Java Super and Sub Classes

Ok so i've got a game, with class Player, and a few extensions of Player

i've greatly over simplified my code for ease of my typing.

Code:

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class Player
    public PlayerStuff;
class SmartPlayer extends Player
    public SmartStuff;
class HumanPlayer extends Player;
    Public HumanStuff;

---

then in my game class i'm trying to define an array of players that is a mix of players, smartplayers and humanplayers.

Code:

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Player[NUM_OF_PLAYERS] PlayersInGame;

PlayersInGame[1] =  new Player;
PlayersInGame[2] = new SmartPlayer;

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and the problem arises that i cant access the methods in SmartPlayer even if instances of the array is pointed at a SmartPlayer... any ideas?

The reason for that is that the compiler has no way of guaranteeing that a reference in an array of Players has the methods within the SmartPlayer class. Since you could just as easily store a HumanPlayer there that does not have the method, the compiler forces you to make such a guarantee.

There are two ways around this.
1) I call this the wrong way, but sometimes you can't avoid it. You could force the instance to be a smart player with a cast, so something like:

Code:

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((SmartPlayer)PlayersInGame).methodInSmartPlayer();

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To be even safer, you could do an instanceof check, so that you never get a ClassCastException if you accidentally do that with the wrong class.

2) Only call methods that are guaranteed to be common among Player - if the method you are trying to call can be made abstract in Player and then implemented in both, then by all means take this route.

can you typecast as things other then default types?

Yes indeed - and that TypeCast will actually work, provided what you are casting actually was instantiated as a SmartPlayer. If you tried the cast on a HumanPlayer, it would throw an exception during execution.

awesome, thanks a bunch.

No problem.