Roguelike Game in C++17

Environment and project setup

Tools

Below is the listing of software, I have installed to write, version, build and debug. In install order:

Visual Studio 2019 Community: I am using MSVC compiler, this is easiest way to get that.
Version: 16.3.2.
Visual Studio Code: Pretty decent code editor, with plenty of extensions and good release cycle.
Version: 1.38.1.
CMake: build generator. Seems to be one of the popular C++ build generators, supports many compilers and OSes.
Version: 3.15.1.
VCpkg: C++ package manager and installer. Installs and builds packages from source, as such requires compiler already installed.
Version: 2019.09.
GIT-SCM: Defacto version control system for any new code project. Also since github.com repo only works with git.
Version: 2.23.0.

Configuration

After having installed the software above, there is a need to do some configuration.

VSCode Extensions

While VSCode is quite well featured out of the box, I prefer some extras to make the experience nicer.

Bracket Pair Colorizer 2: Optional, Quality of Life improvement. Find the code much easier to read when I can spot the bracket pair groups by color.
C/C++: Required, out of the box VSCode doesn't support building C++ code. This extension by Microsoft fixes that.
CMake Tools Helper: Required, similar to C++, out of the box VSCode doesn't support executing CMake builds. This extension makes that configuration easy.
This will installed 2 other extensions
- CMake Tools
- CMake for Visual Studio Code

VCpkg Configuration

Installation instructions for VCpkg are pretty good. There was no need to deviate from it.
I did add following two User Environment variables.

VCPKG_ROOT with value of installation directory of VCpkg, which for me is D:\Projects\CPP\.packages\vcpkg
VCPKG_DEFAULT_TRIPLET with value of x64-Windows as I want to ensure vcpkg only generates 64-bit packages.

Project specific editor configuration

In order to make the code editing and debugging with VSCode a little bit less frustrating, there is a need to do some project specific setup.

Intellisense settings. This is done by press F1 and typing C\C++: Edit Configuration(UI).
On the window that comes up find Compiler arguments and add following two values
/std:c++17
/permissive-
Debugger settings. Next VSCode will need to know how to start the debugger.
For this go to Debug Tab (Ctrl+Shift+D), and click on Small Gear icon called "Configure/Fix launch.json".
Select "C++(Windows)" as environment.
This will then create a launch.json file in .vscode directory. Modify this file, by changing following values.
```
"program": "${command:cmake.launchTargetPath}",
"cwd": "${workspaceFolder}\\build\\bin",
"externalConsole": true
```
After this is done, debugger can be launched using F5.

Project Structure

The project's files are structured in following manner. I am not listing files and directories not directly created by me. e.g .git and .vscode folders.

\roguelike\                 # Project's Root Folder
\roguelike\build\           # CMake build output will go here
\roguelike\docs\            # Github will use this as website folder
\roguelike\src\             # Project's source code lives here
\roguelike\external\        # External dependencies to Project Live here

Build configuration

CMake requires that every folder that participates in our build have a CMakeLists.txt file. For this project, those folders are src and external. So we have total of 3 CMakeLists.txt files. Located as such:

\roguelike\CMakeLists.txt           # Primary/Root CMake file
\roguelike\src\CMakeLists.txt       # Tell CMake how to build source for project
\roguelike\external\CMakeLists.txt  # Tell CMake how to consume dependencies

Each file is well documented, so I won't go over them here. Once files are created, VSCode will automatically trigger CMake Tools which will create a build script. This can be executed using F7.

The Starter Project

Hello World!

You can view the setup starter project on the github repo. Building it will require that you install fmt using vcpkg. Project up to this point doesn't do much other than print Hello World! followed by current time point.
\roguelike\src\main.cpp

\roguelike\CMakeLists.txt

\roguelike\src\CMakeLists.txt

Using TCOD

In order to get a character on the screen, we need libtcod. We have two options here.

Get the source code and build the library ourselves.
Download pre-built package, and use those.

Place to go for either option is libtcod github repo. I am going to go with pre-built version. Author of libtcod uses VS2015, which is ABI compatible with our VS2019 setup. So everything should just work.

Having downloaded libtcod 1.14 x64. I've extracted the contents of the zip file into \external\libtcod-1.14.0-x86_64-msvc folder. I've also added the folder to .gitignore list, as I don't want to add this the project's source control.

You can view the state of the project as this point in time. If you are following along, note the changes made to all the CMakeLists.txt as well as the src\main.cpp. \roguelike\src\main.cpp

\roguelike\CMakeLists.txt

\roguelike\src\CMakeLists.txt

\roguelike\external\CMakeLists.txt

Links

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