Book Image

Expert C++

By : Vardan Grigoryan, Shunguang Wu
Book Image

Expert C++

By: Vardan Grigoryan, Shunguang Wu

Overview of this book

C++ has evolved over the years and the latest release – C++20 – is now available. Since C++11, C++ has been constantly enhancing the language feature set. With the new version, you’ll explore an array of features such as concepts, modules, ranges, and coroutines. This book will be your guide to learning the intricacies of the language, techniques, C++ tools, and the new features introduced in C++20, while also helping you apply these when building modern and resilient software. You’ll start by exploring the latest features of C++, and then move on to advanced techniques such as multithreading, concurrency, debugging, monitoring, and high-performance programming. The book will delve into object-oriented programming principles and the C++ Standard Template Library, and even show you how to create custom templates. After this, you’ll learn about different approaches such as test-driven development (TDD), behavior-driven development (BDD), and domain-driven design (DDD), before taking a look at the coding best practices and design patterns essential for building professional-grade applications. Toward the end of the book, you will gain useful insights into the recent C++ advancements in AI and machine learning. By the end of this C++ programming book, you’ll have gained expertise in real-world application development, including the process of designing complex software.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Section 1: Under the Hood of C++ Programming
7
Section 2: Designing Robust and Efficient Applications
17
Section 3: C++ in the AI World

Designing the game loop

Strategy games have one of the most intensively changing gameplays. At each point in time, many actions happen simultaneously. Readers finish their building; a barrack produces a soldier; a soldier gets attacked by the enemy; the player commands units to move, build, attack, or run; and so on. The game loop handles everything. Usually, a game engine provides a well-designed game loop.

The game loop runs while we play the game. As we already mentioned, the loop handles player actions, updates the game state, and also renders the game (makes state changes visible to the player). It does so on each iteration. The loop should also control the rate of gameplay, that is, its FPS. A common term for one iteration of the game loop is a frame, which is why we emphasize the FPS as the speed of the gameplay. For example, if you design a game running at 60 FPS, this...