Is good enough?

[orgos]

Hello.

It's SFML good enough for comercial games like Stacraft and diablo 2?

Some people make casual games with it? and try on others plaftorms like linux and mac?

[SamuraiCrow]

Yes it is good enough.  It works fine on Linux and Mac also.

[nitram_cero]

Look at the projects on the projects forum to have an idea.

And as I'm here... I might as well just leave a link to a game I made, as an example  of course :roll:   :lol:



Good luck!
-Martín

[Auron]

Of course its well enough for commerical games. I've just started using it, and I can say its pretty amazing. Its better than SDL.

[Core Xii]

No, it's not. "Real" commercial games like that are written their own, specialized, optimized engines directly on top of DirectX/OpenGL. No actual game developer giant would use SFML. They have offices full of seasoned programmers so it's not a problem for them.

At least, that's how I see it. Could be wrong.

[madmark]

Core Xii,

I'm one of those "seasoned programmers" you speak of, 20+ years as a game developer.

I have published titles based on Ogre3D and ClanLib as well as using a number of other Open Source libraries, including Lua which I have co-written a book ("Game Development with LUA").

I am using SFML 1.5 in my current project because Ogre3D is way too heavy for this project and ClanLib has all but abandoned the Mac platform (though I am now concerned about SFML as the Mac maintainer has announced his retirement). I use Open Source libraries because I don't want to write the same functionality myself. Why would I spend my time re-inventing the wheel when a perfectly good wheel is available free or for the cost of making some of my additions available to the other users of the libraries?

In fact, I would say that anyone, no matter how rich in resources, that would rather "roll their own" is being grossly foolish.

[Core Xii]

Why would I spend my time re-inventing the wheel when a perfectly good wheel is available free or for the cost of making some of my additions available to the other users of the libraries?

Because the reinvented wheel is 100% optimized for whatever you're doing. Blizzard would never use SFML for StarCraft because by writing their own engine they get every bit of juice out of it that a generic library cannot offer by design.

Ogre3D falls into the same category. "Real" developers don't use Ogre3D either.

[l0calh05t]

Because the reinvented wheel is 100% optimized for whatever you're doing. Blizzard would never use SFML for StarCraft because by writing their own engine they get every bit of juice out of it that a generic library cannot offer by design.

Ogre3D falls into the same category. "Real" developers don't use Ogre3D either.

Sorry, but that is nonsense. There is absolutely no reason to "reinvent the wheel" every time, especially in cases that are absolutely not performance relevant (like... using SFML or SDL to create an OpenGL window)

Don't believe it? Then look at the Neverwinter Nights Linux client... guess what they use for the OpenGL window... SDL! (And we all know SFML is better :-D )

*Still* don't believe it? Then look at what all those "real" developers use for their games.... How many games are there that use Havok? The Source engine? The Unreal engine? SpeedTree? Did these developers reinvent the wheel? No, because it's just not worth it. Yes, the aforementioned examples are not opensource, but there are a few commercial games that use Ogre (For example Ankh by Deck13) and even more that use Bullet ( see here http://www.bulletphysics.com/Bullet/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=11971#p11971 and don't tell me you've never heard of these "tiny" developer studios mentioned ;-) )

Ok... sorry for that rant, but this just had to be said

[Core Xii]

How many games are there that use Havok? The Source engine? The Unreal engine? SpeedTree?

Havok and SpeedTree are in an entirely different ballpark. They are specialized libraries, Havok specifically designed to simulate physics in a certain way (performance over accuracy), and SpeedTree to procedurally generate trees.

SFML on the other hand is a generic library - It isn't designed to render any type of graphics in particular. Thus a custom graphics engine will always benefit a taxing game.

Now I'm not trying to diss SFML here or anything, I use SDL myself in my indie dev hobbies. You can use SFML for real games like StarCraft, but writing your own graphics routines is still always better (if more laborious).

[l0calh05t]

Havok and SpeedTree are in an entirely different ballpark. They are specialized libraries, Havok specifically designed to simulate physics in a certain way (performance over accuracy), and SpeedTree to procedurally generate trees.

SFML on the other hand is a generic library - It isn't designed to render any type of graphics in particular. Thus a custom graphics engine will always benefit a taxing game.

Now I'm not trying to diss SFML here or anything, I use SDL myself in my indie dev hobbies. You can use SFML for real games like StarCraft, but writing your own graphics routines is still always better (if more laborious).

Specialized or not, libraries like SFML (SDL can be consideres the same kind of library) are being used by your so-called "real" developers!

And... Ogre3D is a library specialized in graphics ;-) (it's not a generic game engine)

[heishe]

99% of the """"""""real""""""" developers just license engines because the developement of an own engine is more expensive. on the market at the moment there are the ID engines (tech 5 now), of course the unreal engine and the source engine, thats it. blizzard is one of the few companies who constantly develop new engines for their games.

and the guys who do write their own engines just do it because engines like Ogre3D lack a loooooot of features they need. it's not because ogre3d is too slow, or not well enough designed, it's just that it misses a lot of stuff (by the way studied the source engine source code when it leaked a few years ago and hell that thing was a fucking mess).

in the realm of 2D games however, SFML is perfectly fine and probably the best thing you can use at the moment. the few "real" developers that you name so often (kyle gabler, petri purho) use SDL because they've written their engines years ago when SFML wasn't even around and they still use their old engines, thats why they don't need to switch to sfml. some even use totally different things (take derek yu for example, he built spelunky using some game creator)

in the realm of 2d games, there's very few things that you'd actually have to implement anyways, since 2d is not as complicated. 99% of 2d-game engines consists of actual game-stuff instead of graphics stuff.

so to simply answer the op's question: yes sfml is perfectly fine for 2d graphics. if you're talking about whole game engines sfml isn't one anyways.

[l0calh05t]

and the guys who do write their own engines just do it because engines like Ogre3D lack a loooooot of features they need. it's not because ogre3d is too slow, or not well enough designed, it's just that it misses a lot of stuff (by the way studied the source engine source code when it leaked a few years ago and hell that thing was a fucking mess).

Actually, you can do almost every effect with Ogre (most new effects are shader based, which is possible, and iirc you can even define your own passes in Ogre) In this case the slowness might actually be the real problem... (haven't found ogre to be particularly fast)

so to simply answer the op's question: yes sfml is perfectly fine for 2d graphics. if you're talking about whole game engines sfml isn't one anyways.

But unlike the 3d-side (ogre), sfml contains everything necessary for a game engine (except physics, which isn't necessary for most 2d games and if it is... box2d)

[Core Xii]

99% of the """"""""real""""""" developers just license engines because the developement of an own engine is more expensive. on the market at the moment there are the ID engines (tech 5 now), of course the unreal engine and the source engine, thats it. blizzard is one of the few companies who constantly develop new engines for their games.

Uh... Epic Games wrote the Unreal Engine for themselves. Valve wrote the Source engine for themselves. They're not some generic engines written by an outside party.

These big names are exactly the "real" developers I'm talking about. Your average commercial game developer doesn't write their own engine because it's easier to use an existing one... But that's the difference between those developers, and the absolute top-notch devs like Valve and Blizzard.

Also, again, I must note that the engines mentioned here are again specialized engines, Source specifically designed for first person shooters, etc.

SFML is not the de-facto library for 2D games. It lacks a lot of features like palette mode and vector drawing, and really only excels in rendering raster images.

[heishe]

99% of the """"""""real""""""" developers just license engines because the developement of an own engine is more expensive. on the market at the moment there are the ID engines (tech 5 now), of course the unreal engine and the source engine, thats it. blizzard is one of the few companies who constantly develop new engines for their games.

These big names are exactly the "real" developers I'm talking about.

Ahh right. And I guess, for you, the only "real" astronauts are the ones who went to the moon, right?

Valve did indeed write the engine primarily for themselves, Epic Games however, specifically designed and developed the UE3 for others. My facts for that u ask? When the UE3 appeared in the public, Epic Games made huge advertisement for it, not to mention that there's a MASSIVE toolchain around the UE3. They did it because the Unreal Engine 2 was used by many many games, and they knew (and know) that they can make a lot of money with their engine.

They didn't develop the engine for UT3 and then added a couple of features so that they could license it to others... they developed the engine for the sole purpose of licencing it to others. using it for their own games was just a bonus. Epic Games major income comes from their engines.

Say, I assume you're not working in the gaming industry right? Have you ever seen the work of one of your "average commercial game developers" (i mean the code)? Have you ever seen the code of some of your "real" developers?  I assure you, pretty much every single one of those "average commercial game devlopers" could produce the same things that EG, Valve and ID produces. The only reason they don't is MONEY. Nothing else.

Also, who the hell needs vector drawing for games? SFML isn't even supposed to be a "engine". It's a fucking library for the very basic stuff. Has anyone of you ever written a game engine? Please stop talking if you actually haven't ever done anything like it.

[l0calh05t]

They didn't develop the engine for UT3 and then added a couple of features so that they could license it to others... they developed the engine for the sole purpose of licencing it to others. using it for their own games was just a bonus. Epic Games major income comes from their engines.

Same thing for id Software. The Quake games were mainly glorified tech-demos...

Also, who the hell needs vector drawing for games? SFML isn't even supposed to be a "engine". It's a fucking library for the very basic stuff. Has anyone of you ever written a game engine? Please stop talking if you actually haven't ever done anything like it.

If I'm not mistaken, vector graphics are planned for SFML 2... And vector graphics are very useful IMO, for example for GUIs (esp scalable ones).