Chapter 3. Get Your Hands Dirty – What You Need to Know

Game development can often be a tedious process to bear. In many instances, the amount of time spent on writing a specific chunk of code, implementing a certain set of features, or revising an old code that you or someone else had written shows very few results that can be immediately appreciated; which is why you may at some point see a game developer's face light up in instant joy when a flashier segment of their project sees the light of day. Seeing your game actually come to life and begin changing before your very eyes is the reason most of our fellow game developers do what they do. Those moments make writing tons of code that show little stimulating results possible.

So, now that we have our game structure ready, it's time to focus on the fun, flashy parts!

In this chapter, we will cover:

• The game of choice for our first project and its history
• Building the game we've chosen
• Common game programming elements
• Additional SFML elements needed to complete our project
• Building helper elements for all our game projects
• Effective debugging and common problem solving in games