Book Image

Procedural Content Generation for C++ Game Development

By : Dale Green
Book Image

Procedural Content Generation for C++ Game Development

By: Dale Green

Overview of this book

Procedural generation is a growing trend in game development. It allows developers to create games that are bigger and more dynamic, giving the games a higher level of replayability. Procedural generation isn’t just one technique, it’s a collection of techniques and approaches that are used together to create dynamic systems and objects. C++ is the industry-standard programming language to write computer games. It’s at the heart of most engines, and is incredibly powerful. SFML is an easy-to-use, cross-platform, and open-source multimedia library. Access to computer hardware is broken into succinct modules, making it a great choice if you want to develop cross-platform games with ease. Using C++ and SFML technologies, this book will guide you through the techniques and approaches used to generate content procedurally within game development. Throughout the course of this book, we’ll look at examples of these technologies, starting with setting up a roguelike project using the C++ template. We’ll then move on to using RNG with C++ data types and randomly scattering objects within a game map. We will create simple console examples to implement in a real game by creating unique and randomised game items, dynamic sprites, and effects, and procedurally generating game events. Then we will walk you through generating random game maps. At the end, we will have a retrospective look at the project. By the end of the book, not only will you have a solid understanding of procedural generation, but you’ll also have a working roguelike game that you will have extended using the examples provided.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Procedural Content Generation for C++ Game Development
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Breaking down the game template


The best way to learn is by practicing. Examples are great, but there's nothing like getting stuck in and working on a real game. The game template provided will allow us to implement the systems that we're going to learn about in a real game as opposed to them being a collection of isolated exercises.

Familiarizing yourself with this template will not only help make the code examples throughout the book clearer, but also make the exercises at the end of each chapter easier. It will also allow you to use what you're learning to implement your own systems in the project once we're done with it.

Download templates

Before you start, download the game template so that you have the source code available as you run through some of the key points. The template is available for download on the official Packt Publishing website at http://www.packtpub.com/support.

We'll set it up shortly, but for now, let's take a quick look at some of its key features.

The class diagram...