Quote:Oh and to stay on topic, SDL is one of those things that seems to be pretty good for getting the simple stuff done, it's not too fairly hard to use or figure out as well. It's really dated now, but if you use OpenGL with it as stated by earlier posters, you have a lot of flexibility on your hands. The real reason people recommend SDL is because it's familiar.

Just to clarify, I don't think Drew meant that SDL is becoming obsolete because of it's age. It is pretty old on the backend for strictly 2d purposes as it uses software rendering however this is actively being worked on and betas of SDL 1.3 seem to work pretty well to address this. Another reason I use SDL is because of the "it just works" factor. There really is a straight forward approach to the whole API and above all "it just works". It allows you to get something running pretty quickly that is easily extendable although it may require quite a bit of tweaking to get just right. Another good point Drew brought up is that so many people are familiar with it you don't have to go to any one specific community to get help if you have an issue although the SDL mailing list is very useful for this and highly active.