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SDL Game Development

By : Shaun Mitchell

2.9 (37)

SDL Game Development

2.9 (37)

By: Shaun Mitchell

Overview of this book

SDL 2.0 is the latest release of the popular Simple DirectMedia Layer API, which is designed to make life easier for C++ developers, allowing you simple low-level access to various multiplatform audio, graphics, and input devices.SDL Game Development guides you through creating your first 2D game using SDL and C++. It takes a clear and practical approach to SDL game development, ensuring that the focus remains on creating awesome games.Starting with the installation and setup of SDL, you will quickly become familiar with useful SDL features, covering sprites, state management, and OOP, leading to a reusable framework that is extendable for your own games. SDL Game Development culminates in the development of two exciting action games that utilize the created framework along with tips to improve the framework.

SDL Game Development

SDL Game Development

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

Getting Started with SDL

Getting Started with SDL

Why use SDL?

Setting up SDL in Visual C++ Express 2010

Hello SDL

What makes up a game

The Game class

Summary

Drawing in SDL

Drawing in SDL

Basic SDL drawing

Source and destination rectangles

Installing SDL_image

Tying it into the framework

Summary

Working with Game Objects

Working with Game Objects

Using inheritance

Implementing polymorphism

Using abstract base classes

Should we always use inheritance?

Putting it all together

Summary

Exploring Movement and Input Handling

Exploring Movement and Input Handling

Setting up game objects for movement

Creating fixed frames per second

Input handling

Summary

Handling Game States

Handling Game States

A simple way for switching states

Implementing finite state machines

Implementing menu states

Summary

Data-driven Design

Data-driven Design

Loading XML files

Implementing Object Factories

Fitting the factory into the framework

Parsing states from an XML file

Loading the menu state from an XML file

Loading other states from an XML file

Summary

Creating and Displaying Tile Maps

Creating and Displaying Tile Maps

What is a tile map?

Getting familiar with the Tiled application

Parsing and drawing a tile map

Scrolling a tile map

Parsing object layers

Summary

Creating Alien Attack

Creating Alien Attack

Using the SDL_mixer extension for sound

Setting up the basic game objects

Handling bullets

Dealing with collisions

Possible improvements

Summary

Creating Conan the Caveman

Creating Conan the Caveman

Setting up the basic game objects

Possible additions

Summary

Index

Index

Loading XML files

I have chosen to use XML files because they are so easy to parse. We are not going to write our own XML parser, rather we will use an open source library called TinyXML. TinyXML was written by Lee Thomason and is available under the zlib license from http://sourceforge.net/projects/tinyxml/.

Once downloaded the only setup we need to do is to include a few of the files in our project:

tinyxmlerror.cpp
tinyxmlparser.cpp
tinystr.cpp
tinystr.h
tinyxml.cpp
tinyxml.h

Also, at the top of tinyxml.h, add this line of code:

#define TIXML_USE_STL

By doing this we ensure that we are using the STL versions of the TinyXML functions. We can now go through a little of how an XML file is structured. It's actually fairly simple and we will only give a brief overview to help you get up to speed with how we will use it.

Basic XML structure

Here is a basic XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<ROOT>
    <ELEMENT>
    </ELEMENT>
</ROOT>

The first line of the file defines...

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83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

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