People says SDL is good. How good is good..?
I'm reading everywhere that SDL is great for a lot of things, but i wonder if it is good enough to be used in more professional applications, say an advanced/commercial 3D engine? Is it? [smile]
Well, you can use OpenGL with SDL so I'd say it was more than capable of making something that's considered 'professional'.
I like it, it does everything I need it to without being restrictive.
I like it, it does everything I need it to without being restrictive.
it has been used in a wide variety of commercial games, including unreal tournament 2004.
For more powerful applications SDL is often used as the windowing/input API which enables you to use OpenGL for the more advanced graphics. Ogre for example uses it for just this purpose. So long as your not planning on using SDL's own graphic routines then you should be fine.
Quote:Original post by clayasaurus
it has been used in a wide variety of commercial games, including unreal tournament 2004.
I found this quote online
Quote:Unreal doesn't use SDL on Windows because the WinDrv module (as opposed
to the SDLDrv module) has a few extra features, such as hooks for speech
recognition, etc, since that code is tied tightly to the Windows API.
Plus, UnrealEd needs multiple windows, which SDL doesn't provide at this
time, and the game is primarily targetted at Direct3D on Windows, which
SDL obviously doesn't provide.
From an employee at SDL. So it can be seen that it is indeed *good*.
I think SDL is great for fun games, but I would much rather use an OpenGL library to handle the base of a professional game or 3D engine. GLFW is what I am going to try out for our current game...
I would say take a look into it. Here is a release page from Programmers Heaven that shows great featues -
Quote:GLFW, in short, is a link library that constitutes a powerful API for handling operating system specific tasks.
It also provides functions for reading a high precision timer, using OpenGL extensions, creating and synchronizing threads, reading textures from files, and more.
GLFW is available for Windows, Unix-like systems running the X Window System (such as Linux, IRIX and Solaris), Mac OS X, AmigaOS and DOS.
The framework is small -- the Windows DLL is only 35 KB. Some of the core features of GLFW include:
* Very easy to use API (similar to the OpenGL API)
* No system specific coding necessary
* Keyboard, mouse and joystick input
* High precision timer
* Multi threading support
* Texture loading support (TGA format files)
* Support for many popular C/C++ compilers
* Support for Borland Delphi
* Support for Microsoft Visual Basic
* Support for MASM32
* Can link either statically or dynamically with your applications (no need for a separate DLL if you don not want it)
You can even take a look at the User's guide. Now the point of my post is not to start a flamewar of which is better - I'm just pointing out there are a lot of under-hyped alternatives that are just as good if not better than SDL if you are intrested in all of your options.
- Drew
It's great...right now I'm quite wasted...but...well it's geat to begin making games using it...then when you want to mahe more asvanx´ced games you can swich to open GL...
//walle
//walle
But...I can say...SDL really eats up my cpu...I triaed to run a game I made with SDL when I had overclocked mu cpu like 400mhz...it restarted some times...
but it's greeat
//walle
but it's greeat
//walle
I use GLFW. But I'd say that what ever I do, SDL or GLFW will not be the first or second reason for unprofessional software I write! They are very good.
Quote:Original post by walleAre you sure it's SDL? HAve you profiled?
But...I can say...SDL really eats up my cpu...
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