Hi.
I have recently uncovered the SDL library, and it seem very interesting.
I belong to a small group of game programmer and we have always used DirectX
(DirectDraw) for our 2D Windows games.
We are now developping a 2D game with two clients, one for Windows and one for
Linux, but we are not sure of which are the SDL performances in Microsoft systems.
Could you makes some example to us?
It’s easy to integrate SDL and win32?
How much time it’s needed to learn?
Thanks.#
One library for SDL that may interest you is Kyra it’s a simple and seems
pretty powerful sprite engine which has some demos. You may or may not be
interested in it http://www.grinninglizard.com/kyra/, but it does show off
some of the things that can be done graphically. Any way I’m using this for
my current project.
I have limited programming ability and have had no difficulty get to grips
with SDL and windows (using Dev-C++).
Hope this is of some use…
Matthew> ----- Original Message -----
From: Mauro Cappelli [mailto:mauro.cappelli@ribesinformatica.it]
Sent: 01 August 2003 09:59
To: sdl at libsdl.org
Subject: [SDL] SDL vs DirectDrawHi.
I have recently uncovered the SDL library, and it seem very interesting.
I belong to a small group of game programmer and we have always used DirectX(DirectDraw) for our 2D Windows games.
We are now developping a 2D game with two clients, one for Windows and one
for
Linux, but we are not sure of which are the SDL performances in Microsoft
systems.
Could you makes some example to us?
It’s easy to integrate SDL and win32?
How much time it’s needed to learn?Thanks.
Mauro Cappelli - mauro.cappelli at ribesinformatica.it
SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl
We are now developping a 2D game with two clients, one for Windows and one for
Linux,
That’s excellent!
but we are not sure of which are the SDL performances in Microsoft systems.
I don’t use Windows myself, and have never used DirectX, but if I’m not mistaken,
SDL uses DirectX as a backend under Windows.
The ‘Windows’ section of the SDL FAQ should be useful:
http://www.libsdl.org/faq.php?action=listentries&category=4
This section of the SDL Introduction (also available in other languages), talks
about this, as well:
http://www.libsdl.org/intro/whatplatforms.html
I hope that helps…
Could you makes some example to us?
I think this discussion has been had on this list in the past, so you might be
able to find some benchmarks in the archives. shrug
It’s easy to integrate SDL and win32?
Again, I’ve never done any Windows development, and don’t run Windowds myself,
but I HAVE successfully cross-compiled a few of my games for Windows, using
MingW32 under Linux. :^)
Also, most of my SDL-based games have been built for Windows
(as well as BeOS… some for Mac OS and Mac OS X… a few for Sega Dreamcast, etc. 
)
How much time it’s needed to learn?
I found SDL fairly straight-forward. I’m a C programmer, and had experience
with X-Window in the past. I found X-Window hard because there were so many things
to keep track of, and take care of, for the various targets available
(color depths, font support, etc.). SDL simplified quite a bit of it for me.
What I’ve seen and heard around the SDL community, though, is that if you know
the DirectX 2D stuff, SDL takes almost no time to learn. 
I highly recommend it! Good luck on your new project!
-bill!On Fri, Aug 01, 2003 at 10:58:43AM +0200, Mauro Cappelli wrote:
–
bill at newbreedsoftware.com Got kids? Get Tux Paint!
http://newbreedsoftware.com/bill/ http://newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint/
Speaking from my own experience SDL is simple to learn, and in fact is a
wrapper around Direct X under Windows. It is function based, rather than
object oriented, but then it really seems to me that in terms of ease of use
and transportability (compiler support, etc) a function based library is the
easiest to use.
Anyway, it really doesn’t matter since you can wrap the SDL functions in
classes if you really want to.
Performance is similar to Direct X, since it uses said library. I guess you
lose a microsecond due to function call indirection, but it is not the thing
that anyone from amateur to full blown professional developer would notice,
and don’t get hung up about it, since everything is a wrapper around
everything else unless you write in machine code without any external
calling (impossible, I would suggest).
The beauty of SDL, of course, is that your windows application will run
exactly the same under Linux with no conversion required (on the SDL calls,
at least).
Time to learn depends on your experience, but if you already know Direct X
and basic 2D graphics programming principles you’ll be converted in a week
at most.> ----- Original Message -----
From: mauro.cappelli@ribesinformatica.it (Mauro Cappelli)
To:
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 6:58 PM
Subject: [SDL] SDL vs DirectDrawHi.
I have recently uncovered the SDL library, and it seem very interesting.
I belong to a small group of game programmer and we have always used
DirectX
(DirectDraw) for our 2D Windows games.
We are now developping a 2D game with two clients, one for Windows and one
for
Linux, but we are not sure of which are the SDL performances in Microsoft
systems.
Could you makes some example to us?
It’s easy to integrate SDL and win32?
How much time it’s needed to learn?Thanks.
Mauro Cappelli - mauro.cappelli at ribesinformatica.it
SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl
I have recently uncovered the SDL library, and it seem very interesting.
I belong to a small group of game programmer and we have always used
DirectX
(DirectDraw) for our 2D Windows games.
We are now developping a 2D game with two clients, one for Windows and one
for
Linux, but we are not sure of which are the SDL performances in Microsoft
systems.
Good
It’s easy to integrate SDL and win32?
Yes
How much time it’s needed to learn?
In one day you can learn SDL and create your first sample in SDL
A question to you:
Why you uses Direct3D/DirectDraw and you dont use OpenGL?
With OpenGL/SDL you can create really cross-platfrom games
(And for 3d sound try OpenAL)
How much time it’s needed to learn?
In one day you can learn SDL and create your first sample in SDL
I hope so.
A question to you:
Why you uses Direct3D/DirectDraw and you dont use OpenGL?
With OpenGL/SDL you can create really cross-platfrom games
(And for 3d sound try OpenAL)
Well, we (I and my group) have started with DirectX 6.0 around three years ago and we
have continued to use it. We have always worked with 2D graphics, the only 3D
experiment that we have tried used OpengGL (we were already thinking to a cross-
platform game).
Now I’m very tired to follow the endless DirectX releases. Backward compatibilty is
assured, but the step from dx7 to dx8 leave us without a true 2d blit engine, so we want
to change radically.
SDL seems the solutions, but before starting a real project (not a great, but a real
project) we must estimate the time of learning and the library effective performances.
We’ll surely try it.On 1 Aug 2003 at 16:14, - Chameleon - wrote:
Hi Mauro,
Origionaly i was using directx myself but as you may know (or will discover
when you start using SDL) alot of things in directx are unnecesarily
complicated and it makes it really hard to learn and use. Its a real pain
in the butt!
well, sdl uses directx in windows and is about as simple to learn as it can
be, a heck of alot easier to use than directx.
and of course its multiplatform so you dont need to maintain 2 branches of
code if your supporting both windows and linux…in fact if you do it right,
by coding it in SDL, by virtue of this great lib support a handful of other
OS’s like BSD and Macintosh and others.
SDL is the way to go!
Atrix
http://www.laggod.org/~atrix/> ----- Original Message -----
From: mauro.cappelli@ribesinformatica.it (Mauro Cappelli)
To:
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 1:58 AM
Subject: [SDL] SDL vs DirectDrawHi.
I have recently uncovered the SDL library, and it seem very interesting.
I belong to a small group of game programmer and we have always used
DirectX
(DirectDraw) for our 2D Windows games.
We are now developping a 2D game with two clients, one for Windows and one
for
Linux, but we are not sure of which are the SDL performances in Microsoft
systems.
Could you makes some example to us?
It’s easy to integrate SDL and win32?
How much time it’s needed to learn?Thanks.
Mauro Cappelli - mauro.cappelli at ribesinformatica.it
SDL mailing list
SDL at libsdl.org
http://www.libsdl.org/mailman/listinfo/sdl