Enemy class architecture

Question

I'm developing a game for Android in Java. I would like to know how a good Enemy class architecture could be implemented.

I've created an abstract class called Enemy. It stores common properties like Health and Animation data. It has methods like LoadContent, Update and Draw.

I want to inherit this class and implement different enemy classes. I want to be able to store all my active enemies in some sort of collection. Then in my Update function of my game loop, I'll do something like:

for each Enemy in Enemies
{
Enemy.Update()
}

And the Update method of the correct child class would be called.

How can this be achieved?

Answer 1

I would consider making an enemy factory. Every time you make a new enemy of any sort, add it to a list inside your factory instance. This means that you can update all of your enemies from your enemy factory, and you know that every enemy is in the list.

Answer 2

If Update is abstract in your base class then all you have to do is override it in your child classes and the relevant update function will be called on each one.