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Using FireMonkey as a game engine
Patrick Prémartin
DELPHICON 2021
The Official Online Conference All About Embarcadero Delphi
delphicon.embarcadero.com

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Agenda
● What is a game engine ?
● What is FireMonkey ?
● Why using FireMonkey to code games ?
● Really ? Games in Delphi FMX ?
● Managing music and sound effects
● Managing backgrounds and scenes
● Managing user interface
● Managing sprites, animations and collisions
● What about 3D ?
● You want more ?

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Speaker
● Patrick Prémartin - MVP Embarcadero
● Freelance Delphi and web developer since 2000
(just after the bug)
● Delphi user since the beginning and before
with Borland / Turbo Pascal.
● Game coder since a little more (TO7-70 J)

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Speaker
● Patrick Prémartin - MVP Embarcadero
● Follow me on :
● GitHub : https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal
● Itch.io : https://gamolf.itch.io
● Twitch : https://www.twitch.tv/patrickpremartin
● My blog : https://developpeur-pascal.fr
● LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickpremartin/

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What is a game engine ?
● A game engine is a library or set of components available to
create games.
● You have code, SDK and sometimes editor tools or you can use
external tools like Tiled to create your scenes and maps.
● A game engine is not a complete game making software like
you have with GameMaker Studio, AppGameKit Studio, Game
Guru, Clickteam Fusion, Unreal Engine or Unity but the code to
work with when creating games.

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What is a game engine ?
● There are a lot of game making software and game engines
coded in Pascal.
● One of the most known is Castle Game Engine available at
https://castle-engine.io/
It now has Delphi compatibility. Look at Michalis Kamburelis
DelphiCon 2021 session to know more about it.
https://delphicon.embarcadero.com/talks/castle-game-engine-
coming-to-delphi/

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What is a game engine ?
● You perhaps eared about some of this other game engines for
Delphi or Pascal developers :
○ Gorilla 3D Framework : https://www.gorilla3d.de
○ Apus Game Engine : https://github.com/Cooler2/ApusGameEngine
○ SDL2 for Pascal : https://github.com/PascalGameDevelopment/SDL2-for-
Pascal
○ Andorra 2D, Turbu, Asphyre, DelphiX, Rage3D, and a lot more listed at
https://wiki.freepascal.org/Game_Engine

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What is FireMonkey ?
● FireMonkey is the multiplatform set of components and
libraries available in Delphi.
● You have VCL for Windows projects since Delphi 1.
● And since Delphi XE2 we have FireMonkey for all major
platforms.
● With Delphi 11 Alexandria you can target Windows, Mac, Linux,
iOS and Android platforms depending on your license level.

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What is FireMonkey ?
● The idea behind FireMonkey is to have one project and one
source code to target all major platforms.
● You don’t need to know “platforms languages” like Objective-C,
Swift, Java, Kotlin, C, C++, C#, .Net, …

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What is FireMonkey ?
● FireMonkey includes classic visual components but also
shapes, animations, visual effects, 3D, access to system API
and other libraries.
● It’s included in all Delphi license level even the Community
Edition (free for personal use) and Academic Edition.

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Why using FireMonkey to code games ?
● The simple answer could be “why not ?” and in fact it’s the first
reason I had to play with it.
● Second answer is more technical :
● FireMonkey draws everything on screen by default.
● Visual components are sets of shapes and effects. They are styled and can
be changed without coding.
● We have 2D and 3D components and layers in standard.

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Why using FireMonkey to code games ?
● The simple answer could be “why not ?” and in fact it’s the first
reason I had to play with it.
● Second answer is more technical :
● Touch, mouse and keyboard are managed by Delphi. It works for classic
programs, so it works for games too.
● We can use properties and events, timers and threads, multi resolution
images and bitmaps, classes and all thinks needed to code games.

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Really ? Games in Delphi FMX ?
● In 2021 I streamed weekly game coding sessions on Twitch,
with Delphi and FireMonkey.
● Published games are available at https://gamolf.itch.io
● Some projects have been open sourced on my GitHub account:
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/DevPas-Games-Pack
● A lots of other projects are available with “delphi-game”
hashtag: https://github.com/topics/delphi-game

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Really ? Games in Delphi FMX ?
● You can also check the showcase part of Embarcadero blogs at
https://blogs.embarcadero.com/category/showcase/
● And more on iOS and Android stores !
● Simply look at the list of games which developers forgot to
change default package name in their project options :
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22com.embarcadero.%22
+game+site%3Aplay.google.com
Please don’t forget to personalize your project version info option page.

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How to ?
● Know, let’s look a little more at developer side of game making
with FireMonkey projects in Delphi.
● You’ll find code samples and usable Delphi units on GitHub at
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/DelphiFMXGameSnippe
ts

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Managing music and sound effects
● Managing sounds in a Delphi project is simple. We have a
component for that : TMediaPlayer.
● In my games I use it to play MP3 music in background. A timer
check if the music is over and restart it for a loop.
● For sound effects, I play WAV files with another TMediaPlayer
(or more than one in a TObjectList<TMediaPlayer> depending
on the game).
● To do the same, use the TMusicLoop class in uMusicLoop.pas

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Managing backgrounds and scenes
● For backgrounds and scenes, I use TImage component, the Fill
property of shapes like TRectangle or TCircle and the TPath to
draw SVG path depending on my needs.
● All FireMonkey visual components are containers. They can be
parents for all other visual components.
● All visual components have opacity, rotation and scale
properties.

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Managing backgrounds and scenes
● We can use nonvisual components to change property values in
a specific duration (TFloatAnimation is very useful).
● We have visual effect as nonvisual components like
TShadowEffect and TGlowEffect, useful for games and classic
programs to show errors or needed edit fields.
● It give us unlimited possibilities without coding anything… and
of course we can code !

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Managing backgrounds and scenes
● For Egg Hunter project, available at https://gamolf.itch.io/egg-
hunter, I needed to manage sprites positions and actions in
different threads.
● I wanted 60 FPS (because we need goals in life).
● I didn’t check if I succeeded but the result is good enough in
term of user experience.

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Managing backgrounds and scenes
● My scene is a TImage. I never draw on it.
● I use a TBitmap in background as a buffer. It’s only refreshed
depending on the viewport position and sprite actions.
● A timer checks every 16ms if I changed the buffer bitmap. If so,
I copy it to the scene image.
● It’s simple. Just need some Booleans and TMutex to avoid
access violations, conflicts and sprites flipping.

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Managing backgrounds and scenes
● In other games, I simply use TLayout on a TForm to simulate a
Z-Index if needed.
● You have a sample at
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/DelphiFMXGameSnippe
ts/tree/main/AnimationVaguesEtCanards
● I used it for Ok Ducky ! game available at
https://gamolf.itch.io/ok-ducky

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Managing user interface
● User interface is simple : I can use styled visual components,
shapes, images, …
● For texts I user TLabel if I want the look and feel of the OS or
TText when I prefer to change color, size and font in my
program.
● For buttons I use TButton, a personalized button style or I
“draw” them in a TFrame with TRectangle, images, effects and
texts.

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Managing user interface
● Have a look at this 2018 CodeRage replay to see how I proceed :
https://serialstreameur.fr/coderage2018-christmasgame-
codereview.php
● This project source code is available on GitHub :
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/CodeRage2018-
ChristmasGame

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Managing sprites, animations and collisions
● For sprites I use the bitmap kind of Fill property from
TRectangle or TCircle components.
● For other visual elements I use TImage with a TImageList or the
background (Fill.Bitmap) of other shapes.

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Managing sprites, animations and collisions
● Animating is easy : FireMonkey give us a TBitmapListAnimation
component which accepts a sprite sheet.
● Look this samples :
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/DelphiFMXGameSnippe
ts/tree/main/AnimSpriteExplosion
and
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/DelphiFMXGameSnippe
ts/tree/main/AnimSpritePersonnage

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Managing sprites, animations and collisions
● To check collisions, I use what Delphi use for the visual
components and testing mouse clicks.
● IntersectRect() is a very useful (too unknown) method to check
if two rectangles collide.
● It’s standard. It works since more than 26 years in the VCL and
now in FMX. Why not using it ?

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Managing sprites, animations and collisions
● For circles I calculate the distance between center of each circle
and compare it to the sum of their radius.
● You have a sample with Soap Bubbles game available at
https://gamolf.itch.io/soap-bubbles
● The base code for this game is available on GitHub :
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/DelphiFMXGameSnippe
ts/tree/main/JeuDesCercles

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Managing sprites, animations and collisions
● For circle versus a rectangle, I calculate the distance between
the circle center and each angle of the rectangle.
● The classic sample for this is a Pong or Breakout game, when
the ball hits a wall or a brick.
● You have the source code of a sample breakout done for Learn
To Code Summer Camp 2021 event at
https://github.com/DeveloppeurPascal/Casse-Briques

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What about 3D ?
● 3D is little more complicated, but FireMonkey includes 3D
viewport and 3D shapes.
● You can use them to create games like did Grégory Bersegeay,
another French Embarcadero MVP, for
○ 3D Pong : a pong game in 3D.
https://github.com/gbegreg/FMXPong
○ FMX Corridor : a The Light Corridor remake.
https://github.com/gbegreg/FMXCorridor
○ FMX Island : an island in 3D, base for FPS games.
https://github.com/gbegreg/FMXISland

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You want more ?
● Did I say it’s simple to use Delphi and FireMonkey for game
coding and deploying them for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and
Android devices ?
● With those samples and links, I hope you have all what you need
to understand how to use FireMonkey as a game engine in your
games.
● If not, contact me and tell me what is missing or submit new
feature requests directly in Embarcadero’s Quality Portal.

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Q&A

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Q&A
● Sorry, I’m not live for Q&A during DelphiCon 2021 but if you
want to talk, leave me a message on LinkedIn or at
https://developpeur-pascal.fr/contact/
● You also can talk with me on Twitch during a live (game or
other) coding stream at
https://www.twitch.tv/patrickpremartin
● Please write in French or English.
Use https://www.deepl.com/translator tool to translate if
needed.

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THANK YOU!