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

Common mistakes


Often, when using clocks, newbies to SFML tend to stick them in the wrong places and restart them at the wrong times. Things like that can result in "funky" behavior at best.

Note

Keep in mind that every line of code that isn't empty or commented out takes time to execute. Depending on how a function that is being called, or a class that is being constructed, is implemented, the time value might range from miniscule to infinite.

Things like updating all of the game entities in the world, performing calculations, and rendering are fairly computationally expensive, so make sure to not somehow exclude these calls from the span of your time measurement. Always make sure that restarting the clock and grabbing the elapsed time is the last thing you're doing before the main game loop ends.

Another mistake is having your clock object within the wrong scope. Consider this example:

void Game::SomeMethod(){
    sf::Clock clock;
    ...
    sf::Time time = clock.getElapsedTime();
}

Assuming...