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Help => General => Topic started by: albert_lazaro on October 06, 2019, 06:51:20 pm

Title: SFML, how to learn it
Post by: albert_lazaro on October 06, 2019, 06:51:20 pm
Hi, I'm beginner with SFML, I have done the Angry bird Udemy tutorial (https://www.udemy.com/course/flappy-bird-sfml/) and now I'm reading the book "SFML Game Development".

MY problem is that I'm learning in my free time, and I doing my don't have a lot of free time. Before buying the book I was doing an RPG project, but after I get the book I'm doing the book project and my progress is slow.

What do you recommend: to read the book and continue with my main project or read the book, make the projects book and after work in my main project?
Title: Re: SFML, how to learn it
Post by: Nexus on October 06, 2019, 10:17:53 pm
One option is to read our book very thoroughly, build each chapter using the online code (https://github.com/SFML/SFML-Game-Development-Book) and understand all the concepts in detail, before you move on to the next chapter.

Or, if you already feel confident with several aspects of game development, you can focus mainly on the parts that are new to you, and look up the code for them. You don't necessarily need to write code yourself (or re-produce the book's code), often you can gain a lot of insights by playing around with the code provided to you, whhile changing it according to your imaginations.

Third, if you think that certain parts of the book are not relevant for your future projects, you can skip them and come back only if you need them. I would not recommend this for the basic chapters though -- game loop, input and state handling as well as basic graphics are so universal that you can't make a game without them. But topics like shaders, audio or network programming are usually not the first thing you do when you develop a game, so you might return any time you see fit.

TLDR: It depends what you want to learn, and how you learn most efficiently. Choose a way where you can keep up your motivation, and advance small steps at a time.
Title: Re: SFML, how to learn it
Post by: battosaijenkins on October 12, 2019, 11:30:32 pm
@albert_lazaro hey man, have you had any prior experience with game development? Jumping into a project like that can be frustrating because there might be concepts in there that you might not fully understand. What I did to get started with SFML was I ported javascript html5 canvas animations to SFML and from there I understood c++ more and more.

I started with tiny concepts such as collision detection, particle animations, physics for gravity/friction, as well as c++ knowledge like databases, memory management, and pointers/references. From practicing on those I could gradually piece them together and then be confident enough to jump into projects. But if you already have prior c++ knowledge/game dev then by all means just hope you have more time to spend on coding.

But I always say practice whenever you have the chance and always write it down or have a block diagram of what your vision is. Sometimes when I just code away without a guideline I'll paint myself into a corner so to speak and then dread that I'd have to start from scratch again. Anyway, Good luck!