Ryan C.

Gordon
icculus.org

Game Development with SDL 2.0
A few notes
Feel free to interrupt!
Slides are at https://icculus.org/SteamDevDays/
Today is a high-level overview.
Feel free to tweet at @icculus
Who am I?
Hacker, game developer, porter
Port games, build tools
Freelance
15 years experience
What is SDL?
Simple Directmedia Layer
Open source answer to DirectX.
Cross-platform, powerful, fast, easy.
15 years of development.
Many games, millions of gamers.
https://www.libsdl.org/
History
Started by Sam Lantinga for Executor.
Used by Loki Software for Linux titles.
Now a de facto standard.
SDL 2.0 is the new hotness.
Features
Modern OSes and devices
Portable game framework
Multiple API targets
Makes hard things easy
Written in C
zlib licensed

Simple DirectMedia Layer
Copyright (C) 1997-2014 Sam Lantinga <[email protected]>

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
freely, subject to the following restrictions:

1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
appreciated but is not required.
2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
misrepresented as being the original software.
3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

Platforms
Linux
Mac OS X
Windows
Unix
Android
iOS
Haiku
Raspberry Pi
Other interesting places
64-bit clean, endian clean
Subsystems
Video
Audio
Events
Rendering
Joystick
Game Controllers
Haptic
Shared Libraries
CPU Info
Stdlib
Timers
Threads
RWops
Filesystems
Power
Asserts
Pick Your Target
Runtime choice with dlopen()
X11, Wayland, Mir
ALSA, PulseAudio, OSS, esd, arts, nas
winmm, DirectSound, XAudio2
Dirt-simple Direct3D example
WNDCLASSEX winClass;
MSG uMsg;

memset(&uMsg,0,sizeof(uMsg));

winClass.lpszClassName = "MY_WINDOWS_CLASS";
winClass.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX);
winClass.style = CS_HREDRAW | CS_VREDRAW;
winClass.lpfnWndProc = WindowProc;
winClass.hInstance = hInstance;
winClass.hIcon = LoadIcon(hInstance, (LPCTSTR)IDI_DIRECTX_ICON);
winClass.hIconSm = LoadIcon(hInstance, (LPCTSTR)IDI_DIRECTX_ICON);
winClass.hCursor = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW);
winClass.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)GetStockObject(BLACK_BRUSH);
winClass.lpszMenuName = NULL;
winClass.cbClsExtra = 0;
winClass.cbWndExtra = 0;

if( RegisterClassEx(&winClass) == 0 )
return E_FAIL;

g_hWnd = CreateWindowEx( NULL, "MY_WINDOWS_CLASS",
"Direct3D (DX9) - Full Screen",
WS_POPUP | WS_SYSMENU | WS_VISIBLE,
0, 0, 640, 480, NULL, NULL, hInstance, NULL );

if( g_hWnd == NULL )
return E_FAIL;

ShowWindow( g_hWnd, nCmdShow );
UpdateWindow( g_hWnd );
g_pD3D = Direct3DCreate9( D3D_SDK_VERSION );

if( g_pD3D == NULL )
{
// TO DO: Respond to failure of Direct3DCreate8
return;
}

//
// For the default adapter, examine all of its display modes to see if any
// of them can give us the hardware support we desire.
//

int nMode = 0;
D3DDISPLAYMODE d3ddm;
bool bDesiredAdapterModeFound = false;

int nMaxAdapterModes = g_pD3D->GetAdapterModeCount( D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT,
D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8 );

for( nMode = 0; nMode < nMaxAdapterModes; ++nMode )
{
if( FAILED( g_pD3D->EnumAdapterModes( D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT,
D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8, nMode, &d3ddm ) ) )
{
// TO DO: Respond to failure of EnumAdapterModes
return;
}

// Does this adapter mode support a mode of 640 x 480?
if( d3ddm.Width != 640 || d3ddm.Height != 480 )
continue;

// Does this adapter mode support a 32-bit RGB pixel format?
if( d3ddm.Format != D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8 )
continue;

// Does this adapter mode support a refresh rate of 75 MHz?
if( d3ddm.RefreshRate != 75 )
continue;

// We found a match!
bDesiredAdapterModeFound = true;
break;
}

if( bDesiredAdapterModeFound == false )
{
// TO DO: Handle lack of support for desired adapter mode...
return;
}
// Can we get a 32-bit back buffer?
if( FAILED( g_pD3D->CheckDeviceType( D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT,
D3DDEVTYPE_HAL,
D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8,
D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8,
FALSE ) ) )
{
// TO DO: Handle lack of support for a 32-bit back buffer...
return;
}

// Can we get a z-buffer that's at least 16 bits?
if( FAILED( g_pD3D->CheckDeviceFormat( D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT,
D3DDEVTYPE_HAL,
D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8,
D3DUSAGE_DEPTHSTENCIL,
D3DRTYPE_SURFACE,
D3DFMT_D16 ) ) )
{
// TO DO: Handle lack of support for a 16-bit z-buffer...
return;
}

//
// Do we support hardware vertex processing? if so, use it.
// If not, downgrade to software.
//

D3DCAPS9 d3dCaps;

if( FAILED( g_pD3D->GetDeviceCaps( D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT,
D3DDEVTYPE_HAL, &d3dCaps ) ) )
{
// TO DO: Respond to failure of GetDeviceCaps
return;
}

DWORD flags = 0;

if( d3dCaps.VertexProcessingCaps != 0 )
flags = D3DCREATE_HARDWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING;
else
flags = D3DCREATE_SOFTWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING;
//
// Everything checks out - create a simple, full-screen device.
//

D3DPRESENT_PARAMETERS d3dpp;
memset(&d3dpp, 0, sizeof(d3dpp));

d3dpp.Windowed = FALSE;
d3dpp.EnableAutoDepthStencil = TRUE;
d3dpp.AutoDepthStencilFormat = D3DFMT_D16;
d3dpp.SwapEffect = D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD;
d3dpp.BackBufferWidth = 640;
d3dpp.BackBufferHeight = 480;
d3dpp.BackBufferFormat = D3DFMT_X8R8G8B8;
d3dpp.PresentationInterval = D3DPRESENT_INTERVAL_IMMEDIATE;

if( FAILED( g_pD3D->CreateDevice( D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT, D3DDEVTYPE_HAL, g_hWnd,
flags, &d3dpp, &g_pd3dDevice ) ) )
{
// TO DO: Respond to failure of CreateDevice
return;
}
// TO DO: Respond to failure of Direct3DCreate8
Really hard SDL version
SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO);

SDL_CreateWindow(
Hello, 0, 0, 640, 480,

SDL_WINDOW_FULLSCREEN |
SDL_WINDOW_OPENGL
);
Video API
Multiple windows, multiple displays
Drawing: Software, OpenGL, GLES, Direct3D
Makes OpenGL context management easy
Exposes system GUI events
Message boxes
Video API Concepts
Windows
Surfaces
Textures
OpenGL, etc.
Render API
Simple 2D API
Backed by GPU
Sprites, color ops, blending, primitives, scaling, rotation
Write simple games fast
Make legacy games amazing!
Need more power? Use OpenGL.
Dungeons of Dredmor vs SDL2.
Disclaimer
Gaslamp Games is not shipping these things, or planning to at the moment.
It was Just For Fun.
Using OpenGL
SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO);
SDL_Window *win = SDL_CreateWindow(
Hello, 0, 0, 640, 480, SDL_WINDOW_OPENGL);
SDL_GL_CreateContext(win);

// START MAKING OPENGL CALLS HERE.

SDL_GL_SwapWindow(win);
Events
OS Events (mouse, keyboard, window)
Relative mouse mode
Touch API
Gestures
Joysticks and Game Controllers
Timers
Event loop
SDL_Event event;
while (SDL_PollEvent(&event))
{
switch (event.type) {
case
SDL_MOUSEMOTION:
// blah
case SDL_KEYDOWN:
// blah blah
case SDL_QUIT:
// bloop bleep
}
}
Joystick API
Multiple sticks
Polling or events
Query axes, buttons, hats, names
Connect and disconnect notifications
Game Controller API
Everything wants an XBox controller. ( :( )
Automatic configuration.
Steam Big Picture support
Crowd-sourced configurations
Less flexible, but Just Works really well.
Haptic API
Haptic == Force feedback
Supports controllers and mice!
Complex effects, simple rumble, left/right
Fire and forget
Audio API
VERY low-level. Maybe too low-level.
Multiple devices, connect/disconnect
Mono, Stereo, Quad, 5.1
8/16/32 bit, (un)signed, little/big, int/float
On-the-fly conversion/resampling
You feed us uncompressed PCM data in a callback.
Really, its low-level.
Only a relentless stream of PCM.
You mix, you spatialize, you manage.
Try SDL_mixer or OpenAL.
Threading API
SDL_CreateThread()
Mutexes
Semaphores
Conditions
Atomics
Other APIs
Shared Libraries
Message Boxes
Clipboard
syswm
CPU Info
Stdlib
Timers
RWops
Filesystems
Power
Asserts
SDL_main
The (Near) Future
Multiple mice
Audio capture, video capture
7.1 audio
Wayland, Mir, libdrc
WinRT and Windows Store apps
sdl12_compat
The Dynamic API
Your requests here!
Getting involved
Mailing lists! https://lists.libsdl.org/
Forums! https://forums.libsdl.org/
Wiki! https://wiki.libsdl.org/
Bugs! https://bugzilla.libsdl.org/
Buildbot! https://buildbot.libsdl.org/
Everything else! https://www.libsdl.org/
Thats all folks.
Questions? Answers!
Hire me.
https://icculus.org/SteamDevDays/
Ryan C. Gordon: [email protected]
https://twitter.com/icculus
http://gplus.to/icculus