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SDL is a GREAT graphics library that is cross platform and easy to use. Simply amazing what you can do with it, and how easily. There are libraries out there for TTF support, along with networking and multi-threading. Really, everything you need for a simple 2D graphics game.

Project 1: Make a puzzle game, maybe one of those image sliding things where you divide an image up into a 5x5 set of tiles, mix them up, remove one and you have to shuffle things. Additions to this would be to make the tiles 'animate' (slide, as opposed to just move), let the user choose an image, record high scores/times. Advanced stuff would be to make it a client/server program and have two players compete with each other for fastest times. Add chat features so they can talk before/after matches.

These are all basics, but they're really, REALLY hard to learn at first when you've never done anything and the concepts are foreign. My first client/server game took me months to debug and get working right, and that was an 'eat the apple' type of game.

--trb

It is a slow and poorly designed monolith that often requires considerable chiseling and hacking in order to work with even the most simple of 3D games.

Then don't use it for games. Use libsdl or something similar.

X isn't for 3D games. X - with its wonderful network transparancy - is for people who like to use computers to get work done.

Linux already does OpenGL very well, and OpenGL is very competitive with Direct3D.

DirectX isn't merely 3D graphics. It's everything you need to create a game, including sound, joystick and keyboard inputs, network play, etc. SDL is an attempt to group the same sort of functionality into a single, easy-on-developers library. My impressions are that it's really good, but still an imperfect substitute for DirectX.

But even if SDL and OpenGL were superior, the Linux world would still be locked out of DirectX games. Microsoft has made it seductively easy to publish games based on their proprietary platform, and very few game developers are going to trade it in for the cross-platform goodness of SDL.

has a clone under SDL... See the SDL home page for a link :-)

Simon.

When Microsoft get around to Freeing Windows, perhaps TrollTech will Free the Windows version of Qt?

As another poster points out, wxWindows does a lot of the Qt stuff in the WIMP arena, and I'd like to add that systems like libSDL pretty much cover the unWIMPy, less structured stuff anyway. Having a spectrum of alternatives is good, and since the smallest disk I can buy these days without going out of my way is 40GB, I don't have a problem with installing a dozen or so sets of libraries.

Posted annonymously as this is a bit off topic, but I can never pass by a chance to recomend SDL, if you do give it a shot. Anything writen with it in C/C++ should be portable with little to no effort between windows,linux, and osx, as well as to the dreamcast with just a little bit more porting work to it. I'm working on a couple 2D games, and I wouldn't be going half as fast if it weren't for SDL.

Now, doesn't libSDL again depend on X? ;-)

No, it doesn't. There is an X backend to SDL, but it can also do the fun stuff on its own, as well, and runs on many platforms. From the FAQ:

Q: How do I choose a specific video driver?
A: You can set the environment variable "SDL_VIDEODRIVER" to the name of the driver you want to use. The drivers available depend on the platform and SDL compile-time options. Here is a partial list for some platforms:

• Linux:
• x11 - (default) Use the X11 windowing system
• dga - Use XFree86 DGA 2.0 for fullscreen hardware acceleration
• fbcon - Use the framebuffer console
• directfb - Use the DirectFB API
• svgalib - Use the SVGAlib API
• ggi - Use the General Graphics Interface API
• aalib - Use the Ascii Art library

Win32:

• directx - (default) Use the DirectDraw API
• windib - Use the standard Win32 GDI

And from the website:

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, and SymbianOS.

Thus, not only can his example be made to work under X (theoretically), but it will also work on pretty much every other OS you'd want to use it on, and some you wouldn't. Also, in addition to being runnable anywhere, it can also run directly on the Linux framebuffer, which means that all that needs doing is hardware acceleration for the framebuffer, and then Y, as well as many other SDL apps (perhaps with slight modification), will run quite well without having to have X loaded. That, to me, sounds like a good thing.

--Dan

The fact that they take so much time to properly configure for gaming (if it even can be configured) and the absence of a "unified" device interface (Windows has DirectX, what does the linux side have that's universal/standard?) is a big reason why games aren't targetted for the platform.

We have SDL

> When linux comes out with a directx equivelent then they might write for it ( this is ONE set of API's ) . Not opengl doesn't count, that is only graphics.

> You need sound,graphics,networking,AND graphics card writers writing to those drivers. That is what makes windows such a good gaming platform. Linux needs to consolidate and throw away the 4 graphics libraries and the 3 different sound package and the 60 windowing library packages and get down to one standard that EVERYONE uses.

Sounds like a recipe for SDL.

When linux comes out with a directx equivelent then they might write for it ( this is ONE set of API's ) . Not opengl doesn't count, that is only graphics.

You need sound,graphics,networking,AND graphics card writers writing to those drivers. That is what makes windows such a good gaming platform. Linux needs to consolidate and throw away the 4 graphics libraries and the 3 different sound package blah blah blah blah blah...

Oh darn... wait, you mean something like this? Well, if you don't like that, how about this one? Oh, I see... you forgot to do any research before you made you groundless claim.

Then maybe folks will port apps. If I write a game on linux 7.2 blah blah blah...

"Linux 7.2", huh? Thanks for proving my point that you don't know wtf you're talking about. "Interesting" my ass.

Well, as far as Doom goes, there is a Windows port of LSDLDoom that uses LibSDL for graphics. Everything except for Midi (because I'm too lazy to get it to work) works great under WinXP. As an added bonus, you're not limited to the 320x240 that the original Dos version had.

Just as SDL_image provides additional image loading, SDL_sound provides additional sound loading, SDL_mixer provides a nicer interface to SDL's audio layer, and SDL_ttf and SDL_bmf add font loading interfaces, there are add-ons for primitives (SDL_draw, SDL_gfx, SDL_prim, sge) and GUIs (paraGUI, SDL_gui, wGui, GUIlib, aedGUI).

As you note, SDL is really a simple audio and framebuffer abstraction, and that's all it's ever been intended to be. A quick glance at the SDL library page, however, gives a quick idea of how extensions are kept modular, and how many there are for almost all reasonable applications of SDL.

Or, to put it another way, the tools are there -- but do you really want them in the core if all you're after is a simple framebuffer?

Just as SDL_image provides additional image loading, SDL_sound provides additional sound loading, SDL_mixer provides a nicer interface to SDL's audio layer, and SDL_ttf and SDL_bmf add font loading interfaces, there are add-ons for primitives (SDL_draw, SDL_gfx, SDL_prim, sge) and GUIs (paraGUI, SDL_gui, wGui, GUIlib, aedGUI).

As you note, SDL is really a simple audio and framebuffer abstraction, and that's all it's ever been intended to be. A quick glance at the SDL library page, however, gives a quick idea of how extensions are kept modular, and how many there are for almost all reasonable applications of SDL.

Or, to put it another way, the tools are there -- but do you really want them in the core if all you're after is a simple framebuffer?

Just as SDL_image provides additional image loading, SDL_sound provides additional sound loading, SDL_mixer provides a nicer interface to SDL's audio layer, and SDL_ttf and SDL_bmf add font loading interfaces, there are add-ons for primitives (SDL_draw, SDL_gfx, SDL_prim, sge) and GUIs (paraGUI, SDL_gui, wGui, GUIlib, aedGUI).

As you note, SDL is really a simple audio and framebuffer abstraction, and that's all it's ever been intended to be. A quick glance at the SDL library page, however, gives a quick idea of how extensions are kept modular, and how many there are for almost all reasonable applications of SDL.

Or, to put it another way, the tools are there -- but do you really want them in the core if all you're after is a simple framebuffer?

Just as SDL_image provides additional image loading, SDL_sound provides additional sound loading, SDL_mixer provides a nicer interface to SDL's audio layer, and SDL_ttf and SDL_bmf add font loading interfaces, there are add-ons for primitives (SDL_draw, SDL_gfx, SDL_prim, sge) and GUIs (paraGUI, SDL_gui, wGui, GUIlib, aedGUI).

As you note, SDL is really a simple audio and framebuffer abstraction, and that's all it's ever been intended to be. A quick glance at the SDL library page, however, gives a quick idea of how extensions are kept modular, and how many there are for almost all reasonable applications of SDL.

Or, to put it another way, the tools are there -- but do you really want them in the core if all you're after is a simple framebuffer?

Just as SDL_image provides additional image loading, SDL_sound provides additional sound loading, SDL_mixer provides a nicer interface to SDL's audio layer, and SDL_ttf and SDL_bmf add font loading interfaces, there are add-ons for primitives (SDL_draw, SDL_gfx, SDL_prim, sge) and GUIs (paraGUI, SDL_gui, wGui, GUIlib, aedGUI).

As you note, SDL is really a simple audio and framebuffer abstraction, and that's all it's ever been intended to be. A quick glance at the SDL library page, however, gives a quick idea of how extensions are kept modular, and how many there are for almost all reasonable applications of SDL.

Or, to put it another way, the tools are there -- but do you really want them in the core if all you're after is a simple framebuffer?

Id really like to try this OpenML SDK, but it seems you are requered to enter your phone number - now why is that??

*shrug*

SDL also offers crossplatform media functionality (and it beats the pants off of GLUT when working with OpenGL), and definitely doesn't have any such silly requirements. ;-)

Or you could just tell the OpenML people your phone number is 867-5309. :-)

Except that your model does not permit for the exchange of their information prior to the full payment for their design. As a consumer you are not permitted to know anything about their design, until they have been sufficiently compensated. You haven't shown that this model is superior.

The information as a service model is better for consumers and it is proven. Check Linux vs Windows

1. Demonstrate that "Linux vs Windows" is an example of the aforementioned scenario.
2. Show that if "Linux vs Windows" is an example, that any and/or all results are applicable to all assets in an information economy.
3. As you imply for your statement to be considered a response to the aforementioned claim for proof, and imply that such proof is existent, demonstrate a proof of the economic superiority of the aforementioned model of distribution.

Linux has advanced this quickly

Linux has been in development for almost twelve years, and many parts of its userland even longer. because information has been shared between competiting companies, Redhat, Suse, and others.

Companies that also have proprietary sources of revenue.

You didn't mention some of the other names, though, that have contributed code, money, or expansive technical information like Intel, IBM, Compaq, HP, CMI, and more. Companies that have no qualms with, or outright desire to make a commodity of operating systems, or the software market altogether. Companies that rely extensively on intellectual property protections for their own sources of income. Do you see Intel or IBM calling for the removal of intellectual property protections, citing a better economic result as their motivation? Do you even see RedHat doing that?

Redhat is profiting

I really hope you can do better than this, although I would be entirely interested in an explanation as to why you believe that this is evidence demonstrating the benefits of removing intellectual property protection.

And while I think your childish obsession with comparing Windows and Linux as a means of determining the success of such a model is more than a little cliche and incredibly useless, you can always take a look at how big a failure Microsoft is in comparison to RedHat. If you could even relate RedHat to your ideology, which is rather suspect at the least, you would probably do better to find a better example.

and other companies are trying to profit

Would that be more like MandrakeSoft, or more like VA Linux Systems/VA Software?

programmers are paid to produce code, not to sell it.

The number of programmers responsible for selling, rather than producing code, is anecdotally small. Intellectual property protections are most often used in either scenario.

This does benefit the user because we get better software

Do we? This certainly seems subjective to me. It hardly matters, however. It also doesn't lend any support to your ideology.

the wheel isnt constantly reinvented

The is constantly reinvented, on this planet where is your

You can direct them to Allegro (http://www.allegro.cc), or even pygame (http://pygame.seul.org) if they show an interest past your class. Both of these packages can be set up in Win32 (with some work), and are a great start in C/C++ and Python development. They're free, use free compilers, don't require too many additional libraries/includes, and they have excellent example programs the kids can play with/learn from. They also have support forums geared to beginners, and have very friendly followings willing to help newcomers.

SDL (http://www.libsdl.org) and Java (http://java.sun.com) are less optimal choices. SDL requires a ton of includes, and someetimes has a tricky compiler setup. Java doesn't have terribly much support for game programming, and doesn;t have a great game-support community.

Granted, they're not Klik and Play type programs, but it's useful to know about these things in case a student wants to continue their learning on their own.

Add to that a strong hobbyist community, an increasingly useful toolset, and you've got an environment where lots of different people and groups can innovate. You don't need to be a megacorp to make a fun or innovative game--innovation can be as simple as Tetris.

Just because the gaming industry is becoming more and more corporate doesn't mean that there's no space for a) innovation or b) indie shops/hobbyists. What more people need to realize is that you can make a Simple, fun game (shameless self-plug*) on your own time, so long as you're willing to accept your limitations. Just because you can't go toe-to-toe with EA or Rockstar doesn't mean that you can't make games or innovate...

* Disclaimer: Nothing about above game is particularly innovative, except, perhaps, the garden gnomes.

Linux and Unices have OpenGL, but are there standards for sound, input, multimedia etc ?

Yes, there is a cross-platform (aka Linux/BSD/Win32/MacOSX) library called SDL.

But it's sure a *real* professional-looking, modern, (sorry but SDL isn't professional nor modern IMHO) native library for Linux would be very good.

So here's the stupid question: why didn't (or hasn't) someone build a graphical syb-system that's modular?

At what level? SDL? GGI? GTK? Qt? wxWindows? KPart? Six of one, half a dozen of the other, perhaps you're spoilt for choice?

I use X, running apps off of a central development server. ddd over the network anyone? Every Windows box here even has an X server installed. I use X at home, and often run apps from home when at work using you gessed it, the X protocol.


I need X.


As for Linux not being a "real gaming platform", hardware accelerated OpenGL is fast enough on linux. And if you actually can get the specs to your graphics hardware, as in the PS2 linux kit,
there's nothing stopping you from writing "real games". SDL give you everything you need, running on XFree86, framebuffer, etc.

PS I write games for a living.

Dave

It doesn't. SDL does. I'm usually not one for short posts, but there's really not much else to say.

Part of the problem with comparing DirectX and OpenGL is that too many people forget there are ways of handling input, audio, etc other than DirectX.

For joystick and other input you can use SDL. Open source and uses the LGPL.

Platform independent code.

There are projects out there that aim to provide a platform-independent method to produce commercial-quality games. There is no real reason that a company has to struggle with long, difficult ports of system-oriented code if they use the platform independent OpenGL (and other libraries) instead.

Now, how do you convince developers (or, more importantly, their managers) of the value of this approach? I don't know, because to a manager market flexibility is just Yet Another Buzzword (TM).

Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games. You needn't rely on software ports to attract gamers to Linux (although I will admit that it does make things easier).

people into retro gaming, or required to use other old software. I'm so glad we are slowly approaching this point. UT2K3 has Linux support out of the box. The demise of Loki is something that I initially thought was going to set back the Linux gaming community for years, but then I've seen games like UT2K3, Castle Wolfenstein, and if you want to count their late to the punch arrival Never Winter Nights come out native. If we could only get Blizzard on the bandwagon, and Maxis more firmly seated the other developers would have little choice but to jump onboard. gatesh8r is right. If Wine gets to good to fast not only will it slow some developers to adopt Linux natively, it may loose a couple that we already have. I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole. The Mac actually has the attention of the developers, and porting from BSD to Linux should be much easier than porting from Windows to Linux. Of course if everyone adopts and improves on SDL and OpenGL they will have little to worry about when porting anyways. Especially if OpenGL2 ever makes it way to daylight with all the Active X type replacements it's supposed to have available.

I guess that is what heppens when open source gets good. Is this a direct response to the popularity of SDL? [www.libsdl.org] Will we see more and more companies (L)GPL'ing their code just to compete with the open source alternatives?

http://www.libsdl.org/index.php
(Pulled from the What is It):
SDL is a free cross-platform multi-media development API
- http://www.libsdl.org/

a new game machine that lowers the bar for entry and has a unique revenue model

May I suggest that you take a look at:

SDL - 2D and input (granted, it doesn't support as wide a range of input devices, but in most cases keyboard and mouse are all you need
fmod - best sound lib out there, used by loads of commercial games.
HawkNL/HawkVoice - good networking libs

Hope that helps you out. It helped me out.

--

The only way to get game developers to come to Linux is to develop a Direct-X like API that makes it easy to develop Linux-native games.

What's wrong with SDL / OpenGL? It is stable, featureful, and cross-platform. The API is full featured, and the implementation is rock-solid. Throw in OpenAL, and you have got everything that DirectX does (except stupid patented crap like force-feedback input) in a standards-based package.
That is about as "linux-native" as it gets. I can't think of a single desktop-targetted distro that doesn't include the SDL libraries. If more windows developers used SDL for their games, then the Linux and MacOSX ports would be almost effortless.

The only way to get game developers to come to Linux is to develop a Direct-X like API that makes it easy to develop Linux-native games.

You mean like SDL? It was developed originally by Loki, and was used for their ports to Linux...

How about SDL, developed primarily by Loki? Pretty decent so far, from what I've used of it.

" turns everyone's favorite hackable console (the Xbox) "

Hey! The Dreamcast Scene is just as hot right now, especially now that SDL has been ported!

Do you know anything about SDL beyond that one sentence summary you posted?

SDL provides a video context for OpenGL, it doesn't/won't/shouldn't try to be it's own 3d api.

" Neither of the two do anything to help you get any sound out of your system, or input into it (gamepads, flightsticks), which is an absolute mess WRT linux right now."

1. Audio - did you even read that one sentence summary you posted? And in addition to standard stereo pcm data, it can also play audio cds, and can provide an audio context for OpenAL for 3D environmental sound.
2. input - yes, SDL handles input, anyway you like it. Keyboard, mice/trackballs, gamepads/joysticks(provided you have a joystick driver loaded, which no distro I know of seems to do out of the box).
3. SDL does even more. I suggest you check it out before you shoot it down so quickly.

Key features of the Network Audio System include:

• Device-independent audio over the network
• Lots of audio file and data formats
• Can store sounds in server for rapid replay
• Extensive mixing, separating, and manipulation of audio data
• Simultaneous use of audio devices by multiple applications
• Use by a growing number of ISVs
• Small size
• Free! No obnoxious licensing terms

• Festival - The Festival Speech Synthesis System.
• mpg123 - a command line MP3 player
• GAIM - a free AOL IM client
• OpenOffice (StarOffice) - the (now opensourced) StarOffice Suite has built-in NAS support for the Solaris and Linux Platforms.
• The Qt Library - from Trolltech supports NAS natively. You will need to pass the '-system-nas-sound' to './configure' before building.
• libSDL - SDL, the Simple DirectMedia Layer library, now has native NAS support thanks to Erik Inge Bols\x{00F8}
• XAnim - the X Animation viewer
• XBoing - a blockout type X game
• XPilot - a multiplayer client/server space warfare game
• Xemacs - the best cross-plaform, cross-language IDE
• Alsaplayer - A NAS Output plugin written by Erik Inge Bols\x{00F8} is now supplied with the Alsaplayer distribution.
• X MultiMedia System (XMMS). A NAS Output plugin written by Willem Monsuwe is available at ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/users/willem/
• Wine. A NAS plugin written by Nicolas Escuder is now available with the WINE distrubution.

"but I mean something more higher level - like DirectSound"

SDL?

for quite some time now.

(Link referenced by http://www.mingw.org/mingwfaq.shtml#faq-cross )

IMO, Linux needs games in order to "make it" in the mass market. It already has the good O/S, it has the word processing software, it has GUIs if you want them - the only thing it doesn't have is a good games library.

I agree with you. However, just be patient, it's coming. It takes time to build a whole infrastructure capable of supporting the full lifecycle of a game development project. It takes time for massive numbers of independent developers to absorb the technical background and learn the skills to come up to the same level as a pro game developer. But look here and here and tell me it isn't happening. As open source developers, one thing we have is plenty of time. That means time to get it right, time to build best of breed tools, time to build a community of first hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of open source game developers. It's happening, I can assure you. Sooner than you think the worldwide programming talent pool for open source games will grow to exceed in numbers the largest commercial game company by an order of magnitude. What's more, that talent pool will include many professional game developers, working in their free time just because they love it, or they want to build their reputation. In that, game developers are no different than any other breed of open source developer.

But it takes more than programmers to make a game, it takes artists and game developers with both excellent skills and good taste. Right now, this side of the community lags way behind the programming side, but that too is a temporary situation. The artists will arrive when the tools are there, and the tools are well on their way. Note that the whole animation industry has basically switched to Linux. Sure, most of the software they're using is proprietary/expensive, but that's changing rapidly.

• Best Free Game - Frozen Bubble
• Best Free 3D Action Game - Cube
• Best Free Arcade Game - Frozen Bubble
• Best Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - PySol
• Best Free Multiplayer Action Game - BZFlag
• Best Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Freeciv
• Best Free Role-Playing Game - NetHack: Falcon's Eye
• Best Free Simulation Game - Flight Gear
• Best Free Single Player Strategy Game - Freeciv

• Best Non-Free Game - Quake 3 Arena
• Best Non-Free 3D Action Game - Return To Castle Wolfenstein
• Best Non-Free Arcade Game - Space Tripper
• Best Non-Free Cards/Board/Gambling Game - Eric's Ultimate Solitaire
• Best Non-Free Multiplayer Action Game - Quake 3 Arena
• Best Non-Free Multiplayer Strategy Game - Heroes of Might and Magic 3
• Best Non-Free Role-Playing Game - Ultima I: A Legend Is Reborn
• Best Non-Free Simulation Game - SimCity 3000 Unlimited
• Best Non-Free Single Player Strategy Game - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

• Best Emulator - ScummVM
• Best Game Support Library - SDL
• Best Graphics - Unreal Tournament 2003
• Best Sound/Music - Frozen Bubble
• Best Toy - Celestia
• Most Original/Unique Game - Liquid War
• Most Promising Linux Game Project - Planeshift

"OK, bear with me. DirectX has been ported through WineX [transgaming.com] to various other platforms. This allows a performance advantage that no other Crossplatform [trolltech.com] GUI [eclipse.org] toolkits [wxwindows.org] can possibly acheive."

Hav you ever tried SDL? Also, today OpenGL tends to give good performance while being (almost) portable.

My guess is that they're using SDL (or something similar, but probably SDL since it has that Professional Quality[tm] and has just about the only 99% working fullscreen mode I've seen on X11). Just the game in window or fullscreen, and it doesn't depend on any specific WM or desktop environment.

The KDE is probably because that was the developer's weird idea of a good desktop environment =)

Funny you should bring this up.

This is the main problem I'm facing right now.
I am the technical guy on my kid's school board(8 people plus the principal).
This is a private k-8 school with about 300 students.

Linux completely makes sense for this school barring one thing. Educational software. Among other pieces they have Reader Rabbit(tm) and HyperStudio. Neither of which I have been able to emulate in Linux.

What we really need now is an organization to push the importance of having this software ported to Linux. As people start to realize that school's techonology budgets should go towards hardware instead of Microsoft licenses, Linux is becoming more and more important.

OpenOffice.org is perfect for an office suite, but these other eductional software pieces really need to be ported.

Many of these programs are DOS-based or even win32 + quicktime based(yuck). They are flashy noisy programs that younger kids really seem to like.

The use SDL would make a lot more sense as a foundation for educational software. Bill Kendrick's Tuxpaint is one example of a fun little program that is cross-platform using SDL.

If there's already an organization out there pushing Linux educational software, I haven't heard of it.
It doesn't have have to be free as in beer or speech, but It should be cross-platform from the get go.

Actually, LGP is an SDL house. So if you're using a windowing system that has both an SDL backend and a decent OpenGL implementation, you should be fine.

Have you seen SDL? It does what DirectX does and is platform independant.

Linux needs the equivalent of Microsoft's DirectX API's

a single, unified graphical interface which substantially eases progarmming issues

Linux also needs the equivalent of Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) for true automated configuration of new hardware, especially "hot docked" external devices through the USB 2.0 and IEEE-1394 interfaces.

why do ppl always compare dx against opengl? they are two quite different things. + opengl is graphics api + directx is api for graphics,sound,network,input devices. you should compare SDL or maybe allegro (dont remember the link) against dx but not a graphics api!

• Allegro
• Clanlib
• SDL

Here's a sound engine.

Here's a movie player.

I want my client now, please!