Getting Started with PasSFML in Lazarus

Introduction

Christian Budde has developed a Pascal binding for the library available on GitHub and named it PasSFML. The C++ version is well documented with official tutorials and online API documentation. It also has samples which Christian has converted to PasSFML. Our tutorial C/C++ after Pascal should help you to understand the C++ tutorials and documentation. The tutorials are very readable and contain useful background information.

You should learn quickly how to write Pascal code based on the C++ documentation. For example, instead of circle.setOutlineThickness(10) you can change the value of the property with circle.OutlineThickness := 10 or directly access the library with SfmlCircleShapeSetOutlineThickness(circle.Handle, 10).

C++ offers a little sample console program to test the set-up. Here is a Pascal version. It uses only the SfmlSystem.pas unit and the corresponding library file (csfml-system-2.dll on Windows).

program Clock;
uses
  SfmlSystem;
var
  MyClock: TsfmlClock;
begin
  MyClock := TsfmlClock.Create;
  while MyClock.ElapsedTime.AsSeconds < 5 do
    begin
      writeln(MyClock.ElapsedTime.AsSeconds : 5 : 3);
      sfmlSleep(sfmlMilliseconds(500));
    end;
  readln;
end.       

0.000
0.501
1.002
1.503
2.003
2.504
3.005
3.506
4.007
4.508

Follow the links below for straightforward demonstrations. In some of them we make the code shorter by closing the program after a sleeping period instead of handling events to close the graphics window.