Scratchpad Games

Download book code from here.

Here you can download content for both books. But please note that the old original Raspbian 2017 content has been depricated and removed, we now use a cross platform template which runs on Pi3 in OpenGLES2.0 and on Pi4 and Pi5 in OpenGLES.3.1. Both versions require that you have a minumum of Raspberry OS Bookworm on board to function.

1st edtion readers should note that because the old Raspbian era (Jessie/Stretch/Buster) code is no longer active, I no longer support that code and the updated template does have a number of differences in setting up OpenGLES and in the way it handles its key and mouse content. Don't be too alarmed, where possible, explanations of the changes are in the code.

Note! If you are downloading these files to try out without having the book(s), please do be aware the book(s) makes the point that several of these files have specific errors in them, and the reader is encouraged to locate and fix them. In particular the early files have deliberatly poor management of memory and architecture, which the reader is lead through to demonstrate the issues such bad design can cause. Also NONE of the projects are optimised for performance, and all use a simple but inefficient flyweight design pattern. The aim of the projects is clarity of purpose and comprehension. Readers are encouraged to pinpoint the bottlenecks and update the code to greatly improve effectivness.

Sample test project PhotoFrame cross Pi3 and PC

It's important to note, that the book does not ask you to write code on the target system itself, you need to use a Windows PC and an IDE.
I use Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition (it's free), info on how to set up your PC and connect to your target is given here. Conversion to a different IDE should be simple enough but try VS2022.

There are of course a couple of important support files/libs you will need. The project content files when downloaded, provide a setup.sh file which automatically goes to your Pi when you build, your 1st build will fail due to the lack of content but setup.sh will now be on your Pi, when run in your home/pi dir it will install all the systems needed. I know that some people are concerned about blindly downloading content, but the sh file is editable and you can check it's not installing anything naughty. (Its not!)

It will install Bullet Physics, GLM maths, Freetype text rendering, Sound systems, updates to openGLES2 and some error handling and a few other things. I may update the setup.sh file from time to time (for example for later versions of Ffreetype).

You only need to run setup.sh once while connected to the internet on your Pi. PC builds already come with all libs and features in place, though you might want to use updated versions if you are writing more complex content.