Cloning objects in C++ Firemonkey platform

Question

I'm creating (for learning purposes) a 2D game in embarcadero's Firemonkey XE2 platform. It's a game similar to space invanders in terms of visual representation of the game field but vastly more complex.

I'm trying to spawn animated enemies. I created a template TImage and assigned it a BitmapListAnimation with six pictures. Then i just clone it using Clone(). Here is the cloning code:

virtual void CreateMe(TForm* pForm);
void CBaseEnemy::CreateMe(TForm *pForm)
{
    TImage* pSource = dynamic_cast<TImage*>(this->pToClone);
    pSource->Visible = true;
    TImage* pDest = dynamic_cast<TImage*>(pSource->Clone(pForm));
    pDest->Parent = pForm;

    TBitmapListAnimation* pAnimSource = dynamic_cast<TBitmapListAnimation*>(pForm->FindComponent("BitmapListAnimation1"));
    pAnimSource->Parent = pDest;
    pAnimSource->Start();
    TBitmapListAnimation* pAnimDest = dynamic_cast<TBitmapListAnimation*>(pAnimSource->Clone(pForm));
}

And it works, It's just extremely complicated, could you suggest a way to clone an entire template (A Component such as TImage along with all it's children) ?

Answer 1

An Embarcadero blog entry just released covers this: blog