Messages

1

General / Re: Question About Fixed Time Step

« on: June 18, 2014, 10:33:13 pm »

it might make more sense for timeSinceUpdate to be called unprocessedTime. It keeps track of how much time has not been updated. When you run an update, you must remove the amount of time you are updating from the unprocessedTime.

Also, frame rate is different from update rate. Update should be called at 60 times per second currently, but the way you code is written, render() is called as fast as possible. IMO, this is a good thing: if you want there to be a cap on the fps use vSync.

2

General discussions / Re: Rethinking the definition of "Simple"

« on: April 20, 2014, 06:26:14 pm »

I have also been using SFML for some time, and would hate to see it die. I am a bit of a lurker here on the forums, but I would definitely be willing to help out with SFML. I love the idea of a committee or some guidance group that would make community contributions much more straightforward.

I think that for SFML to really compete with SDL or something with a backing by valve, it should try to be as feature rich and stable as possible, while being actively developed and tested by the community. SFML has gotten to the point where two or three people can not maintain and enhance it in their free time.

However, we should not try to be another SDL, just in C++, but should grow and develop in the way that the community sees fit. This library has MASSIVE potential with its great design and clean API, but I do agree that it seems to be a bit of a "gateway" library with its current feature set.

3

General / Newest XCode Template Updates

« on: April 20, 2014, 02:41:23 am »

I have been using the SFML 2.1 release with XCode for a while now, but I just built the latest sources from git, and there seems to be issues with the templates.

First of all, there is a cmake variable SFML_INSTALL_XCODE4_TEMPLATES, which confuses me because the readme in tools/templates/xcode says that it works for XCode 4 and 5.

I installed the templates in the latest git in tools/templates/xcode into the correct location and I am able to select them to create a new SFML project. All goes well until after I choose where to save the project, at which point XCode quits unexpectedly, with no error messages.

I'm guessing that the commit github.com/LaurentGomila/SFML/commit/19012c66ea40cda064bfc158a5cac7eabd21280d has somehow messed up the templates, resulting in a corrupt project or something

Let me know if you need any more information on my system or something, I'll see if I can look into this further when I have more time.

4

SFML projects / Re: [ODFAEG] (Open Source Development Framework Adapted for Every Game)

« on: March 29, 2014, 05:22:40 pm »

I don't really knows how vbo's work...

I'm not a beginner with opengl...

VBOs are an absolute MUST if you want to create a 3D engine with reasonable performance today...
Not knowing VBO's is to modern OpenGL what not knowing what objects are is to C++.

5

Graphics / Re: Clear or reset a texture?

« on: March 27, 2014, 11:04:50 pm »

Why do you need to update the texture with a smaller image? Can't you just create a new texture with an appropriate size? Updating a texture all the time is rather slow, compared to just using a different one.

If you do need to update with a smaller image though, then the best way to do this would be to resize the smaller image (the image file, not in sfml) with transparent pixels on the outside.

6

General / Re: Major lag when a C++ statement is removed

« on: March 10, 2014, 12:16:49 am »

When you call std::cout, the program will have to wait to write the output to the console. This is often a very slow process, so it will take longer for the program to complete every loop cycle. This is why it is a lot slower.

As far as the getPosition() functions taking a long time, I would only call each of them once, and then store the result. This will mean less calls to get the position of the mouse and window, which I expect are somewhat expensive if called very frequently.

Overall though, I think that this dragging process should be handled within the main game loop using events. Currently, this function will block until the mouse has been finished dragging, meaning that you cannot redraw the window while its being dragged. Implementing this within the loop will be much simpler with the use of events too.

7

General discussions / Re: Searching for music compositor software

« on: January 31, 2014, 04:26:25 am »

LMMS is a great free music making program. I personally have Ableton Live, but I used to use LMMS, and it is great for being free.

8

General discussions / Favorite IDE

« on: November 13, 2013, 05:27:00 am »

Hey everyone, I was just wondering what the SFML community used to develop things. I personally use Visual Studio (express), but I thought getting a new poll on this would be fun, or even informative for beginners struggling to choose.

9

Audio / Re: Question on how audio is stored in SoundBuffer

« on: October 29, 2013, 04:04:34 am »

An array of Int16s only stores the amplitude of the sound at that point in time. It does not store the pitch, or any sort of effect. You can think of the numbers as the position of the speaker at that point in time.

A good example of working with lower level sound can be found on the SFML wiki:
https://github.com/SFML/SFML/wiki/Tutorial%3A-Play-Sine-Wave

10

General / Re: Small jitter on slope tiles.

« on: September 24, 2013, 10:40:39 pm »

not sure exactly, but maybe your if statement try changing <= to <

currently, once the entity hits the tile, it is set to be = to the tiles height at the spot. Then, the next game loop, the <= means that the entity will still intersect with the tile, and will be reset to the same spot every time. This could cause jittering if you have gravity.

So either set the height of the entity to be a little above the tile (+ 0.001) or just change the if statement to use <.

11

General discussions / Re: SFML Game Jam

« on: July 21, 2013, 11:51:45 pm »

We could have a SFML integration rating or something, or just ask those who rate it to keep in mind the extent to which SFML was used. Let the community decide if the developer was cheesing the use of SFML.

+1

SFML has more potential than just the graphics library for drawing. It is a great library for OpenGL, with its classes handling texture and shader loading. Sure, its graphics library is great and most of the time will leave no reason to use raw OpenGL, but I think that limiting the jam to just 2d games would be a bad idea.

The Audio library in sfml is designed for 3d use. I think sfml is a great library for 3d as well as  2d. Plus saying no OpenGL is hard to really define ( #define NoOpengGL  ), for example you could use sfml's texture and shader loading, which I use along with raw OpenGL. is that raw OpenGL or sfml?

This is why I like the idea of "grading" on integration of sfml. I think it would be a lot more impressive to others if the community came out with a cool 3D game, even if they didn't integrate sfml as much a a 2d platformer. Showing that this library is a viable alternative to SDL as an OpenGL windowing library is just as important imho as showing another demonstration of its amazing graphics.

I think people should be graded on how well they integrate sfml. using the graphics library should be a bonus, but not a law.

12

Feature requests / Re: Vbo class

« on: July 02, 2013, 07:45:48 pm »

Actually, I do have a case like that. I have a particle based map I am working on that has many small textured quads. When I get to a high enough amount of  particles/quads with the vertex array, it starts to really lag. I don't have the best graphics card myself, but I redid it with VBOs and the performance was MUCH better, as it should be. I don't think that it would really be necessary for MOST games, but when you have a ton of stuff to render, VBOs are the way to go. There's a reason pretty much everything else is deprecated .

13

Feature requests / Vbo class

« on: July 02, 2013, 07:32:44 pm »

Hello, I was wondering about the future of the Graphics Module. Specifically, do you think that SFML will support vbos in the near future? There is already a wrapper around vertex arrays, but nothing for a vbo. Were the developers planning on doing this in the near future, or is this not going to be part of the library? It seems like it should be fairly simple to add this functionality, as it would be a near copy of the vertex array class. I have written my own wrapper around it, but I think it would be great to have the graphics module expose the performance of vbos to users in an easy way. Thanks!

14

General discussions / Re: SFML Game Development -- A book on SFML

« on: June 28, 2013, 07:07:38 pm »

I purchased the eBook Kindle thing from Amazon. Its really good by the way. When you get the kindle version you can just put you email in at http://www.packtpub.com/support/12705 and you will get all the code emailed to you. You don't have to prove that you bought the book. Just put in your email, don't get their newsletter, and then enter the catch-pa. Once you hit the "go" button to the left of the catch-pa field, you will get an email within minutes with the downloadable code.

Once again, I've barely started the book but I'm loving it!

15

General discussions / Re: SFML Game Development -- A book on SFML

« on: June 28, 2013, 03:24:58 am »

So just to clarify, if I buy the book from amazon, will I have access to the code from Packt? It looks good, great job  .