Is iOS SDL1.3 production-ready?

SDL Development
1

Hi,

I guess the subject says it all really: is SDL1.3 production-ready on iOS?

Or in other words, have any games been successfully released on the App Store that use it?

Thanks!

thoughton.

2

thoughton wrote:

Hi,

I guess the subject says it all really: is SDL1.3 production-ready on iOS?

Or in other words, have any games been successfully released on the App Store that use it?

Thanks!

thoughton.
There are some games in the App Store that use the game engine in working on (which in turn use SDL 1.3).
These are just two examples:
http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/puzsion/id442575540?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idraw-family/id481007427?mt=8

3

I have a game (shameless plug: www.mysteriouscastle.com) on the app store.
I had to do some custom fiddling to fix some bugs (several months ago), but
I think that the newest SDL versions are pretty much good to go.

No bug reports related to SDL.

Good luck.On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 5:11 PM, josebagar <joseba.gar at gmail.com> wrote:

**

thoughton wrote:

Hi,

I guess the subject says it all really: is SDL1.3 production-ready on iOS?

Or in other words, have any games been successfully released on the App
Store that use it?

Thanks!

thoughton.

There are some games in the App Store that use the game engine in working
on (which in turn use SDL 1.3).
These are just two examples:
http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/puzsion/id442575540?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idraw-family/id481007427?mt=8

SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org

4

Hello !

There are some games in the App Store that use the game engine in working on (which in turn use SDL 1.3).
These are just two examples:
http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/puzsion/id442575540?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idraw-family/id481007427?mt=8

I wish there would be some filter showing only the games using SDL :slight_smile:

CU

5

I don’t think it’s ready until the callback patch gets in. This is
absolutely NOT a knock against anybody working on this or the people
that want to or don’t want to add this patch, but without it, it’s not a
good iOS citizen.

Without it, you’re not going to be able to properly respond to
hide/show/low memory events. I suspect the people that said they
patched did this.

Other than that, though, I use it and test with it all the time running
Scruffy3D (actually dim3 with the Scruffy3D project) on my iPad without
any trouble. You can get away with it. But you are also asking for
GPU crashes in the background and restarts of the app.

[>] Brian

6

Out of curiosity, is that patch in Bugzilla?

We’re not opposed to adding it, I just think we need to understand more how
it fits into the rest of the architecture and on what platforms it makes
sense.On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Brian Barnes wrote:

I don’t think it’s ready until the callback patch gets in. This is
absolutely NOT a knock against anybody working on this or the people that
want to or don’t want to add this patch, but without it, it’s not a good
iOS citizen.

Without it, you’re not going to be able to properly respond to
hide/show/low memory events. I suspect the people that said they patched
did this.

Other than that, though, I use it and test with it all the time running
Scruffy3D (actually dim3 with the Scruffy3D project) on my iPad without any
trouble. You can get away with it. But you are also asking for GPU
crashes in the background and restarts of the app.

[>] Brian

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http://lists.libsdl.org/**listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.orghttp://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org

7

Thanks for all the replies everyone, this is sounding very promising. And by all means keep those shameless plugs coming! :slight_smile:

I am definitely interested in hearing more about the patch mentioned by Brian though. Any further information about that, including how I can get hold of it unofficially (and why I might want to), would be much appreciated.------------------------

8

Sam wrote:

Out of curiosity, is that patch in Bugzilla?

We’re not opposed to adding it, I just think we need to understand
more how it fits into the rest of the architecture and on what
platforms it makes sense.

I don’t know, the original guy who did the patch will have to speak up.
I originally started this by saying I’d do the patch, then he came in
and said he already did it. I grabbed his patch, looked at it, and it
looked great, did everything I wanted to do, so I said go with that one.

Sadly, I just checked the mailing list archive and couldn’t find the URL
for the patch. Hopefully the guy that did this originally will repost
it. It’s a very small patch, a couple defines and a couple lines of code.

[>] Brian

9

Are you talking about this by any chance?
http://forums.libsdl.org/viewtopic.php?t=7733&sid=c9ade150b99a01c8f080cdd465f21b11
VittorioOn Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 9:36 PM, Brian Barnes wrote:

Sam wrote:

Out of curiosity, is that patch in Bugzilla?

We’re not opposed to adding it, I just think we need to understand
more how it fits into the rest of the architecture and on what
platforms it makes sense.

I don’t know, the original guy who did the patch will have to speak up. ?I
originally started this by saying I’d do the patch, then he came in and said
he already did it. ?I grabbed his patch, looked at it, and it looked great,
did everything I wanted to do, so I said go with that one.

Sadly, I just checked the mailing list archive and couldn’t find the URL for
the patch. ?Hopefully the guy that did this originally will repost it. ?It’s
a very small patch, a couple defines and a couple lines of code.

[>] Brian

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SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org

10

Hi,
These iOS appliciations use SDL 1.3:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/honey-flavour-puzzle-chest/id487253192
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/honey-flavour-puzzle-chest/id487251359
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-history-of-mankind-prehistory/id487347101
Version SDL they use has the patch for iOS events I sent earlier
(available here:
http://forums.libsdl.org/viewtopic.php?t=7733&sid=c9ade150b99a01c8f080cdd465f21b11)
and two other modifications to fix 1.2 compatibility issues:

  • Disabled creation of RLE accelerated surfaces: they are slower on
    ipad than non rle accelereated, especially if you need to make changes to
    surface content every frame.
  • A fix to SDL_ConvertSurface, allowing creation of a new alpha surface
    from a surface without alpha through 1.2 compatibility function
    SDL_DisplayFormatAlpha. Without this patch you cant create an alpha
    surface from a surface without alpha.

diff -r eb0e11b096ab src/video/SDL_surface.c
— a/src/video/SDL_surface.c Wed Nov 16 05:13:40 2011 -0500
+++ b/src/video/SDL_surface.c Mon Nov 28 13:40:24 2011 +0100
@@ -848,7 +848,8 @@

 /* Enable alpha blending by default if the new surface has an
  * alpha channel or alpha modulation */
  • if ((surface->format->Amask && format->Amask) ||
  •   if ((format->Amask) ||
   (copy_flags & (SDL_COPY_COLORKEY|SDL_COPY_MODULATE_ALPHA))) {
   SDL_SetSurfaceBlendMode(convert, SDL_BLENDMODE_BLEND);
    }

regards,
PiotrOn Thu, 12 Jan 2012, thoughton wrote:

Thanks for all the replies everyone, this is sounding very promising. And by all means keep those shameless plugs coming! :slight_smile:

I am definitely interested in hearing more about the patch mentioned by Brian though. Any further information about that, including how I can get hold of it unofficially (and why I might want to), would be much appreciated.

https://github.com/thoughton

11

Vittorio wrote:

Are you talking about this by any chance?
http://forums.libsdl.org/viewtopic.php?t=7733&sid=c9ade150b99a01c8f080cdd465f21b11
Vittorio

I’m not even going to begin to admit how sad it was that I couldn’t find that. But, yes, that’s the one!

[>] Brian