Hi everyone 
My friend and I are currently working on a Low-Poly 3D-Survival Game. So far we are able to randomly generate a island with a 3D-Person Player being able to walk around with items in his hands (like in Minecraft 
).
We are now trying to implement an interaction system which should handle the interaction between the item the player currently has in his hands and the target object the player aims at (e.g. hitting a tree with an axe, etc.).
We already have some code handling this case, but I think is´s not very clean so I decided to refactor it. As for now, we have a Control called AttackControl attached to the player which listens for mouse input and then casts a ray, in order to get the object the player is aiming at. The code looks similar to that:
/* This code gets called when the left mouse button is pressed */
Spatial entity = findTargetByCastingRay();
attackAnimationControl.playAnimation();
if(entity != null){
//Check if the item in the players hands can interact with the collided
Item item = (Item)inventory.getCurrentItem();
//If the item is not null
if(item != null){
//Check if the item is in range, in order to be used against an entity
if(item.isInRange(distance)){
InteractionControl interactionControl = entity.getControl(InteractionControl.class);
//Use the item against the entity - returns true if it could interact with the entity
if(item.onInteract(player, entity)){
if(interactionControl != null){
if(interactionControl.isNotifyOnInteraction() || interactionControl.isNotifyAlways()){
interactionControl.onInteraction(world, player, item);
}
}
//Check if the item got destroyed by using it
if(item.isDestroyed()){
//Call the items onDestruction (maybe trigger some effect when the item gets destroed)
if(item.onDestruction()){
//If the item could be succesfully destroyed - remove it from the inventory
inventory.removeCurrentItem();
}
}
} else {
//Throw item if it can be thrown
if(item.isThrowable()){
}
if(interactionControl != null){
if(interactionControl.isNotifyOnInteractionNotSuccessful() ||
interactionControl.isNotifyAlways()){
interactionControl.onInteraction(world, player, item);
}
}
}
}
}
All this code is handled by the AttackControl at the moment. But thinking about it, casting the ray as well as checking if the interaction was succesful etc. isn´t part of the player. So I had the idea that the player sends an Event when he presses the left mouse button which contains all the information which is needed for the responsible Listener (being the InteractionSystem) in order to do a ray-cast and check for an interaction.
So my question is: Would this approach be clean or are there simpler solutions?
Thanks in advance
