Creating Games From Scratch Using SDL 2.0
What you'll learn
- Program your own 2d games using SDL 2.0
- Understand the discrete nature of games and the "game loop"
- Play sfx & music in your game
- Do body body collision detection and resolution
Course content
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Requirements
- To be able to follow this course, you will need an intermediate skill level with coding in C++
- You will need an IDE in your chosen development environment (On Windows, usually Visual Studio, Mac=Xcode)
- You will need to download SDL 2.0 from http://libsdl.org (free & open source)
Description
Have you ever wanted to program your own game in C++ from scratch? Do you want to enjoy easy & free multiplatform deployment (Windows, Mac, Linux iOS and Android?). In this course, we will have a basic introduction to programming games in C++ using the SDL 2.0 library. We will use SDL 2.0 to:
- Get a window on the screen
- Draw line and rectangle primitives
- Draw sprites on the screen
- Use object-oriented principles to manage Sprites and game character data
- Load and play sounds & music from disk
- Do collision detection using Rectangles
- Manage game state & game state transitions using finite state machines
Overview & Motivation
Why use SDL 2.0? Many people opt to go with complete game engines, such as Unity or Unreal Engine 4, to create their games. Unity and Unreal have licensing costs associated with them. Are you prepared to take on that extra cost? What if you can avoid spending that money on the engine and spend it on licensing assets and other resources instead?
What about using a free and open source sound, graphics and input API to deploy your game to all devices? And the freedom to program in pure C or C++?
LibSDL lets you do all that. Simple C commands will enable you to load sounds & music, load & display hardware accelerated graphics easily. The simple framework I provide in the code examples here will make it easy for you to get started creating your own games from scratch.
Programming from C++ directly (instead of using an engine) will give you much more control over how things get done inside your game. If you like raw programming and always wanted to see how games like Super Mario Brothers, Dragon Warrior, and other classic NES games would get assembled, try this course!
Many professional & indie games use libsdl already, including:
Robin hood - the Legend of Sherwood, Left 4 Dead 2, Steel Storm, Edna & Harvey, Proteus, Psychonauts, Amnesia, FastForward, Syberia, AwesomeNauts and more.
Who this course is for:
- This course is not about creating robust game engines!
- We will see some typical engine code (collision detection code), but our focus is on game assembly using SDL
- This game is not about creating game art.. that princess is in another castle!
- If you're interested in interfacing with SDL 2.0 directly (with no other layers between!) this course is for you
- Our core focus in this course will be creating games using SDL
Instructor
![William Sherif](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 3.9 Instructor Rating
- 61 Reviews
- 1,683 Students
- 3 Courses
William Sherif is a competent C++ programmer of 8+ years. He has a wide variety of experiences, from games programming to web programming. He has also been a university course instructor (sessional) for 7 years.
He has published several apps in the iTunes store, including strum and MARSHALL OF THE ELITE SQUADRON.
His interests are varied, but his focus has always been pleasing his clients.
In the past he has been acclaimed for delivering course material in an easy to understand manner.