SFML
More info
- Creator
- Laurent Gomila
- Released
- 2007
- Type
- Multimedia library
- License
- zlib
- Website
- sfml-dev.org
Simple and Fast Multimedia Library — a C++ library for windows, 2D graphics, audio and networking, and often the first thing people write a game in once they are tired of starting from scratch.
SDL is written in C and leaves most of the work to the programmer. SFML, released by Frenchman Laurent Gomila in 2007, took on the same job but put an object-oriented C++ interface on top of OpenGL: sprites, textures, text and shapes are classes you create and draw. It is split into modules — system, window, graphics, audio and network — and you link only what you use.
It is not an engine: no scene graph, no physics, no editor. That is precisely why it caught on in classrooms and game jams, where the point is to understand the game loop rather than click around in an engine. Version 3.0 arrived at the end of 2024 and required C++17, which broke nearly every old tutorial on the internet.