Although I probably shouldn’t start again with something new and rather try to get more of those computer science articles ready, I still had this funny idea of releasing ‘news’ articles on what has been happening in the SFML community. I’ll try to release weekly articles, but I don’t promise anything and I don’t even know how much I’ll write for each article.

Projects

Kroniax

As promised by AlexAUT, Kroniax 0.4 got published last Sunday and it adds a complete redesign of the GUI and a few additional levels. Although he mentioned that it would take longer before the next version, he managed to get 0.51 (download page) out yesterday.

But who’s AlexAUT and what’s Kroniax? AlexAUT joined the SFML community in October last year and has been most likely busy ever since. Less than a month ago he released his probably first bigger game with SFML. It’s some kind of a side-scroller, where you have to maneuver a white triangle, representing a ship, through a maze of blocks. To make things more interesting the velocity of the triangle as well as the strength of gravity varies from level to level or can change within each level. Next to the described Arcade mode, the latest version 0.51 features now another mode called Speedchallenge, where you can change the velocity on your own, while you still have to beat the level. Since it is called ‘challenge’, AlexAUT added an online highscore, so you’ll get some aim to fight for.

Kroniax is extremely addictive and makes a lot of fun. Since I had so much fun with it, I’ve even made quick Let’s Play:

Open Hexagon

Legendary Vee has done it again and released not only one new version of Open Hexagon but five; starting with 1.8 and ending with 1.84 (download page). The most noticeable change are the online highscores. Everyone who’s playing with the official version in ‘official mode’, will automatically submit their scores to a server and get their current position and the top 8 places. But that’s not the only new thing; you now get a full menu for various options and a nice pseudo 3D effect. As always you can find the full changelog in Vee’s detailed ReadMe. The minor updates were mostly bug fixes, as well as security and performances updates.

I actually wanted to make another video on Open Hexagon, but my microphone on the headset died and I don’t have a replacement yet. The built-in mic of my notebook is not really useable for such things, but you can still checkout one of my older videos on Open Hexagon:

NEAT Visualizer

The NEAT Visualizer is a project, which visualizes an implementation of the Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Topologies (short NEAT) algorithm. The NEAT algorithm evolves neuronal network structures and weights them simultaneously. Such a network is capable of learning some simple tasks, which the visualizer should make prettier for the eye. The used algorithm doesn’t have anything to do with SFML, since it’s a generic, but the visualization uses SFML underneath. Based on NEAT lolz123 has also written a small but fun game as Ludum Dare.

lolz123 released a new video and a new version of the NEAT visualizer this week. You can look at the video here:

Discussions

New SFML Logo

Nearly two years ago Laurent opened the discussion on the forum for a new logo. Back then we already assumed SFML 2.0 would get released anytime now, but well we are still waiting, more on that in another post though. After the thread died out for a while it’s back again and every week we get a few new suggestions. The ones of this week were in my opinion quite strange and not very well suited as logo. On two of them it’s nearly impossible to see the letters ‘SFML’, especially if you don’t know already that they should be there. The other one is textured which is not useable at all for a logo. But maybe I’m not artsy enough to understand this, so I’ll let you make your own opinions:

Will SFML support OpenGL ES sooner than expected?

OpenGL ES is as specification for a platform and language independed 3D programming. It’s mainly aims embedded systems (thus the ES) such as Raspberry Pi or devices that run Android or iOS.
If SFML were to be ported over to OpenGL ES, it could potentially open the world to a whole new set of platforms and thus new games and applications with SMFL. In general Laurent wants to get SFML to OpenGL ES, but in the past this was not due for anytime soon. What could then change his mind? Well slotdev started a discussion on the forum about having a DirectX backend for SFML, which would involve even a bigger change to SFML, but luckily some guys have created ANGLE, which basically translate OpenGL to DirectX calls and thus enables one to write OpenGL applications for platforms which support only DirectX. The downside to this is though, that ANGLE implements an OpenGL ES specification. Since slotdev and a few more people are commercially working on games for casino machines, Laurent stated that he’d be looking into getting OpenGL ES support sooner than plant, if they require it anytime soon. The discussion was then moved to private chats and we’re kind of left in the dark what they decided on.

What do you guys think about elevating the priorities on OpenGL ES? Should Laurent tackle other more important issues first before rewriting huge junks of SFML’s code? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Source code changes

Personally I feel like we got a much more involved community in the past few weeks, but I’m not sure whether this is just because I’m looking more closely at the commits and what’s going on, or if it’s really because more people are submitting pull requests and Laurent actually accepts them. It also kind of feels like, Laurent got a bit more open about contributions after the forum thread with the title: “More Commuity-driven Development”

• We received a fix from one guy, who had problems with some events on Arch Linux with Awesome WM. – 560b741
• As noticed by our great Nexus in a forum post, the explicit for the sf::Text constructor wasn’t needed anymore. – 5c46daa

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my news post and actually got some news out of this. If you feel, that I’ve missed some parts or just got any kind of feedback, please leave a comment down below or contact me by means of PM, Mail, Twitter, IRC, etc. I’d really to hear some opinions.