Trying to test my Tower Location input, and can't figure out how to retrieve the coordinates of my Tower.

Question

After coding the user input for where to place the towers (I hardcoded 2 towers in the level) in Game.cs, I wanted to just print out the coordinates of the towers to make sure I was storing the data correctly, but now I'm completely stuck trying to figure out how to get that info back.
I've tried a few different things, and I think what I need to do is actually define a method in Tower.cs that returns it's location, then call that Method in Game.cs after having the user put in the tower coordinates. But the only time I was able to successfully compile, I just got output like "Tower 1 is at TreehouseDefense.MapLocation". 
Here's the body of my Tower class, followed by the body of Game.cs:
Tower.cs
namespace TreehouseDefense
{
  class Tower
  {
    private const int _range = 1;
    private const int _power = 1;
    private readonly MapLocation _location;
public Tower(MapLocation location)
{
  _location = location;    
}
  public void FireOnInvaders(Invader[] invaders)
  {        
    foreach(Invader invader in invaders)
    {
      if(invader.IsActive && _location.InRangeOf(invader.Location,_range))
      {
        invader.DecreaseHealth(_power);
        break;
      }
    }
  }

public MapLocation TowerLoc()
{
  return _location;
}

}
}
Game.cs
using System;
namespace TreehouseDefense
{
    class Game
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
          Map map = new Map(8,5);
          try
          {
          Path path = new Path(
            new [] {
              new MapLocation(0, 2, map),
              new MapLocation(1, 2, map),
              new MapLocation(2, 2, map),
              new MapLocation(3, 2, map),
              new MapLocation(4, 2, map),
              new MapLocation(5, 2, map),
              new MapLocation(6, 2, map),
              new MapLocation(7, 2, map)
              } 
            );
        Invader[] invaders = 
        {
          new Invader(path),
          new Invader(path),
          new Invader(path),
          new Invader(path)
        };

Level level = new Level(invaders);

Console.WriteLine("Welcome to Level 1 - defend your Tower!");
        Console.WriteLine("You will place two towers in a map 8 spaces long and 5 spaces tall");
        Console.WriteLine("Towers cannot be placed on the path, which runs down the middle length-wise");

int _towerCount = 1;
        level.Towers = new Tower[2];
        while(_towerCount <= 2)
        {
          Console.Write("Enter the X Coordinate for Tower #"+ _towerCount + ": ");
          string _towerX = Console.ReadLine();
          int x = Int32.Parse(_towerX);
          Console.Write("Enter the Y Coordinate for Tower #"+ _towerCount + ": ");
          string _towerY = Console.ReadLine();
          int y = Int32.Parse(_towerY);
          try
          {
            MapLocation towerLoc = new MapLocation(x,y,map);
            Tower tower = new Tower(towerLoc);
            level.Towers[_towerCount - 1] = tower;
          }
          catch(OutOfBoundsException ex)
          {
            Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
            continue;
          }
          _towerCount++;
        }

Console.WriteLine("Tower 1 is at " + level.Towers[0].TowerLoc());
        Console.WriteLine("Tower 2 is at " + level.Towers[1].TowerLoc());

}
      catch(TreehouseDefenseException)
      {
        Console.WriteLine("Unhandled TreehouseDefenseException");
      }
      catch(Exception ex)
      {
        Console.WriteLine("Unhandled Exception" + ex);
      }
    }
}
}

Samuel Ferree · Accepted Answer

Your code is technically working. The function that you defined is in fact returning the Tower's location.
However, You aren't seeing the output you expect, because a tower's location is an object that is an instance of class MapLocation.
When C# is told to append an object to a string, it implicitly calls that objects ToString() method. Since MapLocation doesn't have a ToString() method defined, it calls the default Object ToString() method, which simply returns the name of the class.
You have two choices, you can override the ToString() method of MapLocation, so that it returns text that shows the coordinates of the map location. Something like this:
csharp
public class MapLocation
{
  public override string ToString()
  {
    return this.X + ", " + this.Y
  }
}

Or you can, using the properties of the MapLocation object, append the actual x and y coordinates of the location.
TL;DR: You're adding MapLocation's to the end of Strings. only Strings can be added to Strings. You didn't tell C# how to convert a MapLocation to a String, so it's just adding the name of the class, which happens to be "TreehouseDefense.MapLocation"

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Eric Smailys

Eric Smailys

Trying to test my Tower Location input, and can't figure out how to retrieve the coordinates of my Tower.

Eric Smailys

Eric Smailys

1 Answer

Samuel Ferree

Samuel Ferree