Book Image

SFML Game Development By Example

By : Raimondas Pupius
Book Image

SFML Game Development By Example

By: Raimondas Pupius

Overview of this book

Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is a simple interface comprising five modules, namely, the audio, graphics, network, system, and window modules, which help to develop cross-platform media applications. By utilizing the SFML library, you are provided with the ability to craft games quickly and easily, without going through an extensive learning curve. This effectively serves as a confidence booster, as well as a way to delve into the game development process itself, before having to worry about more advanced topics such as “rendering pipelines” or “shaders.” With just an investment of moderate C++ knowledge, this book will guide you all the way through the journey of game development. The book starts by building a clone of the classical snake game where you will learn how to open a window and render a basic sprite, write well-structured code to implement the design of the game, and use the AABB bounding box collision concept. The next game is a simple platformer with enemies, obstacles and a few different stages. Here, we will be creating states that will provide custom application flow and explore the most common yet often overlooked design patterns used in game development. Last but not the least, we will create a small RPG game where we will be using common game design patterns, multiple GUI. elements, advanced graphical features, and sounds and music features. We will also be implementing networking features that will allow other players to join and play together. By the end of the book, you will be an expert in using the SFML library to its full potential.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
SFML Game Development By Example
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Multi-threading


Having blocking functions in your code can be a real nuisance. Listening for incoming network connections or data, asking users to input something into the console, or even loading game data, like textures, maps, or sounds, can block a program from executing until it's done. Have you ever wondered how certain games have a loading bar that actually moves while the data is being loaded? How can that be done with code that is executed sequentially? The answer to that is multi-threading. Your application runs all its code sequentially from top to bottom in something referred to as the main thread. It is not a program, as it can't exist by itself. Instead, a thread only runs within your application. The beauty of this is that multiple threads can exist and run all at once, which enables parallel code execution. Consider the following diagram:

Let's say that the entire application space is the main thread, and all we do here is update and render the game. The example above is running...