Getting Started - SixtyFPS Memory Game Tutorial (C++)

# Getting Started

In this tutorial, we use C++ as the host programming language. We also support other programming languages like Rust or JavaScript.

You will need a development environment that can compile C++17 with CMake 3.16. We do not provide binaries of SixtyFPS yet, so we will use the CMake integration that will automatically build the tools and library from source. Since it is implemented in the Rust programming language, this means that you also need to install a Rust compiler (1.48). You can easily install a Rust compiler following the instruction from the Rust website. We are going to use `cmake`'s builtin FetchContent module to fetch the source code of SixtyFPS.

In a new directory, we create a new `CMakeLists.txt` file.

    # CMakeLists.txt
    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
    project(memory LANGUAGES CXX)

    include(FetchContent)
    FetchContent_Declare(
        SixtyFPS
        GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/sixtyfpsui/sixtyfps.git
        GIT_TAG v0.0.6
        SOURCE_SUBDIR api/sixtyfps-cpp
    )
    FetchContent_MakeAvailable(SixtyFPS)

    add_executable(memory_game main.cpp)
    target_link_libraries(memory_game PRIVATE SixtyFPS::SixtyFPS)
    sixtyfps_target_60_sources(memory_game memory.60)

This should look familiar to people familiar with CMake. We see that this CMakeLists.txt references a `main.cpp`, which we will add later, and it also has a line `sixtyfps_target_60_sources(memory_game memory.60)`, which is a SixtyFPS function used to add the `memory.60` file to the target. We must then create, in the same directory, the `memory.60` file. Let's just fill it with a hello world for now:

    // memory.60
    MainWindow := Window {
        Text {
            text: "hello world";
            color: green;
        }
    }

What's still missing is the `main.cpp`:

    // main.cpp

    #include "memory.h" // generated header from memory.60

    int main()
    {
        auto main_window = MainWindow::create();
        main_window->run();
    }

To recap, we now have a directory with a `CMakeLists.txt`, `memory.60` and `main.cpp`.

We can now compile and run this program:

    cmake -GNinja .
    cmake --build .
    ./memory_game

and a window will appear with the green "Hello World" greeting.

Feel free to use your favorite IDE for this purpose, or use out-of-tree build, or Ninja, ... We just keep it simple here for the purpose of this blog.

Note: When configuring with CMake, the FetchContent module will fetch the source code of SixtyFPS via git. this may take some time. When building for the first time, the first thing that need to be build is the SixtyFPS runtime and compiler, this can take a few minutes.