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SFML Tutorial Series Changeover

Ken — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:41:47 +0000

I’m sorry to the people that have been eagerly anticipating the next tutorials in my SFML-Zelda series (I’m honestly surprised that I’ve gotten any results, especially considering the state of the current tutorials), but I’ve decided to scrap SFML in favor of OpenGL. It will still be a C++ game programming tutorial series, and will be using Legend of Zelda as a backdrop for it, but at this point I’m tired of the problems SFML has given me that shouldn’t exist– at least with OpenGL, I’ll know that the problems lie with me. For those still interested, I still plan to kick the tutorial off no later than early February, though specific dates will depend on when my stuff arrives after the move. I’ll focus the tutorials around OpenGL 2.x because of its wider support base, but we will be using a shader-based graphics pipeline for it. I will try to cover the basics of OpenGL as best I can, but I greatly recommend taking a look at Beginning OpenGL Game Programming, Second Edition– it’s what I learned from, and it served me well.

Update!

Ken — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:30:55 +0000

So once again, it’s been forever since I’ve updated this blog (or, sadly, put up the next tutorial in my SFML-Zelda series). I’m still alive, I’ve just been busy between work, school and my personal experimentations. I’m hoping to be able to pick up the SFML-Zelda series again near the end of October, so keep your eyes open!

In the mean time, I’ve been playing around with a fair amount of OpenGL, trying to break into the third dimension– I’ve grown tired of two-dimensional projects. Accompanying this is my attempting to get at least a general understanding of 3D modeling, and I’m getting to the point where I can create something that I feel will be passable in a game, so hopefully I’ll be able to show some things off here soon!

And last, but certainly not least, is my new gaming computer- Miyako. She’s a beast of a machine, specifically tailored to be ready to run Skyrim at its highest on release. She’s equipped with an AMD Phenom II 3.3GHz/3.7GHz Turbo X6 six-core processor, an AMD Radeon HD 6950 (soon to be dual, with CrossFire), 8 GB (soon to be 16) of RAM, and a Blu-Ray Burner. All-in-all, I’m looking forward to upcoming PC titles, and hopefully I’ll be able to crank out some powerful effects and experimentation with some OpenGL 4 and Direct3D 11 projects soon enough.

In the mean time, here’s some of what I’ve worked on in Blender.

SFML Zelda Tutorial 3: Events & Design Discussion

Ken — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:01:05 +0000

Introduction

Welcome to my newest tutorial series: SFML Zelda. Throughout this tutorial series, we will be building a two-dimensional Legend of Zelda fan game. Before we begin, I want to say what this tutorial is and is not. The tutorial is a basic game programming tutorial, written with C++ and the SFML 1.6 game library. The series is not covering advanced game development techniques. There are many things that I will cover in this tutorial that are better handled by other means, and I encourage you to look for other resources and expand your knowledge.

Code License

All code in this tutorial series is released under the zLib 1.2.2 License (can be viewed here).

Tutorial 3 Overview

For this tutorial, I am going to be taking a different approach. There is only a minor amount of code in this tutorial, as I am instead going to focus primarily on an explanation of the system that we are designing for the game, and some of the reasoning behind the decisions that I will be making regarding it. The code will be switching us from using the standard Window class to the RenderWindow class within the SFML Graphics package, and will change our system to use an event structure, rather than relying on the task manager or debugger to kill the application instance.

SFML-Zelda GitHub Project

Updated Code
System Overview