootElement();
if (!pRoot)
return;

g_pApp->m_pGame->VModifyActor(atoi(pRoot->Attribute( “ id ” )), pRoot);

}
The BSTR parameter sent from the editor is a bit of XML data the editor creates to
tell the game engine exactly how the actor is changing. Basically, the XML contains a
snippet of the component XML you saw previously, but only the part that has chan-
ged. For example, if the editor changed the orientation of a Grid actor to rotate 90
degrees around the Y-axis, the XML sent from the editor would look like this:

<Actor type= >

<TransformComponent>
<YawPitchRoll x=

“ Grid ”

“ 0 ” y= “ 90 ” z= “ 0 ” />

</TransformComponent>
</Actor>

The BaseGameLogic::VModifyActor() method finds the actor and calls a mem-
ber of the ActorFactory class you ve never seen before, which is very similar to the

ActorFactory::VCreateComponent() method that initializes a new actor. It runs
through the XML above, either creates or finds the components, and initializes them.

'

void ActorFactory::ModifyActor(StrongActorPtr pActor, TiXmlElement* overrides)
{

// Loop through each child element and load the component
for (TiXmlElement* pNode = overrides->FirstChildElement();
pNode; pNode = pNode->NextSiblingElement())

{

ComponentId componentId = ActorComponent::GetIdFromName(pNode->Value());
StrongActorComponentPtr pComponent =
MakeStrongPtr(pActor->GetComponent<ActorComponent>(componentId));
if (pComponent)
{

pComponent->VInit(pNode);

}