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

Creating a simple communication protocol


Having covered all of the basics, we're finally ready to get designing! The first choice we need to make is which protocol suits our needs better. Losing packets in a real-time application like this is not a tragedy. It's more important that data is sent and received as quickly as possible in order to update the player and all of the entities in the game. Since TCP is a slower protocol and we would not benefit from the extra measures it takes to deliver data in order, the choice is clear. User datagram protocol is the way to go.

Let's flesh out some details of the system we're going to be building by first defining some packet types that are going to be exchanged between the server and client, as well as deciding on the type of the packet identifier. This information will be held inside the PacketTypes.h header:

using PacketID = sf::Int8;
enum class PacketType{
  Disconnect = -1, Connect, Heartbeat, Snapshot,
  Player_Update, Message, Hurt, OutOfBounds...