Dear all, this is going to be tough: I have created a game object factory that generates objects of my wish. However, I get memory leaks which I can not fix.

Memory leaks are generated by return new Object(); in the bottom part of the code sample.

static BaseObject * CreateObjectFunc()
{
    return new Object();
}

How and where to delete the pointers? I wrote bool ReleaseClassType(). Despite the factory works well, ReleaseClassType() does not fix memory leaks.

bool ReleaseClassTypes()
{
    unsigned int nRecordCount = vFactories.size();
    for (unsigned int nLoop = 0; nLoop < nRecordCount; nLoop++ )
    {
        // if the object exists in the container and is valid, then render it
        if( vFactories[nLoop] != NULL) 
            delete vFactories[nLoop]();
    }
    return true;
}

Before taking a look at the code below, let me help you in that my CGameObjectFactory creates pointers to functions creating particular object type. The pointers are stored within vFactories vector container.

I have chosen this way because I parse an object map file. I have object type IDs (integer values) which I need to translate them into real objects. Because I have over 100 different object data types, I wished to avoid continuously traversing very long Switch() statement.

Therefore, to create an object, I call vFactoriesnEnumObjectTypeID via CGameObjectFactory::create() to call stored function that generates desired object.

The position of the appropriate function in the vFactories is identical to the nObjectTypeID, so I can use indexing to access the function.

So the question remains, how to proceed with garbage collection and avoid reported memory leaks?

#ifndef GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS
#define GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS

//#include "MemoryManager.h"
#include <vector>


template <typename BaseObject>
class CGameObjectFactory
{
public:
    // cleanup and release registered object data types
    bool ReleaseClassTypes()
    {
        unsigned int nRecordCount = vFactories.size();
        for (unsigned int nLoop = 0; nLoop < nRecordCount; nLoop++ )
        {
            // if the object exists in the container and is valid, then render it
            if( vFactories[nLoop] != NULL) 
                delete vFactories[nLoop]();
        }
        return true;
    }

    // register new object data type
    template <typename Object>
    bool RegisterClassType(unsigned int nObjectIDParam )
    {
        if(vFactories.size() < nObjectIDParam) vFactories.resize(nObjectIDParam);

        vFactories[nObjectIDParam] = &CreateObjectFunc<Object>;
        return true;
    }


    // create new object by calling the pointer to the appropriate type function
    BaseObject* create(unsigned int nObjectIDParam) const
    {
        return vFactories[nObjectIDParam]();
    }


    // resize the vector array containing pointers to function calls
    bool resize(unsigned int nSizeParam)
    {
        vFactories.resize(nSizeParam);
        return true;
    }

private:
    //DECLARE_HEAP;

    template <typename Object>
    static BaseObject * CreateObjectFunc()
    {
        return new Object();
    }


    typedef BaseObject*(*factory)();
    std::vector<factory> vFactories;
};


//DEFINE_HEAP_T(CGameObjectFactory, "Game Object Factory");

#endif // GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS