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SFML Game Development By Example

You're reading from   SFML Game Development By Example Create and develop exciting games from start to finish using SFML

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Product type Paperback
Published in Dec 2015
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781785287343
Length 522 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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Raimondas Pupius Raimondas Pupius
Author Profile Icon Raimondas Pupius
Raimondas Pupius
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Toc

Table of Contents (16) Chapters Close

Preface 1. It's Alive! It's Alive! – Setup and First Program 2. Give It Some Structure – Building the Game Framework FREE CHAPTER 3. Get Your Hands Dirty – What You Need to Know 4. Grab That Joystick – Input and Event Management 5. Can I Pause This? – Application States 6. Set It in Motion! – Animating and Moving around Your World 7. Rediscovering Fire – Common Game Design Elements 8. The More You Know – Common Game Programming Patterns 9. A Breath of Fresh Air – Entity Component System Continued 10. Can I Click This? – GUI Fundamentals 11. Don't Touch the Red Button! – Implementing the GUI 12. Can You Hear Me Now? – Sound and Music 13. We Have Contact! – Networking Basics 14. Come Play with Us! – Multiplayer Subtleties Index

Automated resource management


Let's talk about textures and the way we've been using them so far. A texture in SFML is something you want to only have one of, since it's not cheap memory wise. Our approach so far was simply storing the textures as data members of relevant classes. A scenario that illustrates how horrendous this strategy is would be as follows: you need the same texture somewhere else. That's it. It really doesn't seem like the type of thing that you could just brush off your shoulders, as it only happens once in a blue moon. Creating multiple textures that all hold the same data is a huge waste of resources, and adding methods for obtaining textures from the classes that use them is a disaster. Not only does it clutter the class footprint, it would also mean that other classes would have to have access to the one that holds this texture. Nobody should subject themselves to such torture.

How do we remedy this situation then? By creating a class that holds all of our textures...

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