Interactions Between Objects

The project

In the previous lesson, you designed a Player class complete with fields like name, health, and attackPower, plus a method to display player stats and perform a basic attack.

Now, it’s time to take that foundation further.

You’ll learn how and why objects interact the way they do in memory, and then you’ll simulate a real battle loop where two players continuously attack each other until one wins. This is where your simulator truly becomes a game—where code isn’t just static, but dynamic and alive.

The programming concept

The primary concept for this lesson is the interaction between objects—when one object utilizes another’s data or methods to produce an outcome. In C++, this happens through memory references. When you pass one object into another’s function (like attack(Player &target)), you aren’t sending a copy—you’re passing a reference to the same memory location.

This allows both objects to share and modify real data during the program’s execution.

How objects interact in memory

Every object in C++ lives in a unique spot in your computer’s memory. When you write a method like this:

You’re saying: Don’t copy the target—use the ...