Book Image

SFML Game Development

By : Artur Moreira, Henrik Vogelius Hansson, Jan Haller, Henrik Valter Vogelius, SFML
Book Image

SFML Game Development

By: Artur Moreira, Henrik Vogelius Hansson, Jan Haller, Henrik Valter Vogelius, SFML

Overview of this book

Game development comprises the combination of many different aspects such as game logics, graphics, audio, user input, physics and much more. SFML is an Open Source C++ library designed to make game development more accessible, exposing multimedia components to the user through a simple, yet powerful interface. If you are a C++ programmer with a stack of ideas in your head and seeking a platform for implementation, your search ends here.Starting with nothing more than a blank screen, SFML Game Development will provide you with all the guidance you need to create your first fully featured 2D game using SFML 2.0. By the end, you'll have learned the basic principles of game development, including advanced topics such as how to network your game, how to utilize particle systems and much more.SFML Game Development starts with an overview of windows, graphics, and user inputs. After this brief introduction, you will start to get to grips with SFML by building up a world of different game objects, and implementing more and more gameplay features. Eventually, you'll be handling advanced visual effects, audio effects and network programming like an old pro. New concepts are discussed, while the code steadily develops.SFML Game Development will get you started with animations, particle effects and shaders. As well as these fundamental game aspects, we're also covering network programming to the extent where you'll be able to support the game running from two different machines. The most important part, the gameplay implementation with enemies and missiles, will make up the core of our top-scrolling airplane shoot' em-up game!You will learn everything you need in SFML Game Development in order to start with game development and come closer to creating your own game.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
SFML Game Development
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 8. Every Pixel Counts – Adding Visual Effects

Throughout the previous chapters, we have constantly been adding functionality. We finally reached a point where our game is playable, where all the game mechanisms are implemented. With a bit of creativity, you should already be able to write your own small game. Nevertheless, we are not going to quit now—a game is more than just gameplay. A very important part of games are the graphics. Be it cutting-edge 3D scenes in the newest real-time strategy game or the nostalgic atmosphere of a pixel-art indie title, graphics determine to a big extent how the player feels.

In this chapter, we are going to look behind the scenes of rendering. We are going to cover various techniques that are used in modern games to create graphical effects of different kinds. To mention a few:

  • Texture atlases and how different objects can be stored in one texture

  • Texture mapping and vertex arrays

  • Particle systems to create effects such as fire or smoke

  • Animations that...