What data structure should I use for a snake game?

Question

I have some homework for my school and I have to make a snake game, like Nokia's, in Delphi. I wonder which solution is the best. I want my snake be a class and the body is an array of points (parent class) or a linked list of points. What's the best? An array or a linked list?

Answer 1

A Linked list is better. (Each node can point to the previous and next node) It is easier to add nodes to the end of a linked list.

If you use an array you would either need to resize it or initialise it to the Maximum possible snake length to start with which can be wasteful on memory.

UPDATE This article talks about pointers in Delph and even suggests a simple Node definition delphi article

Answer 2

A simple solution is to make an array[horizontal][vertical] of type, so that there is one item for each coordinate on the screen. Each type can be a snake-direction, food, poison, wall or empty. This means that you only need to remember the head and tail position of the snake, and the count of food and poisons, and the array describes how the screen looks like.

This removes the hassle of handling the snake's elements, and makes it easy to position new food or poison items on the screen, ensuring that you're not putting it into a place that is already occupied.

When you need to remove the tail element of the snake, get the direction of the tail using direction:=array[tailx,taily]; and then set array[tailx,taily]:=empty. Afterwards, update tailx and taily depending on the direction. That's it.