Libraries
Some of the dependencies and the justification for using them
Dependencies
SDL 2
This is the fundation of all my C++ games. It cross compiles and is relatively easy to pack. In contrast to other native C++ libraries like SFML, RAII is not included by default. However, while working with SFML I found that I ended up with my own RAII layer anyway.
SDL2_gfx
Easily mistaken for an actual part of SDL2. It is that conformaty which makes it attractive.
PhysFS
This is the library used for abstracting the file system. The system is strongly inspired by the system used by Quake 3. It is also fantiastic for mod support.
boost_program_options
Used to parse program options from command line or config file. Primarily used because I like the format for saland -h. There are other libraries that does the same but I prefer the boost option if it is availeble.
boost (headers)
For basic algorithms I turn to boost. Used tokenizer and predicate. It is big dependency in size but I find the number of dependencies to be more problematic than the size.
Bundled
Box2d
This is used for the physics. Using physics in a top down game gives a feeling of pushing things around that I like. I include box2d as a bundled dependency. The reason is that Box2d does not guarentee compatibility between even versions. Even minor versions might break the API.
b64
Used for base64 encoding and decoding for the Tiled format. During development I got depended on some of the Debian changes. There is an unmerged patch on the SalesForce project and without that patch everything breaks horrible. Buffer overflows are a major problem in C and b64 is very prone to them without the patch.
utf8cpp
The nononse working version of UTF-8 for C++. The biggest problem with this library is that Linux distribution package it differently and MXE.cc does not pack it at all. Therefore the library is also bundled.
rapidxml
Used by the homemade tiled-library. This is a header only. I have experieced some version compatibility trouble while working with Cereal, so I embed a specific version.
rapidjson
Used by the commen "sago" files shared with Block Attack - Rise of the Blocks. Bundled due to compatiblity concers found in Cereal.
PlatformFolders
My own library for handling access to Save games folders on different platforms. While this was designed with backwards compatibility in mind. I always assumed that it would get embedded.