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.

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SFML Game Development
Artur Moreira | Henrik Vogelius Hansson | Jan Haller | Henrik Valter Vogelius | SFML
Jun, 2013 | 296 pages
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Table of Contents (18 chapters)
SFML Game Development
SFML Game Development
Credits
Credits
Foreword
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Making a Game Tick
Making a Game Tick
Introducing SFML
A few notes on C++
Developing the first game
Game loops and frames
Displaying sprites on the screen
Summary
2
Keeping Track of Your Textures – Resource Management
Keeping Track of Your Textures – Resource Management
Defining resources
Resources in SFML
A typical use case
An automated approach
Error handling
Generalizing the approach
Summary
3
Forge of the Gods – Shaping Our World
Forge of the Gods – Shaping Our World
Entities
Rendering the scene
Updating the scene
The view
Landscape rendering
Composing our world
Integrating the Game class
Summary
4
Command and Control – Input Handling
Command and Control – Input Handling
Polling events
Getting the input state in real time
Playing nice with your application neighborhood
A command-based communication system
Customizing key bindings
Summary
5
Diverting the Game Flow – State Stack
Diverting the Game Flow – State Stack
Defining a state
The state stack
The state context
Integrating the stack in the Application class
Navigating between states
The loading screen – sample
Summary
6
Waiting and Maintenance Area – Menus
Waiting and Maintenance Area – Menus
The GUI hierarchy, the Java way
Updating the menu
The promised key bindings
Summary
7
Warfare Unleashed – Implementing Gameplay
Warfare Unleashed – Implementing Gameplay
Equipping the entities
Creating enemies
Adding projectiles
Picking up some goodies
Collision detection and response
An interacting world
Victory and defeat
Summary
8
Every Pixel Counts – Adding Visual Effects
Every Pixel Counts – Adding Visual Effects
Defining texture atlases
Low-level rendering
Particle systems
Animated sprites
Post effects and shaders
Summary
9
Cranking Up the Bass – Music and Sound Effects
Cranking Up the Bass – Music and Sound Effects
Music themes
Sound effects
Sounds in 3D space
Summary
10
Company Atop the Clouds – Co-op Multiplayer
Company Atop the Clouds – Co-op Multiplayer
Playing multiplayer games
Interacting with sockets
Data transport
Network architectures
Creating the structure for multiplayer
Working with the Server
Taking a peek in the other end – the client
Latency
Cheating prevention
Summary
Index
Index

About the Authors

Artur Moreira is a game development enthusiast who ultimately aims to start a new game development company in his home country. He has been programming games and game-related software for over 4 years. Most of the effort in that time was put in creating an open source game-making library with lots of flexibility and portability. The library is called Nephilim and is known for supporting all major desktop and mobile operating systems, making game development fully cross-platform and fast. Alongside this big project, he keeps making his own prototypes and games for educational and commercial purposes.

Aside from the programming, he also puts some focus in creative areas such as 3D modeling, digital painting, and music composing.

I would like to thank, first of all, my girlfriend for her patience and unconditional support every single time the writing was taking all of my time and energy. Also, I can't be thankful enough for the support of my parents and sisters, along with all the closest relatives, whose support is ever-present and always helpful. On the technical side, I would like to directly thank Jan Haller and Henrik Vogelius Hansson, the co-authors of the book, for their remarkable collaboration, skill, and teamwork. It's been always a pleasure to work with them.

Henrik Vogelius Hansson has always been in love with both games and programming. He started his education fairly early and continued on into the indie scene with Defrost Games and their game Project Temporality. The next company that hired him was Paradox Development Studio where he got to work on titles such as Crusader Kings 2.

Beside the game companies, Henrik has also been very active in the SFML community and has even provided a binding for Ruby called rbSFML.

I would like to thank my co-authors, Jan and Artur, for the amazing cooperation and great times. I am also very happy and would like to thank my family that encouraged me to pursue this line of work. Also special thanks to my grandmother.

Jan Haller is a Master's degree student of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. In his free time, he occasionally develops games in C++. He is also interested in the creation of graphics and 3D models.

In 2008, Jan stumbled upon SFML. Since then, he has used the library for many of his works. One of his bigger projects was a 2D Jump'n'Run game, where the character has to find its way through different levels, defeating enemies and collecting various items. During the years, Jan has actively participated in the SFML community, getting a lot of insights into the development of SFML 2. He has also written a C++ library called Thor, which extends SFML by ready-to-use features such as particle systems or animations.

I would like to thank Laurent Gomila for the passion and huge efforts he invested into the Simple and Fast Multimedia Library. It has always been interesting to discuss with him about the library and its development process. I would also like to thank my co-authors, Artur Moreira and Henrik Vogelius Hansson, who have been a very nice team to work with.

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