SFML

One of the reasons I learned how to program was to make games. Games are a unique form of creative medium, combining art, interactive storytelling, and vibrant worlds. But as a software engineer, it’s easy to lose sight of my goals and get trapped by the technical details. It’s common for software engineers in game dev to roll their own engine, which I believe reduces productivity and is ultimately a distraction to making a game.

Note that I’m not just referring to making reusable or generic game engines; for this article, I consider using low-level technology like OpenGL, SFML, or SDL to make games to include the act of rolling your own game engine, even if the focus is specific. It’s more manageable, but you still end up reinventing the wheel and having to solve many of the same problems.

There are plenty of other articles about whether or not to make your own game engine. This article is personal to me; it’s an exploration of my journey in game dev, a discussion of what motivates me, and a promise for the future.

Drop shadows are created using a Gaussian blur drawn underneath the original element. You can do this using either a fixed texture or a post-processing fragment shader.

SFML is an excellent library that can be used to create 2D games and similar applications in C++. It’s an abstraction over OpenGL and various system APIs, presenting a consistent and easy-to-use interface.

Providing a Graphical User Interface (GUI / UI) API is out of scope for SFML. GUIs are complicated, and there’s no single good way to implement them. The S in SFML stands for Simple but GUI code rarely is.

There are many different options to choose from when making GUIs. This article is an in-depth comparison of the options for making GUIs in SFML, discussing their pros and cons.

Ruben’s Virtual World Project is a game I’ve been working on for almost 4 years now. Recently I rewrote the rendering code to support voxel lighting and multiple z-level - heights of the map.

For the last two years, I have been working on a very ambitious game. The game is a top-down sandbox with multiplayer support. I’m aiming towards a city-based game, where players can wander around a procedurally generated city. One of the main reasons I started creating this game is to learn about multiplayer networking at a low level - client-side prediction, server-side reconcilliation, cheat preventation, and reducing the visual effect of latency.

Usecase: shells dropping in sync with firing, fake bullets, etc

You must use a particle emitter to create particles, however this doesn’t mean it’s impossible to create single particles on command. You can create a particle emitter which simply adds particles from a queue to the system

Simply get the SFGUI window size using GetAllocation, the sfml window size using getSize, then do this arithmetic:

auto window = sfg::Window::Create();
auto win_rect = window->GetAllocation();
sf::Vector2f size(win_rect.width, win_rect.height);
window->SetPosition(((sf::Vector2f)rwindow->getSize() - size) / 2.0f);