Where best to check conditions, main loop?

Question

Ok, with a little tinkering, I now have a nearly functional app.
As I put pieces up on the board, I keep count. When I remove a piece from the board, I decrement my count, and the level is complete when the count reaches 0.
So, where is the best place to do my check for 0 pieces left?
I know for a fact the last piece is removed while in my 'move a piece' logic. The actual piece removal is down several levels into the code, which I need to unwind from to keep things clean. So, where is the main application loop, a point that I know will get called, once a cycle?
I'm using a Utility Application template, in case that makes a difference.

Answer 1

reststop wrote:
Are you saying I should do the win code at the point where I detect all pieces are gone?
Yes. That's the natural place. I think that's where most games would start whatever code needed to run after the zero count. If after a zero, you need to wait for something else to happen, then the code that handles the terminal event would be the natural place to start the win code. But if the zero is the end of the game, then end it.
But remember, forum helpers can only give you general principles. I doubt many developers here are willing to grok all the details of your particular game in order to see if the general rule applies. That's your job. For example, Q told you that notifications are better than polling. That's totally true, and if that advice doesn't help you right now, sooner or later you'll want to remember it. But it's your job to see if the advice applies to your current project.
All I can do is point out that I can't see why your win code shouldn't be started by the code that manages the counter. That doesn't mean my opinion applies to your project. It just means maybe stand back and try to see the forest instead of the trees. Ask yourself: "Hmm... This developer who has no clue how my game operates is telling me that I, who have lived with this puppy day and night for weeks, might be looking in the wrong place to do something... Why is that??" So check it out.
Maybe what works for most games is simply inappropriate for yours. Or maybe it's impossible to do the natural thing anymore because the structure of your game has been twisted into a pretzel by newbie design decisions. That doesn't mean you need to tear your game apart and start over. It just means you'll do a better job next time because you now have some experience with the consequences of early, structural decisions.
Anyway customers don't care if you write professional code, and they don't care if your app is MVC. They care whether they like the game. So maybe your code will never make it into a magazine, but you'll make a gazillion dollars and wind up employing all the programmers who used to criticize your code.
\- Ray