SDL Has Been Ported to Sony PS2

JigSaw writes: "SDL, the open source answer to DirectX, is a well-known cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide fast access to the graphics framebuffer and audio device. Sam Lantiga, the maintainer and SDL project leader, announced today on the SDL mailing list, that he ported the library to Playstation2 and it will allow to write and run SDL games (open source or commercial, as SDL is LGPL) on the Linux port for the PS2. Great to see Linux to become the source for a whole bunch of free SDL games (some of them with commercial-level quality), easily recompiled for the PS2 and run them without having to spend $49 USD for each game. This release will be even more significant in the near future, as SONY is planning to release the broadband adapter add-on, which will enable small developers (and even companies) to release free or shareware games, downloadable in binary or source format (most SDL games are known to have small sizes) from the web, and hop, to your TV!"

Comments

Commercial quality?

[SilentChris]

"Great to see Linux to become the source for a whole bunch of free SDL games (some of them with commercial-level quality)"

Ahem. *cough* :) Someone's been going to the school of CmdrTaco's all-inclusive non-objective statements. I would hardly call a majority of the SDL games commercial quality. A majority are playful diversions (like minesweeper) and the few that are commercial quality ARE commercial (like Loki's wares).

Don't get me wrong: I think SDL is a step in the right direction. But are you going to get Joe User to play these games when for $20 used you can get a decent copy of Final Fantasy for PS?

Language bindings

[JayKey]

Another cool thing about SDL is that it supports various languages through its bindings. For example I tested the guile/scheme binding a while ago.. the code needed to get things on the screen was only a few lines... sorry to say, but it lacked some features and crashed in my face.. but at least in my mind it would be awefully cool to prototype effect/AI/ ideas etc using SDL and Scheme. Other people may already have some experience using SDL with other interpreted languages?
-jk
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil" - Don Knuth