Best practices about ma_engine code declaration

[Ar-Ess]

I am creating a physics library where each body can emit sound.
The structure would be like this:

CORE CLASS:

• Function to create the body ( BODY constructor call )
• Iterable List of BODY's
• Function to load a sound into a BODY

BODY:

• Iterable List of ma_sound
• Play ma_sound function

Which would be the best practice to create an "ma_engine"?
Should it be inside the CORE CLASS and the passing a pointer inside each BODY class?
Should each body has it's own ma_engine inside?
Is the best way to save ma_sounds in an iterable list?

Thanks so much and hopefully this is understandable!

[mackron]

There's no single right answer. It's up to you to decide what works best for your own project, but here's some answers to your questions.

Which would be the best practice to create an "ma_engine"?
Should each body has it's own ma_engine inside?

You should only ever have a single ma_engine object for your whole program. You want many ma_sound's to one ma_engine. You should absolutely not have one ma_engine for each physics body.

Should it be inside the CORE CLASS and the passing a pointer inside each BODY class?

Up to you, but yes storing a pointer to the engine object in the physics body object might be a good option. So long as they have visibility of the ma_engine object it shouldn't really matter.

Is the best way to save ma_sounds in an iterable list?

Up to you, but be careful with this. The address of your ma_sound objects (and all miniaudio objects for that matter) must never change because miniaudio will store pointers to your objects internally (if you change their address from under miniaudio it'll all fall apart). If you store it in a dynamically expanding array list this, you'll have issues when the internal buffer needs to be resized: std::vector<ma_sound>. Instead you can allocate them on the heap and store them as pointers in the list: std::vector<ma_sound*>. But again, it's up to you how you store them - just so long as their address in memory never changes you can store them however you like.

[Ar-Ess]

Nice, that's the answer I was looking for.
I actually use std as a library so I wat planning to work with ma_sound* (pointers) on the heap.
Regarding the ma_engine, I'll go with the creation of it in the core structure (just created once), and then passing the pointer to its different physic bodies.

Thanks so much for the response!