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2D Retro Car Game

Car Game Screenshot 1 Car Game Screenshot 2 Welcome to the documentation for the Endless Car Highway, a simple SFML-based project that is inspired by the mobile classic from Nokia.

⚙️ Setting Up the Project (Visual Studio + SFML)

Follow these steps to build and run the game on Windows:

  1. Install Visual Studio 2022 (with C++ Desktop Development tools).
  2. Download and install SFML 2.6+.
  3. In your Visual Studio project:
  4. Add SFML include and library paths (Include and Lib folders).
  5. Link the required SFML libraries:
    sfml-graphics, sfml-window, sfml-system.
  6. Copy the SFML bin DLLs to your project’s executable directory.
  7. Build and run the project.

For a visual setup guide, watch this tutorial:

YouTube Setup Guide

💡 What is SFML?

SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library) is a C++ library for graphics, audio, and input handling.
It allows developers to easily create 2D visualizations, games, and interactive tools.

This project uses SFML to render smooth gameplay of a 2D, 4 lane Car game.

SFML Docs Page

📝 Learning Phase

For someone who had worked almost entirely in console before, there was much catching up to do. Aside from the basic creating a window, there was much more to learn such as: - creating sprites - tracking mouse/keyboard input - handling collisions - screen transitions

And much more!

Thankfully a YouTube playlist did make my journey smoother and easy to understand by explaining these concepts with proper code. Although I did only watch GAME 1 (videos 1 to 12), the rest of the playlist is just as enlightening if not more and can help to create even more diverse types of games swith SFML.

YouTube Game Guide

🧩 Project Idea and Code Overview

The project demonstrates how a basic game works from new game to pause menu to setting difficulty and even seeing high scores!

Core Functionality

  • The user starts at the main menu.
  • The choices are:
  • New Game: Start a new game.
  • High Scores: See top scores.
  • Options: Set difficulty from easy, medium, hard.
  • Controls: Help menu showcasing controls.

Main Components

  • main.cpp: Runs the Game loop until user escapes or closes the window.
  • support.h / support.cpp: Renders all the game screens, player car movement, spawning opposing cars, updating high scores, changing difficulty, etc.

🧪 Demo Implementation

Here’s a couple of videos of the running game:

This demo shows the real-time gameplay.

🚀 Running the Executable

  1. Download the ZIP file (same name as repository) from the project’s main directory.
  2. Extract it into any folder.
  3. Run the exe file:

(Currently supports Windows only.)

No installation or configuration needed — everything is self-contained.

📘 Concepts Learned & Future Scope

Concepts Learned

  • Working with SFML graphics and event handling
  • Structuring C++ OOP code for creating classes of cars/trucks/vans.
  • Implementing real-time dynamic gameplay and points and difficulty system.
  • Debugging for out of bounds and wrong indexing errors and fixing them for smooth operations.

Future Scope

  • 🧱 Improved UI
  • 🐧 Cross-platform builds (Linux / macOS)
  • ⚡ Support for more gameplay mechanics (invincibility token, more opposing vehicles,etc)
  • 💾 Option to save and load savestates (Continue option).

🧭 Credits

Developed by Once-1296
Licensed under the MIT License

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