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

Giving the player random stats


A classic way in which this random distribution of numbers can be used is to give a player random stats. Traditionally, a character in a game is given n stat points, and it's up to the player to distribute them. Since we're making a procedural game, we'll instead distribute them randomly to create procedurally generated character stats.

To do this we need to hook up the previous code with the assignment of our player's stat variables. Our player stats are currently fixed, and assigned in the following way:

m_attack = 10;
m_defense = 10;
m_strength = 10;
m_dexterity = 10;
m_stamina = 10;

Let's replace that with the following to randomly distribute the stats. We'll also add a variable to the player so we can change how many stat points the player has to distribute.

To start, add the following variable to the player, and don't forget to add it to our initializer list:

int m_statPoints;

Now let's use this to give our player random stats:

// Randomly distribute other stat...