Refactoring code

You probably felt a little uncomfortable with the redundant code blocks we wrote in the previous chapters; for example, the PlayerAvatar and Enemy classes have some identical attribute variables and functions. Can we instead combine them and maintain only one copy of code for those replicated variables and functions? Yes, and this will require us to refactor the code.

Code refactoring helps improve the internal structure of code so that it becomes more readable, maintainable, and efficient. The process includes algorithm optimization, duplicate removal, and code simplification.

For the Pangaea project, we identified two refactoring tasks:

• Combining the two animation instance classes
• Adding a parent class for the PlayerAvatar and Enemy classes

Let’s start with the first task.

Combining the PlayerAvatarAnimInstance and EnemyAnimInstance classes

Open and compare the PlayerAvatarAnimInstance.h, PlayerAvatarAnimInstance.cpp, EnemyAnimInstance...