If you want to be a programmer , then in the long term, you need to develop the skill of being able to learn new APIs quickly. Learning any API is good practice of this skill.

It's been used in plenty of commercial games.

SDL isn't a GUI library like QT or WxWidgets... it's a cross-platform multimedia library.

Hello,

I've been looking at SDL and it seems like a nice way to easily start creating basic games, but before i commit to learning it i have a couple questions.

Would learning SDL be useful in the long term? Obviously its great for transitioning from console c++ to graphics and such (from what i have read) but is that all its good for? Is it only really used as a learning/simplicity tool? Or is it used actively in the industry?

Also is SDL the definitive best option for a game interface layer gui library thingy? How about qt, wxwidgets or native APIs such as win32? (i suppose this is related to the first question)


This is with OpenGL btw

Thanks!

Dont worry about what they use in the industry. Worry about learning how to program. Over time you'll become accustom to general ideas and more experienced in picking up new languages and apis.

If you want to be a programmer , then in the long term, you need to develop the skill of being able to learn new APIs quickly. Learning any API is good practice of this skill.

Focus one one thing at a time. Once you've mastered one language/api, it'll be that much easier to pick up a new language.

for a good laugh check out http://thedailywtf.com/ There's tons of examples of people getting jobs without knowing how to use the tools they're expected to. I'm not condoning this but trying to point out that the main point is to learn to program, and not worry about what others use.

Hello,

I've been looking at SDL and it seems like a nice way to easily start creating basic games, but before i commit to learning it i have a couple questions.

Would learning SDL be useful in the long term? Obviously its great for transitioning from console c++ to graphics and such (from what i have read) but is that all its good for? Is it only really used as a learning/simplicity tool? Or is it used actively in the industry?

Also is SDL the definitive best option for a game interface layer gui library thingy? How about qt, wxwidgets or native APIs such as win32? (i suppose this is related to the first question)


This is with OpenGL btw

Thanks!

SDL is a good library, its stalled at version 1.2 for quite some time though so i'd recommend going with 1.3 despite it not being finished yet.

As for the GUI parts you really can't use SDL, its not a GUI library, it only handles basic things like creating a window, handling input, etc in a portable manner.

If you are making a event driven cross platform GUI application i'd recommend QT or wxwidgets (Games normally aren't centered around a GUI though), i wouldn't touch win32 with a 20 foot pole (its an awful API), for Windows only GUI applications i'd go with WPF and C# instead.

For a game GUI it really depends on your needs, if you only need simple controls and hud elements you can roll your own system quite easily, If you need more advanced controls, overlapping windows, etc you could take a look at something like CEGUI (it works very well with OpenGL)