I started a blog/tutorial on iphone sdl integration.
Not much yet but will grow shortly.
Sam, you may want to make this a sticky at some point.
This tutorial will probably take a month or two complete. And will be concurrent with the development of the StreamX application described.
Only the first and last parts of the tutorial will focus on StreamX.
There will be a number of user downloadable xcode projects.
The first will be a revamping of the Demo launchpad type app I posted last month elsewhere on this forum.
The second will be a networked aware mixer applications, because a mixer app isn’t very good if you can’t get new instrument sounds on the device without recompileing the app.
The third demo app will be an OpenGl/SDL game that posts its results via fbconnect to facebook.
Finally when the StreamX application is approved (I’m being optimistic about approval) we will publish the complete source to streamX along with a doomClasic style code review . (doomclasic, put out an excellent code review of there app that is a model for all developers to follow)
and a comparison between an app with similar functionality and not using sdl.
I started a blog/tutorial on iphone sdl integration.
visited that link and i did not see a blog, there is very little there.
mattOn Sun, 28 Feb 2010, michelleC wrote:
As I said its just getting started.
But there are 5 pages with code examples, so I don’ t know what you mean by little content.
A few criticisms:
- The layout’s pretty ugly. If you’re going simple, use a single color for background and its complementing color for text.
- The images at the top of each entry have nothing to do with the topic of the entry – trash them.
- It was pretty slow when I accessed it.
- It didn’t seem to have any material useful to anyone but an iPhone developer interested in what SDL has to offer them. Which I’m guessing is your purpose anyway, but my point is that it’s not useful to most of SDL’s userbase (which is developers for PC platforms where SDL already works fine).
nfries88 wrote:
A few criticisms:
- The layout’s pretty ugly. If you’re going simple, use a single color for background and its complementing color for text.
- The images at the top of each entry have nothing to do with the topic of the entry – trash them.
- It was pretty slow when I accessed it.
- It didn’t seem to have any material useful to anyone but an iPhone developer interested in what SDL has to offer them. Which I’m guessing is your purpose anyway, but my point is that it’s not useful to most of SDL’s userbase (which is developers for PC platforms where SDL already works fine).
-
I did not create the layout, its a iweb page, I may play with the styling later for now I am just concentrating on content.
-
The format follows a textbook with random images starting each section, many people do like this. Find something of your own to trash.
-
I see its slow, but there were a lot of hits today seems like a lot of people think the content is useful. Apparently I sparked a lot of interest when I demonstrated that the app can utilize servers that preset Hulu content. There is something about Hulu that brings the masses out.
-
There are a lot of tutorials on sdl on pc’s, macs and linux, those for the iphone you can count on one hand. My target user base is the iphone community , I am sharing it here because the app uses some sdl. And I am aware of a few posters here who will be interested in the articles and demos. All the content going forward will be centered around iphone development, so you may want to look elsewhere.
I like it :)On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:52 PM, michelleC wrote:
I started a blog/tutorial on iphone sdl integration.
Not much yet but will grow shortly.
Sam, you may want to make this a sticky at some point.
http://web.me.com/cannonwc/Site_4/Blog/Archive.html
SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org
Yeah, I like it too… Except that I think I saw some Obj-C… 
Jonny DOn Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Donny Viszneki <donny.viszneki at gmail.com>wrote:
I like it
On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:52 PM, michelleC wrote:
I started a blog/tutorial on iphone sdl integration.
Not much yet but will grow shortly.
Sam, you may want to make this a sticky at some point.
http://web.me.com/cannonwc/Site_4/Blog/Archive.html
SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org
SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org
Thanks
but you’re going to see a lot more objective-c, I am a big fan of smalltalk. smalltalk was long dead and buried before I came on the scene, but I experienced in artificial intelligence classes in college and fell in love with it.
Jonny D wrote:> Yeah, I like it too… ?Except that I think I saw some Obj-C…
Jonny D
On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Donny Viszneki <donny.viszneki at gmail.com (donny.viszneki at gmail.com)> wrote:
I like it
On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 11:52 PM, michelleC <@michelleC (@michelleC)> wrote:
I started a blog/tutorial on iphone sdl integration.
Not much yet but will grow shortly.
Sam, you may want to make this a sticky at some point.
http://web.me.com/cannonwc/Site_4/Blog/Archive.html (http://web.me.com/cannonwc/Site_4/Blog/Archive.html)
SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org (SDL at lists.libsdl.org)
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org (http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org)–
http://codebad.com/ (http://codebad.com/)
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SDL at lists.libsdl.org (SDL at lists.libsdl.org)
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org (http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org)
Thank for the replies , I’m glad someone finds it useful.
I also will be updating the previous examples I gave.
flow here
http://sol3.typepad.com/tagalong_developer_journa/2010/02/sdl-and-coaca-revisted.html
and the small sample project here.
http://sol3.typepad.com/tagalong_developer_journa/2010/02/sdl-and-coaca-revisted.html
I found this, its a discussion about porting a game to the iphone, its pretty cool. and the game is too.
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=26193&start=0&sid=16210fbb6fc8f54df9d6cfa56e2b7631
[
SDL use in the iphone community is pretty low.
Why,
- Not many developers have heard of it
- The only real demos available are those included with the distribution
- the few sdl games available do not favorably compare to open gl counterparts
- hard to make it support open gl es2
- No trackrecord in the app store
Changing that perception
I don’t know if it is going to help but we are going to do 3 youtube videos some time next week.
- Launchpad demo showing all the current sdl examples in a normal ui
- networked aware mixer
- (maybe) facebook access from with an sdl game
- video player with demo of accessing hulu content
The last one will also be meant to get some feedback on our ui design for our video add.
michelleC wrote:
SDL use in the iphone community is pretty low.
Why,
- Not many developers have heard of it
- The only real demos available are those included with the distribution
- the few sdl games available do not favorably compare to open gl counterparts
- hard to make it support open gl es2
- No trackrecord in the app store
Changing that perception
Not too many projects use SDL on PC either. One could probably count the well-known commercial ones with their fingers.
SDL’s biggest use, and biggest attraction, is portability. That’s the primary reason I use it in my own projects – to be fair, Win32 APIs provide all the functionality I need if I just want to write a windows program. Gdk or Qt provide all I’d want for a Linux program. On Mac I’d probably still prefer to use SDL just because I don’t care for writing/reading Obj-C code. However, when I write programs aimed for any combination of the systems SDL is supported on, I’d certainly choose SDL.
It also isn’t frequently used outside the open-source community, or at least 99% of the products I’ve seen using it were open-source.
Also, SDL doesn’t provide a GUI like Qt or wxWidgets do, which probably dissuades people from using it.
Although certainly the reasons you’ve listed are a part of it as well, at least on iPhone.
It’s used in World of Goo. They just slapped on a Direct3D layer for the
windows ports.
It’s used in quite a few popular commercial Indie games which are not
mentioned on the SDL website either.
It might be cool to have a showcase section on the website.
I don’t mind helping out there if that’s needed…
cheers,
ErikOn Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 8:56 AM, nfries88 wrote:
michelleC wrote:
SDL use in the iphone community is pretty low.
Why,
- Not many developers have heard of it
- The only real demos available are those included with the distribution
- the few sdl games available do not favorably compare to open gl
counterparts- hard to make it support open gl es2
- No trackrecord in the app store
Changing that perception
Not too many projects use SDL on PC either. One could probably count the
well-known commercial ones with their fingers.
SDL’s biggest use, and biggest attraction, is portability. That’s the
primary reason I use it in my own projects – to be fair, Win32 APIs provide
all the functionality I need if I just want to write a windows program. Gdk
or Qt provide all I’d want for a Linux program. On Mac I’d probably still
prefer to use SDL just because I don’t care for writing/reading Obj-C code.
However, when I write programs aimed for any combination of the systems SDL
is supported on, I’d certainly choose SDL.
It also isn’t frequently used outside the open-source community, or at
least 99% of the products I’ve seen using it were open-source.
Also, SDL doesn’t provide a GUI like Qt or wxWidgets do, which probably
dissuades people from using it.Although certainly the reasons you’ve listed are a part of it as well, at
least on iPhone.
SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org
–
Erik Yuzwa
I’d love to help out! Find me on:
http://www.erikyuzwa.com
http://www.twitter.com/eyuzwa
Erik Yuzwa wrote:
It’s used in World of Goo. They just slapped on a Direct3D layer for the windows ports.
Erik Yuzwa
I’d love to help out! Find me on:
http://www.wazooinc.com (http://www.wazooinc.com)
http://www.erikyuzwa.com (http://www.erikyuzwa.com)
http://www.twitter.com/eyuzwa (http://www.twitter.com/eyuzwa)
We can discuss that.
The way I see it since Android can support sdl, the iphone can support sdl and I read something that web os has sdl built in. It makes some sense to use sdl over just opengl.
And yes I think it is the unusual runloop, event model and lack of gui that turns most developers off.
These can be managed.
I always have to be the radical girl on the block, But my idea is to develop a set of procedures with some minor mods to sdl, that allows easy integration with the sdk and still keep as much cross platform as possible.
The sdl port includes a number of classes only for the iphone port so those are open to mod.
Also I recommend creating a common.m , which contains the new interfaces, and a common.h with the c prototypes, together those become the interface between sdk and sdl.
I don’t think the license fee is a factor, because one thing most iphone developers want is a simple route to those accounting matters. unclear or confusing licensing policies are much more of a turnoff. As well as per seat licenses.
SDL’s biggest use, and biggest attraction, is
portability. That’s the primary reason I use it in my
own projects – to be fair, Win32 APIs provide all the
functionality I need if I just want to write a windows
program. Gdk or Qt provide all I’d want for a Linux
program. On Mac I’d probably still prefer to use SDL
just because I don’t care for writing/reading Obj-C
code. However, when I write programs aimed for any
combination of the systems SDL is supported on, I’d
certainly choose SDL.
To me, that’s its biggest attractor as well. However unlike you my days of GTK+ are behind me, and I have no desire to learn Win32. So SDL gives me the ability to develop a game for those platforms without having to get into native platforms. For non-graphical apps I use wxW.
It also isn’t frequently used outside the open-source
community, or at least 99% of the products I’ve seen
using it were open-source.
One of my favorite SDL games is Neverball (and I keep swearing one day when I get the time I’m porting it to the PSP and look into tweaking the linux version for the PS3 so I can use SIXAXIS which will make it pretty damn cool).
Why do I bring it up? Well, if not for Linux, and likewise SDL I’d probably have never learned of Neverball. I only found it browsing Debian’s repositories. Open source helped me find something I really like, and probably never would have looked for otherwise. Now I’m getting too far off-topic…
The point simply was that open source brings diversity. Maybe not as importance to some as commercial viability, however. MichelleC noted a lack of demos other than those included in the distribution, she should instead look at applications that use it. I have never seen anyone play with Win32 demos included with VisualC++ or GTK+ demos with Linux and decide that it was a poor platform just because demos were subpar.
Also, SDL doesn’t provide a GUI like Qt or wxWidgets
do, which probably dissuades people from using it.
Which the whole discussion of SDL on the iPhone lead me to wonder, I just never had time to contribute my $0.02. Doesn’t wxWidgets have a widget where you can run SDL inside of an SDL widget and still use wxW for the main GUI? I can’t see why the same can not be done for the iPhone too. Forgive me if I missed it, but I didn’t see this mentioned before.— On Wed, 3/3/10, nfries88 wrote:
–
Anthony T.
goumba2k5-web wrote:> — On Wed, 3/3/10, nfries88 wrote:
Also, SDL doesn’t provide a GUI like Qt or wxWidgets
do, which probably dissuades people from using it.Which the whole discussion of SDL on the iPhone lead me to wonder, I just never had time to contribute my $0.02. Doesn’t wxWidgets have a widget where you can run SDL inside of an SDL widget and still use wxW for the main GUI? I can’t see why the same can not be done for the iPhone too. Forgive me if I missed it, but I didn’t see this mentioned before.
–
Anthony T.
SDL mailing list
SDL at lists.libsdl.org
http://lists.libsdl.org/listinfo.cgi/sdl-libsdl.org
Comparing apples and oranges.
But the tone of the discussion is encouraging.
There is no true concept like a component on the iphone, the ui is basically windows, views and components , but those are conceptually different than there windows or xwindows conterparts. sorry.
But the idea is to encapsulate the sdl elements into the sdk in a way that keeps portablity (or as much as possible ) and ideally doesn’t change the base code in the static library.
Sdl is best managed at the window/view level. And treat it the created sdl_window similarly to a eaglview.
I like the showcase idea, and I would be willing to contribute to an iphone section.
I am already putting together a tutorial.
However I know little and don’t have time to explore other platforms, although I think an xbox showcase would be sweet , not sure sdl could complete with direct3d.
And a showcase that only included the iphone would be very unbalanced and not much use alone considering sdl’s current user base.
I think our ambitions are clear, mooncatventures is clearly focused on the iphone, we expect to port apps to android latter this year, considered palm but the market is too small.
michelleC wrote:
I like the showcase idea, and I would be willing to contribute to an
iphone section.
I am already putting together a tutorial.However I know little and don’t have time to explore other platforms,
although I think an xbox showcase would be sweet , not sure sdl could
complete with direct3d.
[snip]
I second what nfries88 says – and I’d say let’s not oversell SDL.
Users must be aware that it is an Open Source project, albeit a
good and mature one, but to talk about directly comparing or
competing against DirectX is just missing the point completely.
Many Open Source games use SDL for good reasons, but these reasons
may not be for everyone. Why, not very long ago you were slagging
on SDL for all the wrong reasons…
I am reminded of a well-known tech reporter that did a story on
Lua for a tech site that caters to business enterprise IT. Lua
does not even fit into that; it has its niche areas. But that did
not dissuade this reporter, and the end result was this weird
dissonant story. This kind of overselling invites backlash and
ridicule.
Slow down, cut the hype. SDL does not compete against any of those
other libraries. You consider your application and you just pick
the best tool given a set of circumstances. In a social media
culture, there is an unconscious tendency to overdo the hype. I
don’t think SDL’s cause will be helped by use of hype.–
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
KHMan wrote:
michelleC wrote:
I like the showcase idea, and I would be willing to contribute to an
iphone section.
I am already putting together a tutorial.However I know little and don’t have time to explore other platforms,
although I think an xbox showcase would be sweet , not sure sdl could
complete with direct3d.
[snip][ related stuff ]
Slow down, cut the hype. SDL does not compete against any of those
other libraries. You consider your application and you just pick
the best tool given a set of circumstances. In a social media
culture, there is an unconscious tendency to overdo the hype. I
don’t think SDL’s cause will be helped by use of hype.
I second this notion. Drawing too much attention to SDL may be a bad thing.
However, I certainly think it’s fine when opening the idea of using SDL to a community that probably have heard little to nothing of it before (iPhone devs) to show successful use cases on other platforms. Going beyond that, and especially comparing it to other APIs to a community that knows near-nothing about SDL, could be disastrous to SDL’s reputation.
SDL provides no 3D APIs. It uses 3D APIs for accelerated rendering, but it doesn’t provide them at all – the developer using SDL must provide his own 3D engine.
Comparing it to Direct3D or OpenGL would be harmful and wrong for that reason. Comparing it to Allegro or SFML, however, would be fair – but iPhone devs have probably heard about as much of those as they have of SDL, perhaps even less (since SFML is fairly young and neither have an iPhone port yet), so it’s probably a bad idea.
If I were you, I would just stick to teaching how to use SDL effectively** on the iPhone, and also providing code for generic SDL use-cases. There aren’t really any SDL 1.3 examples or tutorials out there, as you’ve mentioned, so it’d be great for you to provide them. Especially with the perspective of a newcomer to SDL, you might be able to explain the API’s use more effectively to another newcomer than an SDL “expert” could.
** - in a way that would seem familiar to an iPhone developer