Raylib: Setup and Installation

Raylib is another popular C/C++ library for 2D and 3D graphics, and it takes a genuinely different approach than SFML. SFML models everything as objects, you create an sf::RectangleShape, configure it, then call window.draw(shape). Raylib is immediate mode, there are no shape objects to create at all, you just call a function like DrawRectangle(...) with the position and color every single frame, and it appears.

Installing Raylib

• Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install libraylib-dev
• macOS (Homebrew): brew install raylib
• Windows: install via vcpkg install raylib, or grab prebuilt binaries from raylib.com and point your IDE at them.

Compiling with Raylib

g++ main.cpp -o tower_defense -lraylib -lGL -lm -lpthread -ldl -lrt -lX11
./tower_defense

(macOS links different system frameworks instead of -lGL/-lX11, and Windows links -lopengl32 -lgdi32 -lwinmm, the raylib install docs cover the exact flags for your platform.)

Opening a window

#include "raylib.h"

int main() {
    InitWindow(800, 600, "Tower Defense");
    SetTargetFPS(60);

    while (!WindowShouldClose()) {
        BeginDrawing();
        ClearBackground(RAYWHITE);

        DrawText("Hello, Raylib!", 300, 280, 20, DARKGRAY);

        EndDrawing();
    }

    CloseWindow();
    return 0;
}

Reading it line by line

• InitWindow(800, 600, "Tower Defense") opens an 800x600 window, no separate object to store, hold onto, or pass around, raylib just tracks "the window" globally.
• WindowShouldClose() is both the loop condition and the close-button/Escape-key check in one call, there's no separate event queue to drain like SFML's pollEvent.
• BeginDrawing() / EndDrawing() bracket every frame's drawing calls, everything between them, in the order you call it, is what appears on screen.
• ClearBackground(RAYWHITE) wipes the previous frame, exactly like SFML's window.clear(...), skip it and you'd see a smeared trail.
• DrawText(...) needs no font object, no sf::Text, no sf::Font::loadFromFile, raylib ships a default font and draws text with a single function call.