Adding a little bow to my game

17 Mar, 2026

So I am working on a small game, my second ever, to learn C++ and gamedev.

It is about a little guy who shoots arrows. (Today I recolored the player character to be a dark elf, because I am reading Malazan, and I am easily influenced -- Malazan fans are now furiously shouting at the monitor that Tiste Andii are not dark elfs)

My newest addition is a little bow that faces the direction the player is shooting:

It is very crude full of hardcoded magic numbers:

void Engine::renderWeapon(std::shared_ptr<Entity> e) {
  SDL_Rect crop = calcTilePos(BOW);
  SDL_Rect pos = {(int)e->mDimensions->radiusCentre.first - 26,
                  (int)e->mDimensions->radiusCentre.second - 32, 64, 64};
  int x, y;
  SDL_GetMouseState(&x, &y);
  std::pair<float, float> mousePositionVector = calculateProjectileVector(
      e->mDimensions->radiusCentre, std::make_pair(x, y));
  float rotation =
      angleFromVector(mousePositionVector.first, mousePositionVector.second);
  SDL_RenderCopyEx(mRenderer, mTexture, &crop, &pos, rotation + 90, nullptr,
                   SDL_FLIP_NONE);
}

It calculates a vector based on the mouse position relative to the player, then turns that vector to degrees. Finally I add 90 to it before rendering, so not the tip of the bow, but the front of it looks in the direction of shooting.

It looks a little weird because of the low pixel count scaled to the high resolution the bow is covering too much of the player character, but I will write that off as charm, and move on.