C++ SFML 2.0 Spritesheet Animation Class

Loading and displaying sprites with SFML 2.0 is not hard work to do, its just two functions however when it comes to animating them you will need to actually delve a little bit more deeper. I've created a basic wrapper class for SFML 2.0 which loads displays and animates spritesheets with just few lines of code.

Beginners who are finding trouble with animating their sprites could find this helpful. First of all this class implements Sprite class and Texture class, two standard SFML classes for loading and displaying sprites. I implemented functions from these two classes in one single class which loads and animates sprites.

By: Alias On 16:34

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How to make a Game ? Steps on how to start simple

Interactive games are getting bigger and bigger. They started from a simple Pong game on a TV. Now they are pure art, with graphics, sounds, interactions and other stuff to make you feel the experience under your skin.

The simplest answer to a game is fun. How fun can fun be ? That depends on your style. Modern games are hitting the biggest market. And if you are a game developer, then you are rich. But making a game its not that simple than playing it. Even though the hard work can be payed off, you are going to get a big pain in the ass. Yes, sorry for the disclaimer but remember just one thing. Games are fun, and creating them is more than fun. Below we offer you some steps on how to enter the amazing world of game making.

By: Alias On 09:20

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Age of Empires on Android and iOS

Age of Empires Fans. Brace yourself! One of the most famous and played games of all times Age of Empires will be developed for mobile devices. Apparently, Microsoft has made a licensing agreement with KLab Inc. to develop a mobile version of Age of Empires franchise.

This news for a mobile version of Age of Empires come after 2 months when they published a remake for Age of Empires II HD. It's no wonder that Age of Empires has such a strong fan base worldwide and is widely considered as one of the best games ever. As i already said Age of Empires is one of the most successful game franchises in the market. This historical strategy game has won the heart of many fans throughout the world. Microsoft revived their Age of Empires II on April with improved graphics and available for download through Steam as Age of Empires II HD.

By: Leo On 04:19

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Unreal Engine 4 : New features and scripting systems

Legions of developers rely upon Unreal Engine 3’s Unreal Kismet, which is used to quickly build gameplay prototypes and level events. With Unreal Engine 4, Epic introduces Blueprints, a revolutionary new visual scripting system that replaces Kismet and provides a massive leap in functionality and productivity for projects large or small. Blueprint visual scripting empowers artists and designers like never before by providing access to low-level engine functions and the ability to rapidly prototype without having to write a single line of code.

By: Alias On 17:31

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OUYA: New Android based Game Console

OUYA Console

Another innovative project funded via Kickstarter.  It is Kickstarter's most backed project exceeding $8 million, it was named OUYA and it is a video game console with it's own Android Operating System aiming to bring games into big screens. The console is open for anyone to easily build games and bring them on TV.

It will probably be an attractive console for Indie Developers to bring their creative and innovative gameplay. OUYA Game Console would be available for just $99 and it will attempt to bring on TV screen cheaper games unlike the major Consoles and their expensive games.

By: Leo On 12:15

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Top 10 Indie Games

Indie Games

We have always had the stereotype and belief that what constitutes a good and playable game is the ones made by big companies and the games with 3D Graphics.

Independent Developers have seen a tremendous rise recently and proved wrong most of stereotypes by reviving the old school gaming or so called retro-gaming. Indie Game Developers have brought a nostalgia among the gamers with their creative and imaginative titles.

By: Leo On 01:50

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Top Free Android Games

Android Games

Computer Gaming is one of the biggest industry in the world. A lot of people take their time to try various genres of games. With the improvement of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Graphics Gaming have been taken into an almost revolutionary step with splendid games being thrown into the market.

On the other hand, gaming experience is not restricted only to PCs but it has also boomed into smartphones with the biggest concentration being on Android and iPhone System. In this article i will list some excellent Android games that are available at the Google Play. Most if not all of them are fully Free to Download.

By: Leo On 02:10

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Age of Empires II HD

Age of Empires II HD

I suppose you remember the Age of Empires II which was so widespread and popular game before. Well, the classical strategy game from Microsoft is being updated and is coming in 9th April.

Age of Empires II was perhaps one of the few games i have spent so much time in playing it. It is a Microsoft masterpiece and an update to this classic is the right answer from Microsoft. Microsoft announced that Age of Empires II HD Edition has been remastered for high resolution displays at 1080p. It also includes an enhanced visual engine sporting improved textures for terrain, water and fire, and ambient lighting effects.

By: Leo On 12:24

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PS4 - The new gaming console - Sony hides many things we should know.

Earlier this week we finally got a look at the next generation of console gaming (sorry, Wii U). Though Sony announced some amazing features for the PlayStation 4, the announcement left some of us a little underwhelmed  - most likely because of what we still don’t know about the console.

A number of features and specs were announced, most notably the x86 architecture and the admittedly impressive “backseat gaming” streaming functionality. However, even though Sony’s new console will allow us to play a friend’s game (that we don’t own!) over the internet, the event was underwhelming for a handful of reasons.

By: Alias On 14:45

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OpenGL Backface Culling - Removing unseen faces to improve performance

OpenGL can be very useful if we know how to use it. But sometimes it can tire up our computer and eat performance resulting to slow application. No one likes this especially gamers. They want smooth games and  experience with 90 FPS during their gameplay. It is useful to know some pitfalls we should prevent when creating OpenGL applications.

There are many factors that reduce performance of your application, it depends on the code for example dynamically memory allocation and not freeing those resources, loading and displaying complex 3D meshes and scenes, calculating complex lighting algorithms etc. In this post i will discuss a very useful technique that OpenGL offers us to drastically improve performance of our applications. That is backface culling. Backface culling is a technique that slices up faces that are never seen.

By: Alias On 15:16

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Opengl Mesh Loader OBJ

OpenGL as we know is a low level API for manipulating computer graphics. It is very powerful and cross platform which means all operating systems support it. This is the main reason i want to develop apps with opengl. I dont want to stick with Windows only, rather as a lover of Ubuntu i like to create small programs for this platform also.

OpenGL is powerful but when it comes to create big 3D worlds and meshes it can be very very hard nearly impossible to do this all by code. So you cant just create small games with OpenGL only. You need to create your 3D assets on other 3D modelling software and to export them and after that to create functions or classes in C++ that will read those exported files and parse them into your final program. In the code below you have a class that loads OBJ files and displays them onto the screen. OBJ is powerful file format and is very easy to implement parser for those files.

By: Alias On 18:19

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Installing SDL libraries and creating your first window on Ubuntu

SDL is used for creating graphical user interfaces or small games. But if its used correctly you can also create robust graphics applications or games. Simple Direct Media Layer is used to manipulate pixels to create different ui layouts for your applications and even games.

In my other blog posts i discussed about downloading installing and configuring SDL under Windows with Visual Studio. Here we will explain how to get running this library under Ubuntu. Graphics programming under Ubuntu are becoming more popular like even EA started to create games for this platform.

By: Alias On 14:59

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SDL Windows Programming - Creating your first Window

In this text we will create our first windows program using SDL ( Simple Direct Media Layer ). SDL is low level graphics api and can be used as a windowing platform to create window programs or as a graphics layer to create small games. It can be very powerful if its used correctly.

In this blog post i discuss the steps to configure SDL with Visual Studio. Follow the steps and if you are all set up come back. If you already configured SDL you are now ready to create your first window.

By: Alias On 11:30

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Configuring SDL with Visual Studio 2010

SDL (Simple Direct Media Layer) is a low level api for manipulating pixels to create different UI layouts and even small games. This api is free for download and free for use both for commercial and personal. But many developers face problems when it comes to configuring it with an IDE especially visual studio. Follow these steps and you should be all set up, and in the end we will run sample code to show the result.

By: Alias On 07:40

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