WEBVTT

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Hello again!

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In this video, we are going to start looking at SFML.

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This is the "Simple and Fast Multimedia Library".

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There are quite a lot of graphics libraries, which are written in C, or C++ which looks like C.

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This is actually written in idiomatic modern C++, C++ 14.

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So it works very well with the features that we have been learning about in this course.

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It is also easy to use and it is very well documented.

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It has a website, so let's go over and have a look at that.

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SFML provides an interface to the multimedia components of your computer.

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It works on Windows, Linux and Mac, and it is also available in C and .net, and other languages.

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"Et aussi en Francais"

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There is documentation on how to use the interface, answers to frequently asked questions, and tutorials.

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So these will tell you how to get started, with various compilers and operating systems.

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There are some system modules, which are probably not really relevant

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now we have C++11. Maybe they are useful if you have to use a very old compiler.

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Then, managing windows, interacting with events, and keyboard, mouse and joysticks. And also how to use

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OpenGL,

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if you want more control, or to do your own rendering.

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And then the real heart of the graphics features, and we are going to be using some of these.

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There is also support for audio and networking.

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We are not going to be using those, but they are there, if you want to investigate them.

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For downloading, I recommend using the latest stable version.

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And there are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac.

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Or alternatively, you can download the source code and copmile that yourself.

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And that should be pretty straightforward, if you are used to doing that sort of thing. For the Windows

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version, it is very important to make sure that you have the right binary for your compiler. Especially

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if you are using Visual Studio, because Microsoft keep changing

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their binary output format.

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Although they do seem to have settled down now.

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I have been using Visual Studio 2019 with the 2017 binaries, and there have been no problems at all.

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They are also ones for CodeBlocks and MinGW.

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If you are using Linux or one of the BSDs, then the best thing is to use the package manager.

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That will download the binaries and install them in a sensible place.

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For MacOS, I need to go back to the tutorials, briefly.

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There are two versions.

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One is dylib, which works like a Unix binary, and there is also frameworks, which you can use for doing

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things which are a bit more "Mac-like".

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Okay, so that is it for this video.

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In the next video, I will be showing you how to configure this for command line and IDE.

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But until then, keep coding!