Simple C++ 2D rendering engine

Question

I need to brush up on my C++ for a course I am teaching in the fall, I want to have fun doing it and have an idea for a simple 2D game, however I don't want to have to worry about any of the rendering code.

What would be the simplest library to take care of rendering 2D PNGs in a window?

As I said, this is to brush up on my object-oriented programming skills so I am not at all worried about performance or viability in industry, whatever has the simplest setup with clear documentation.

If on top of it the framework/engine has some gameloop management that would be fantastic, but I'm mostly looking for sprite loading/rendering so I can focus on the gameplay.

An example of a 'perfect world' engine would look like this:

Window window = engine.createWindow(1260, 720);
Sprite s = Sprite("path/to/img.png");
window.clear();
window.render(s, 100, 150);

This way I only have to worry about building the proper headers and functions for my game play objects.

Answer 1

Take a look at SFML. It offers window creation, event handling, sprite drawing and is all pretty simple to use.

Answer 2

The Cairo graphics library has C++ bindings; that might interest you.

---

Also...

Not something you can use right now, but the C++ standards committee (WG21) has a subgroup, SG14, focusing on game development and low-latency capabilities. One of their issues of interest is 2D graphics capabilities as part of the language standard.

• A recorded presentation from CppCon 2016 describing SG14's activities and interests.
• A report (from May 2016) on SG14's progress, including some discussion and reference to specific proposals regarding 2D graphics.