Help with rotating a sprite

[rcplusplus]

I have a character sprite that I need to rotate to face up, left, right, and down. The way I'm currently rotating it is like this:

(SpriteX is a wrapper class I made around an sf::Sprite, and these are some rotation methods)

void SpriteX::rotate(float degrees)
{
   sprite.SetCenter(get_width()/2, get_height()/2);
   sprite.Rotate(degrees);
   sprite.SetCenter(0, 0);
}

void SpriteX::set_rotation(float degrees)
{
   sprite.SetCenter(get_width()/2, get_height()/2);
   sprite.SetRotation(degrees);
   sprite.SetCenter(0, 0);
}
 

The sprite still rotates around its top left corner, how do I make it rotate around it's center just for the scope of the rotation method? I still want to position the sprite based on its top left corner.

Will I just have to make 4 separate image files?

Any help is appreciated!

[Laurent]

You can't do what you want (with SFML 1). Transformations are not applied immediately and combined with the current state, the SetPosition/SetRotation/... functions just set internal attributes that are combined when drawing the sprite, always in the same order.

[rcplusplus]

Can it be done with SFML 2? And if so, how?

And the way I'm currently getting around the situation is by just center-positioning all the sprites internally, and using the wrapper class to make it behave like I'm positioning using the top left corner. Would you say this is bad design?

[Laurent]

Can it be done with SFML 2? And if so, how?

Yes. In SFML 2, the behaviour of the setRotation/setPosition/... functions is the same, but you can ignore them and provide your own custom transform at draw time. There's a sf::Transform class that can combine translations/rotations/... in any order.

And the way I'm currently getting around the situation is by just center-positioning all the sprites internally, and using the wrapper class to make it behave like I'm positioning using the top left corner. Would you say this is bad design?

According to the API of SFML1, I think this is a pretty good design