SFML 2.6 Updates
There haven’t been large changes or concrete movements for the release itself, but we did fix two minor things:
- For Android there was an issue with linking
sfml-mainas static library into a shared library (#2397) - On the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) side, there was an issue with installingSFML as static libraries (#2400)
SFML 3.0 Updates
- We’ve merged a few more test cases and then due to flakiness of the fake X-display, disabled some of them again (#2390, #2402, #2405, #2412)
- Slightly simplified the
sf::Clockimplementation (#2388) - Added some CMake enhancements (#2392, #2398, #2418)
- And not to forget the added clang-tidy check (#2411)
Some feature discussions were also opened, feel free to provide your insights – it generally is useful to hear other people’s perspectives.
- Replace cmake/Modules/FindFreetype.cmake with CMake-provided module (#2399)
- Function to set window size limits (#2406)
getAspectRatio()forsf::VideoMode(#2414)
SFML Games & Projects
Zitrone
First up, we a cool little application called Zitrone, that can be used to write special kind of sheet music for a Zither, which is an stringed instruments on which you pick each string by hand to play it. The sheet music is often inserted underneath the strings, so you just have to follow the patterns and time it correctly.
Chain Reaction
Next up, we have an upcoming Android game. Unfortunately, it’s not playable yet, but you can already register for it in the Google Play store. Looks a bit like a bullet hell game, I’m looking forward to give it a try. The author, Zombieschannel, has also opened a bunch of Android issues and hopefully, we can contact them for help with additional Android fixes.
Update: Zombieschannel mentioned that one can already test an early version over on itch.io
Tutorial / Post on SFML Inputs
At the beginning of the month a member of the community published a blog post showing some explaining how and when to use the available input methodsin SFML for the keyboard and mouse. “Working with Keyboard and Mouse in SFML” also contains some example code, so feel free to check it out.
What I personally was missing on the list of why to prefer events over isKeyPressed is, that every isKeyPressed call ends up with a systemcall, which can be relatively costly and slow. Checking a variable in memory and updating said variable when an event arrives, is a lot cheaper, than polling the OS every few milliseconds.
Sorcery: Shadows under Llylgamyn
Sorcery a opensource remake/remaster of the classic CRPG Wizardry and similar, has received some updates and plans to release sometime later in 2023. I haven’t tried the game and also don’t really know anything about Wizardry, so I’ll let you be the judge. It looks quite old-school.
Sfml Text “Aline”
Our lovely Hapax/Hapaxia has blessed the community with another great resource, still work-in-progress, but already available for those who need to align (“Aline”, get it? 😉) some multi-line SFML text. Meaning, if you have multiple lines in a sf::Text object, they’d all be aligned on the left side. With SfmlTextAline, you can have different alignments, colors and styles on a per line basis, but also quickly align them all at once.
SFML Assimp OpenGL Mesh Viewer
This Mesh Viewer is around ten years old, but the reason I’ve included it in SFML News, is that Pierce Brooks has picked up the old crusty version and injected it into our current timeline.
As the name says, it uses Assimp, a very popular 3D model loader, SFML for the windowing and input, and OpenGL for the rendering. What isn’t mentioned directly, but is also used, is SFGUI to show some simple GUI. If you get confused about the build system, Buildster is some custom build system by Pierce.
However, the name is quite deceiving, because the code is essentially a more or less complete engine, it even has its own Entity Component System (ECS), next to a scene graph, skeletal animation and more. Definitely an interesting project to check out.
ImGui-SFML
No, this is not a Déjà Vu, but there really have been some changes in the past two weeks. Elias Daler has been looking for a new maintainer for a while now, and as nobody really wanted to take on the project, he initially planned to archive it. After some discussions on GitHub and Discord and me checking in with some of the maintainers, we decided to transfer the repository to the SFML GitHub Organization instead. However, the intend here isn’t that the SFML Team takes over the maintenance work, we’re more providing a safe-harbour for the project. During the discussions oprypin also showed interest in keeping the project alive, so he’s been added as maintainer as well. If there are any other people out there, who are interested in maintaining ImGui-SFML, please reach out to me.
Just In…
A new feature implementation for setting a window icon from a sf::Image instance on the sf::RenderWindow was provided just roughly 24h earlier. (#2417)
Read the next issue of SFML News
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