Hello again!
In this video, we are going to start looking at SFML.
This is the "Simple and Fast Multimedia Library".
There are quite a lot of graphics libraries, which are written in C, or C++ which looks like C.
This is actually written in idiomatic modern C++, C++ 14.
So it works very well with the features that we have been learning about in this course.
It is also easy to use and it is very well documented.
It has a website, so let's go over and have a look at that.
SFML provides an interface to the multimedia components of your computer.
It works on Windows, Linux and Mac, and it is also available in C and .net, and other languages.
"Et aussi en Francais"
There is documentation on how to use the interface, answers to frequently asked questions, and tutorials.
So these will tell you how to get started, with various compilers and operating systems.
There are some system modules, which are probably not really relevant
now we have C++11. Maybe they are useful if you have to use a very old compiler.
Then, managing windows, interacting with events, and keyboard, mouse and joysticks. And also how to use
OpenGL,
if you want more control, or to do your own rendering.
And then the real heart of the graphics features, and we are going to be using some of these.
There is also support for audio and networking.
We are not going to be using those, but they are there, if you want to investigate them.
For downloading, I recommend using the latest stable version.
And there are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Or alternatively, you can download the source code and copmile that yourself.
And that should be pretty straightforward, if you are used to doing that sort of thing. For the Windows
version, it is very important to make sure that you have the right binary for your compiler. Especially
if you are using Visual Studio, because Microsoft keep changing
their binary output format.
Although they do seem to have settled down now.
I have been using Visual Studio 2019 with the 2017 binaries, and there have been no problems at all.
They are also ones for CodeBlocks and MinGW.
If you are using Linux or one of the BSDs, then the best thing is to use the package manager.
That will download the binaries and install them in a sensible place.
For MacOS, I need to go back to the tutorials, briefly.
There are two versions.
One is dylib, which works like a Unix binary, and there is also frameworks, which you can use for doing
things which are a bit more "Mac-like".
Okay, so that is it for this video.
In the next video, I will be showing you how to configure this for command line and IDE.
But until then, keep coding!