I asked Google what it was, and saw this snippet of a Wikipedia entry:
Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is an object-oriented,
cross-platform, free and open source software multimedia API written
in C++
and that’s about where I stopped. (Plain non-object-oriented C is about
all I have the time and brainpower to understand, and it keeps me happy.)
So it’s probably a matter of language taste. (Out of curiosity,
does SFML have bindings to a bunch of other languages, like SDL does?)
-bill!
I took a look at the website for it (http://www.sfml-dev.org/) and they do
have bindings to other languages along with a C interface for people adverse
to C++.
From the website:
SFML is available in the following languages :
* C++
* C
* .Net (C#, VB.Net, C++/CLI, ...)
* Python
* D
* Ruby
I am not promoting SFML, just passing on some info. Personally, I have a
lot of time invested with SDL and find it to be a good 2D solution for
cross-platform development. And for people like myself who prefer C++, SDL
is easy to write wrappers for to create a nice OOP SDL framework.
In the 15 minutes I looked at SFML, I didn’t see anything that it does that
SDL does not do; at least if you include the commond SDL extensions
(SDL_image, SDL_mixer, etc).
Given that SFML is also Open Source, I certainly cannot see any drawback to
having an alternative to SDL, especially as a learning tool for programmers
new to games. There are definitely a LOT of similarities to SDL in SFML,
but that would be true of any library that provides similar functionality.
Ken