Book Image

Beginning C++ Game Programming - Second Edition

By : John Horton
Book Image

Beginning C++ Game Programming - Second Edition

By: John Horton

Overview of this book

The second edition of Beginning C++ Game Programming is updated and improved to include the latest features of Visual Studio 2019, SFML, and modern C++ programming techniques. With this book, you’ll get a fun introduction to game programming by building five fully playable games of increasing complexity. You’ll learn to build clones of popular games such as Timberman, Pong, a Zombie survival shooter, a coop puzzle platformer and Space Invaders. The book starts by covering the basics of programming. You’ll study key C++ topics, such as object-oriented programming (OOP) and C++ pointers, and get acquainted with the Standard Template Library (STL). The book helps you learn about collision detection techniques and game physics by building a Pong game. As you build games, you’ll also learn exciting game programming concepts such as particle effects, directional sound (spatialization), OpenGL programmable shaders, spawning objects, and much more. Finally, you’ll explore game design patterns to enhance your C++ game programming skills. By the end of the book, you’ll have gained the knowledge you need to build your own games with exciting features from scratch
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
23
Chapter 23: Before You Go...

Implementing the HUD

Now, we know enough about Strings, SFML Text, and SFML Font to go about implementing the HUD. HUD stands for Heads Up Display. It can be as simple as the score and text messages on the screen or it can include more complex elements such as a time-bar, mini-map, or compass that represents the direction that the player character is facing.

To get started with the HUD, we need to add another #include directive to the top of the code file to add access to the sstream class. As we already know, the sstream class adds some really useful functionality for combining Strings and other variable types into a String.

Add the following line of highlighted code:

#include <sstream>
#include <SFML/Graphics.hpp>
using namespace sf;
int main()
{

Next, we will set up our SFML Text objects: one to hold a message that we will vary to suit the state of the game and one that will hold the score and will need to be regularly updated.

The code declares the Text...