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

The interface class


An interface, in its simplest meaning, is a container of elements. It's a window that can be moved around and scrolled and has all of the same features and event hooks as a regular element. Efficiency is also a great concern, as dealing with lots of elements in a single window is a definite possibility. Those problems can be dealt with by carefully designing a way of drawing elements at the appropriate time.

The way we want our interfaces to draw content is by using three separate textures for different purposes, as shown below:

  • The background layer is used for drawing backdrop elements

  • The content layer is where all of the elements of the interface are drawn

  • The controls layer hosts elements such as scrollbars that manipulate the content layer and don't need to be scrolled

With the design details out of the way, element storage deserves some attention. As it happens, the std::unordered_map structure serves this purpose well:

using Elements = std::unordered_map<std::string...