Announcing new CVS snapshot

SDL Development
1

There’s a couple of neat features in this snapshot:
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/develop.html

Thanks to Moses DeJong , demos built with the new
GNU Makefile (in the demos archive) will now automatically load the SDL
library from the SDL library directory – no more setting the
LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable under Linux. :slight_smile:
This hasn’t yet been tested under Solaris, but it should work.

A great big thank you goes to brn , the author of
the X11 port of the Prometheus TrueColor toolkit:
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/students/c.nentwich/ptc

This is a very nice C++ library for doing 32-bit window graphics and
converting on the fly to the display format.

brn got me excited about optimizing the SDL blitters, and now SDL kicks butt:
(Optimized 8-bit to 16/32-bit and 32-bit to 16/8-bit)

This is the Fire demo from the PTC library:==========================================
Results on my machine, both compiled with gcc 2.7.2 and -O2:
(P2 300 under Linux 16-bit X11 window, average over 5 runs, no load)
SDL 0.8d: 148 FPS
PTC 2.0.5: 114 FPS (asm)
PTC 2.0.5: 119 FPS ©

This is the Tunnel demo from the PTC library:

Results on my machine, both compiled with gcc 2.7.2 and -O2:
(P2 300 under Linux 16-bit X11 window, average over 5 runs, no load)
SDL 0.8d: 85 FPS
PTC 2.0.5: 83 FPS (mmx)
PTC 2.0.5: 71 FPS (asm)
PTC 2.0.5: 57 FPS ©

No, those numbers are not crazy – the C optimizer does a very good job. :slight_smile:

Now, keep in mind that those numbers reflect SDL carefully optimized,
v.s. stock PTC 2.0.5. brn hasn’t had a chance to look at my code and
optimize his to match. :slight_smile:

Hopefully when his mmx code stars kicking SDL’s butt, he’ll let us use it. :slight_smile:

You can check out the fire and tunnel demos, along with the PTC emulation
headers, in the latest CVS snapshot of the demos archive. It’s also a good
example of a C++ wrapper around SDL. :slight_smile:

The nice thing is, the cases optimized to show off SDL are very common ones. :slight_smile:

See ya!
-Sam Lantinga (slouken at devolution.com)

–
Author of Simple DirectMedia Layer -
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/

2

Sam Lantinga writes:

There’s a couple of neat features in this snapshot:
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/develop.html

Thanks to Moses DeJong , demos built with the new
GNU Makefile (in the demos archive) will now automatically load the SDL
library from the SDL library directory – no more setting the
LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable under Linux. :slight_smile:
This hasn’t yet been tested under Solaris, but it should work.

A great big thank you goes to brn , the author of
the X11 port of the Prometheus TrueColor toolkit:
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/students/c.nentwich/ptc

This is a very nice C++ library for doing 32-bit window graphics and
converting on the fly to the display format.

brn got me excited about optimizing the SDL blitters, and now SDL kicks butt:
(Optimized 8-bit to 16/32-bit and 32-bit to 16/8-bit)

This is the Fire demo from the PTC library:

Results on my machine, both compiled with gcc 2.7.2 and -O2:
(P2 300 under Linux 16-bit X11 window, average over 5 runs, no load)
SDL 0.8d: 148 FPS
PTC 2.0.5: 114 FPS (asm)
PTC 2.0.5: 119 FPS ©

This is the Tunnel demo from the PTC library:

Results on my machine, both compiled with gcc 2.7.2 and -O2:
(P2 300 under Linux 16-bit X11 window, average over 5 runs, no load)
SDL 0.8d: 85 FPS
PTC 2.0.5: 83 FPS (mmx)
PTC 2.0.5: 71 FPS (asm)
PTC 2.0.5: 57 FPS ©

No, those numbers are not crazy – the C optimizer does a very good job. :slight_smile:

Now, keep in mind that those numbers reflect SDL carefully optimized,
v.s. stock PTC 2.0.5. brn hasn’t had a chance to look at my code and
optimize his to match. :slight_smile:

Hopefully when his mmx code stars kicking SDL’s butt, he’ll let us use it. :slight_smile:

You can check out the fire and tunnel demos, along with the PTC emulation
headers, in the latest CVS snapshot of the demos archive. It’s also a good
example of a C++ wrapper around SDL. :slight_smile:

The nice thing is, the cases optimized to show off SDL are very common ones. :slight_smile:

one thing the PTC guy should do is throw some AMD 3dnow! code in his engine, then it will REALLY wail on AMD K6-2’s (quake goes from 32fps to 58fps)…

j

3

Sam Lantinga writes:

There’s a couple of neat features in this snapshot:
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/develop.html

~/projects/sdl> cvs update
cvs [update aborted]: unrecognized auth response from devolution.com: cvs: unrecognized option `–allow-root=/home/slouken/cvsroot’

cvs update is now broked for me…? HAS been working fine

j

4

cvs update is now broked for me…? HAS been working fine

devolution.com was just upgraded, and an older version of CVS was installed.
I’ll fix it today…

See ya!
-Sam Lantinga (slouken at devolution.com)–
Author of Simple DirectMedia Layer -
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/

5

Sam Lantinga writes:

cvs update is now broked for me…? HAS been working fine

devolution.com was just upgraded, and an older version of CVS was installed.
I’ll fix it today…

danke schoen for the quick reply :slight_smile:

j

6

Its ready!

Fix: Non-OSS Linux sound drivers should work with the audio open code now.

New: Prometheus TrueColor examples, built with an emulation over SDL

New: MMX accelerated support for 32-bit -> 16-bit blits, using core potions
of the new Hermes conversion library. (More acceleration is coming!)

Blitting in general should be much faster, as the whole structure has been
streamlined and optimized. Er, except for colorkey and alpha blending,
which are still slow. :slight_smile: Now it’s really easy to add your optimized blit
routines… just take a look at SDL_Blit_N.c

Precalculated alpha blending acceleration has been removed for simplicity.
(Was anyone using that?)

Also, the test programs have been cleaned up a bit, and now use the GNU
Makefile – Woohoo! :slight_smile:

Late breaking news on the MacOS front:
8-bit --> 16/32-bit graphics seem to work okay
16/32-bit --> 16/32-bit graphics crash (?)
sound is not yet implemented

A new version of the Macintosh emulator, Executor, using the latest version
of the SDL library, including accelerated blits, better sound, cut-and-paste,
and fullscreen access is in progress. :slight_smile:

Lots of stuff is happening. If you’ve sent me e-mail recently, and I haven’t
responded, it’s because I’ve been busy. If you don’t hear from me in the next
week, your mail got lost in my copious mailbox, and you should probably resend
it. :slight_smile:

Have a great Labor Day!
See ya!
-Sam Lantinga (slouken at devolution.com)–
Author of Simple DirectMedia Layer -
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/

7

A new version of the Macintosh emulator, Executor, using the latest version
of the SDL library, including accelerated blits, better sound, cut-and-paste,
and fullscreen access is in progress. :slight_smile:
Since gcc(egcs) exists now for BeOS Intel, is there an SDL version of
Executor planned?

Also, is MMX support enabled in BeOS?

Does anyone want me to do a build of SDL with gcc?

Best Regards,
David Sowsy

8

Since gcc(egcs) exists now for BeOS Intel, is there an SDL version of
Executor planned?

I was not aware of that…

Also, is MMX support enabled in BeOS?

I’ll look into it. :slight_smile:

Does anyone want me to do a build of SDL with gcc?

Sure, if you want to. :slight_smile:

See ya!
-Sam Lantinga (slouken at devolution.com)–
Author of Simple DirectMedia Layer -
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/