Creating a Game in C++ (part 1)

I am Software Engineer, having many years of FrontEnd Development experience. In my spare time I wanted to create a Game, and also catch up with latest changes in C++. Most importantly, I wanted to try to use any “latest commonly agreed” best practices 😁.

So Let’s start…

Tools

I need full control of my code, so raylib (v5) is one the best options out there now — clean, simple, with good documentation and a plethora of examples. I am more proficient in C than C++, however I am going to use C++ and follow the suggestions from here. I need version control and since I have been using Git for almost 20 years, I will go with that for now. A C++ project needs a compiler and a build system, so I will use clang++ (v20) and CMake(v3.31) which is what raylib uses. I am not sure about any good sound libraries, and since I like simplicity and efficiency, I will go with whatever raylib already provides, which looks very simple and efficient (miniaudio).

Setup

For speeding up, let’s get a template to use:

git clone https://github.com/raysan5/raylib-game-template.git my-cpp-game

Remove any unecessary files:

cd my-cpp-game
rm src/screen*

and create a boilerplate my-cpp-game.cpp:

#include "raylib.h"

#if defined(PLATFORM_WEB)
#include <emscripten/emscripten.h>
#endif

static const int screenWidth = 800;
static const int screenHeight = 450;

static void UpdateDrawFrame(void);

int main(void) {
  InitWindow(screenWidth, screenHeight, "My Game");

  InitAudioDevice();

#if defined(PLATFORM_WEB)
  emscripten_set_main_loop(UpdateDrawFrame, 60, 1);
#else
  SetTargetFPS(60);

  // Main game loop
  while (!WindowShouldClose()) {
    UpdateDrawFrame();
  }
#endif

  CloseAudioDevice();
  CloseWindow();

  return 0;
}

// Update and draw game frame
static void UpdateDrawFrame(void) {
  BeginDrawing();

  ClearBackground(RAYWHITE);

  EndDrawing();
}

After changing CMakeLists.txt to point to my-cpp-game and also use any *.cpp/*.hpp files, let’s see if it compiles:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/usr/bin/clang++
cmake --build build -j4

It took only 4s, so now let’s test if it works:

./build/my-game/my-game

Up and running Raylib Game displaying a white screen

Success!!!

Finally

As a final step let’s save our work:

git remote set-url origin <add_your_repo_url_here>
git add .
git commit -m 'raylib boilerplate project'
git push

And that’s it!

Note: By the way, you may find the project here.

Next Steps

On the next post, I will proceed with defining the game specs and designing the high level architecture.

Thanks for staying with me so far.

On to the next post — Creating a Game in C++ Part 2 …