Re: [Chicken-users] SDL

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Peter Keller wrote:

Even if SDL started as a 2D toolkit and has some bit blitting functions,
as soon as you interface it with OpenGL, you only use a small section
of SDL, and any 2D thing you want to do you do directly in OpenGL which
will be accelerated if possible. I didn't even know it started as a 2D
interface until you just mentioned it and I went and looked at the API...
  

Yes, to me SDL is synonymous with paving over DirectX 7 DirectDraw.  I forget what the Linux SVGA or X window 2D blitting equivalents were back in the day, or are now.  In the DX8 era, people decided that 3D was the proper way to do 2D.  This has a number of technical advantages as to what you can get done, like making sprite rotations and blends rather trivial.  But it comes at the expense of gratuitous API complication, as 3D requires a lot more setup than 2D does.  I'm still unsure whether OpenGL ever became a proper backend for the 2D stuff, or if OpenGL merely exists "alongside" the rest of SDL and doesn't do anything at all for a 2D developer.  I'll have to read up on it.

I am intrigued that Quake 4 used a modified SDL on Linux somehow.  But 
it was modified, not straight up.  Also it seems they did it for Linux 
only, not Windows.  I wish I could find a concise summary of why ID 
Software didn't find off-the-shelf SDL acceptable.  Maybe I'll have to 
download their SDL patch and comb through it for clues.
    

I have a friend who happened to work on Quake 4, and he said he is pretty
sure no SDL was used at all. He was only 90% sure about the Linux port
since that wasn't done in house. He said if it was used, it was probably
for the mouse/keyboard events and nothing else.
  

Right, so "SDL was used" says very little.  Other than that it doesn't get in the way of an OpenGL app on Linux.  I don't know what can be said about Windows, especially Vista.

As for things like the playstation 3, well, you should probably just
use whatever SDK the manufacturer has (while they charge you an arm and
a leg for the privledge)--that way you're sure it is going to work.
  

Phah, easy for you to say!  You got $10K or more, and a company, and a track record developing successful titles, and a willingness to sign a NDA?  'Cuz that's the only way you're getting a Sony SDK legally.  Totally uninteresting from an indie's point of view.  No, I will worry about what can be done without paying Sony a dime. 

I think I've established that there are lotsa reasons why SDL may or may 
not be desireable.
    

So then you should, or shouldn't, use it. :) Of course, I'm being
facetious there, but my point is that you should pick the platforms you
want your game to run on (and "all of them" is a bad choice) and write
whatever unification layer you need over the available native libraries
and then write your game. It is often easier to write/maintain the
unification layer than design something that would be natively used on
all of the platforms.

Let OTHER people who get paid for it maintain those native libraries.
  

Kind of a non-sequitor as SDL is an open source project.  I don't think anyone's raking in the bucks on it.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every