Hey so I've been working on a very small roguelike just to get my feet wet in game development. Its isn't anything amazing but since this is my first ever "rpg" I'm super excited and proud of it haha.

Anyways, my question is: How do I delete a monster off of my map when i defeat it?

Basically what i have is a switch statement and in the case where my character "@" runs into an "x" or my "monster", it runs a while loop that you can see below. And you can also see that it really isnt a true battle because it isnt generating random numbers or taking into account player and/or creature statistics. Its literally just saying "Ok user, you selected the option to fight, but the programmer doesn;t know how to implement a battle system yet, so he's written this to let you always win and never die".

And thats where my problem is, once the player "wins", how do i clear the "monster off the screen and whats the quickest way to do it?

case 'x':
{
monster = true;
}

break;

while (stopgame == false && monster == true) //start monster
{
cout << "\n\nYou encountered a monster, what will you do?" << endl;
cout << "1.) Attack!" << endl;
cout << "2.) Flee." << endl;
cin >> monsterInput;

if(monsterInput == 1)
{
cout << "\n\nYou attacked the monster" << endl;
cout << "You defeated the monster" << endl;
cout << "You win!" << endl;
cout << "\nRECIVED: Gold +5" << endl;
cout << "RECIVED: EXP +5" << endl;
gold += 5;
xp += 5;

// code to clear the monster off the screen goes here (i think)
monster = false;
}

else
{
cout << "\n\nYou safely got away." << endl;
monster = false;
}system("pause");

}// end monster

and here is my map: (its all messed up copying it over so i deleted alot of the map, but hopefully you get the idea)

char Map [50] [70] =
{"##########
"# #
"# x #
"# #
"# #",
"# #
"# x #
"# #
"#### ####
" # #
"#### #####
"# #
"# #
"# #
"# #
"# #
"# @ #
"#############################################" };

If having my source code will help you to help me, I'll be more than happy to upload it. Thanks

You replace 'x' with a blank character in your Map array ... Assuming that this is the extent of your model, and there's no additional structure that represents the "Monster" and related data (in which case you would probably want to delete that).

You replace 'x' with a blank character in your Map array ... Assuming that this is the extent of your model, and there's no additional structure that represents the "Monster" and related data (in which case you would probably want to delete that).

Thats pretty much what I thought, but I'm not sure how to do that. Could you show me how? I was hoping someone could show me.

You would take the indexes of the monsters and would do something like this:

map[x][y] = ' ';

Then redraw your map.

It looks like you've hard coded your map, monsters, walls, player, etc. into a two dimensional character array. How are you managing your monster and player movement?

If nothing knows where the monsters are, you need to start keeping track of that. I'm assuming right above the switch statement containing case 'x': you've calculated the coordinates and pulled back 'x'. Then you can just do what Dragonsoulj wrote.

You might want to separate your map from enemies/player. If not, your monsters will be static fixtures in your dungeon unless you start writing some funky code.

- Eck

I agree, don't store movable or collectable stuff on the map, store them in some other data structure and draw them on top of the map. Otherwise enemies won't be able to move over items on the ground, unless you remember what tile they were on and what it contained (not recommended).

Monsters in Nethack can walk over staircases, objects on the ground, altars, there are 2 types of floor tiles (room and corridor), etc.

Consider making a simple monster class and putting the remove from map code in the destructor. That said if you are not at that skill level yet, then write a function to do it.