I'm using c++ and have some problems with the QuadTree design.
I have some components which are not related to the QuadTree directly. These components are eg. RenderableMesh, PointLight, etc. Some of them should be handled by a QuadTree and some of them should not.
I have a "reflection" system, so I can determine the type of a given component, that's not a problem.
A simple restriction is if I want to use a component in a QuadTree, it has to be inherited from the IBoundComponent which can be used to get the bounding box of the object (using a pure virtual function which is implemented in the exact Component)
This seems okay for me but for fast remove/insert operations of "changed components" (eg. the point light's radius is changed) I should store the current node/cell of the QuadTree. And here comes the real problem. Or actually problems.
1)
Because the IBoundComponent does not know about the QuadTree directly, it has to have a public function pair which can be used to set/get the current node. I could use "friend class QuadTree" but that would restrict the spatial implementation to the QuadTree class.
2)
The Node class of the QuadTree is hidden (private). Of course I could store a void* in the IBoundComponent and cast it. Or a base class (eg. ITreeNode) could be used and the QuadTree's Node should inherit from it.
Maybe a cleaner design would be the following:
Don't store anything in the IBoundComponent (expect the bounds...). When a component is changed, I could store the pre-update bounds as well as the post-update bounds. This way I can find which node contains the component and which will contain it. However this is an extra search. So it's a performance loss for cleaner design.
Do you have any good idea? I've searched here but cannot find a good answer for this situation.
