Last Updated September 27, 2012

Simple and Fast Multimedia Library

SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library) is a portable and easy-to-use API for multimedia programming. We will be using this library for the follow functionality;

Windowing (createing and managing windows)
Input
Loading graphical resources
Memory management
Framework to support OpenGL (advanced 3D graphics)
Framework to support FMod (advanced 3D audio)

Installing SFML (need to do this only once)

Download version 2.1 (32-bit for Visual Studio 2012) from here. Save the SFML-2.1 folder to your C:\ Drive.
Edit your PC's 'PATH' variable to allow you app to find the SFML DLL's
- From the desktop, right-click My Computer and click Properties.
- In the System Properties window, click on the Advanced tab.
- In the Advanced section, click the Environment Variables button.
- Finally, in the Environment Variables window, highlight the Path variable in the Systems Variable section and click the Edit button. Add the path "C:\SFML-2.1\bin" to the end of the system path variable. Remember to put a semi-colon (;) between the directories.
Create a new Environment Variable called SFML_SDK, set it's value to also be the SFML directory e.g. "C:\SFML-2.1\"

Building a Visual Studio 2012 project to use SFML &OpenGL

Create a new "Win32 Console Application" Project.

Make the following changes to project properties (see screen-shot)

select "VC++ Directories"
select "all configurations"
add "$(SFML_SDK)\include" to the list of include directories
add "$(SFML_SDK)\lib" to the list of library directories

Finally, delete the contents of your cpp file and paste in the code below (double click on the code to select);
Press F5 to build and run...