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

Exercises


To help you test your knowledge of this chapter's content, here are a few exercises that you should work on. They are not imperative to the rest of the book, but working on them will help you assess your strengths and weaknesses in the material covered:

  1. When calculating pathfinding, we currently do not allow diagonal movement. Update the algorithm so that this is now allowed. To get you started, when calculating the G cost, you'll need to determine whether we moved diagonally or straight.

  2. Currently, the enemies will chase us throughout the entire level. Amend the function so that the enemy will only chase the player if they are within a certain distance.

  3. Currently our enemies move at a fixed speed and don't take into account the speed variable that we generated in an earlier chapter. Incorporate the speed variable in the game so that the enemies move at their correct speeds.