For three weeks, I was doing C++ game programming to further increase my skills. This resulted in the game I call HedronSpace. My first time making a game in C++ was BlockDodger, but there were a few challenges with the engine code. BlockDodger used SDL for the low-level application code and it was very tricky to find a way to get audio to play and to get HUD-style font drawing to work out of the box.
That was one of the reasons why I made this new game in SFML. SFML offers an easy-to-use and object-oriented interface to make desktop applications. However, not everything was a walk in the park. SFML uses OpenGL for its low level graphics needs, but only offers a user-friendly interface to create application with 2D graphics. Fortunately, you can make 3D applications with SFML, but you’ll be mostly on your own.
That prompted me to make a little engine (I use that term loosely here) that wraps around SFML and offers easy to use 3D functionality for games (but only for simple abstract games). It’s called SF3DEW (which stands for SFML 3D Engine Wrapper) and took up most my 3 weeks doing C++ game programming.
{ Jibran I. Syed } 