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

Polymorphism


Before we get started with the game template, we're going to take a look at polymorphism. It's an important feature of object-orientated programming that we will be taking advantage of in many of the procedural systems that we will create. Therefore, it's important that you have a solid understanding of not only what it is, but also the techniques that are used to achieve it and the potential pitfalls.

Tip

If you already have a strong understanding of polymorphism, feel free to skip this section or head to https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/z165t2xk(v=vs.90) for a more in-depth discussion of the topic.

Polymorphism is the ability to access different objects through an individually implemented common interface. That's a very formal definition. So, let's break that down into the individual techniques and features that are used to achieve it. It's worth noting that while polymorphism is the standard approach in the games industry, it's still a choice among other schools of programming...