What is SDL?
Author
Hello I was just wondering what SDL is? as its mentioned a few times within some threads on here and I'm just checking is it a library like <iostream> to be used in C++?
Sorry for the rather retarded question (to some it might seem that way)
Thank you for any information.
SDL stands for Simple Directmedia layer. It is a code library that handles such tasks as graphics, audio, and input. It is an easier alternative to coding an app in DirectX or OpenGL.
Quote: Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."
Simple DirectMedia Layer supports Linux, Windows, BeOS, MacOS Classic, MacOS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, Solaris, IRIX, and QNX. There is also code, but no official support, for Windows CE, AmigaOS, Dreamcast, Atari, NetBSD, AIX, OSF/Tru64, RISC OS, and SymbianOS.
SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, Eiffel, Java, Lua, ML, Perl, PHP, Pike, Python, and Ruby.
SDL is just a library that makes making games a lot easier by providing a lot of functionality that would other wise take time to do yourself. Getting SDL up and running is quite easy and it is a very powerful library. It is used by many compaines for it's crossplatform features enabling use on all those OS's listed above. If you click on my webpage link then go to Tutorials, there are a few on the right side that show how the code looks.
Furthermore, SDL can be used as a wrapper for OpenGL and Direct3D as well. It has be used in conjunction with the Ogre3D library as well. Just lots of uses and a great simple library [smile]
Author
Ahhh thank you thats helpful and I just checked out your website tutorials very handy I shall bookmark that for later use when I'm a little better with C++.
Thank you :)
Thank you :)
SDL is a C library. You can also use it in C++, and also Ada, Eiffel, Java, Lua, ML, Perl, PHP, Pike, Python, and Ruby.
In C or C++, you add #include "SDL.h" to the start of your file and link with the appropriate libraries, which depends on the platform you're using. The output of sdl-config --libs would be a pretty good clue as to what to link with.
In C or C++, you add #include "SDL.h" to the start of your file and link with the appropriate libraries, which depends on the platform you're using. The output of sdl-config --libs would be a pretty good clue as to what to link with.
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