No software surfaces with svgalib driver?

Hi,

I noticed that the SDL (1.2.9) svgalib driver only makes use of linear
addressable (framebuffer) video modes. On older systems (like one of
mine), linear addressable modes are often not available.
Especially for cards with VESA VBE < 2.0 the svgalib vesa driver is
unusable, since VESA only supports framebuffering for VBE 2.0 and later.

The changes necessary to add support for software surfaces seem to be
relatively small. I only had to hack src/video/svga/SDL_svgavideo.c (see
attached patch). The code worked fine for me, but it is no more than a
proof of concept and should be reviewed (probably has a memory leak when
switching modes). It also uses the vgagl library (included in the
svgalib package) and needs to be linked against it.

-Alex
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I noticed that the SDL (1.2.9) svgalib driver only makes use of linear
addressable (framebuffer) video modes. On older systems (like one of
mine), linear addressable modes are often not available.
Especially for cards with VESA VBE < 2.0 the svgalib vesa driver is
unusable, since VESA only supports framebuffering for VBE 2.0 and later.

I’ve added your bug report and patch to bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.libsdl.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84

Do you actually get decent performance from this? When I was writing
that code years ago, my 486 got terrible banked video performance.
Maelstrom was unplayable. :slight_smile:

Thanks!
-Sam Lantinga, Senior Software Engineer, Blizzard Entertainment