Original author(s) Written in C | Developer(s) SDL Community | |
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Initial release 1998; 19 years ago (1998) Stable release 2.0.5 / 20 October 2016; 4 months ago (2016-10-20)
Deprecated v1.2.15: 20 January 2012; 5 years ago (2012-01-20) Operating system | ||
Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is a cross-platform software development library designed to provide a hardware abstraction layer to computer multimedia hardware components. Software developers can use it to write high-performance computer games and other multimedia applications that can run on many operating systems such as Android, iOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and other platforms.
Contents
- History
- Software architecture
- Subsystems
- Language bindings
- Supported back ends
- Reception and adoption
- References
SDL manages video, audio, input devices, CD-ROM, threads, shared object loading, networking and timers. For 3D graphics it can handle an OpenGL or Direct3D context.
The library is internally written in C and, depending on the target platform, C++ or Objective-C, and provides the application programming interface in C, with bindings to other languages available. It is free and open-source software subject to the requirements of the zlib License since version 2.0 and with prior versions subject to the GNU Lesser General Public License. Under the zlib License, SDL 2.0 is freely available for static linking in closed-source projects, unlike SDL 1.2.
SDL is extensively used in the industry in both large and small projects. Over 700 games, 180 applications, and 120 demos have also been posted on the library website.
A common misconception is that SDL is a game engine, but this is not true. However, the library is well-suited for building an engine on top of it.
History
Sam Lantinga created the library, first releasing it in early 1998, while working for Loki Software. He got the idea while porting a Windows application to Macintosh. He then used SDL to port Doom to BeOS (see Doom source ports). Several other free libraries were developed to work alongside SDL, such as SMPEG and OpenAL. He also founded Galaxy Gameworks in 2008 to help commercially support SDL, although the company plans are currently on hold due to time constraints. Soon after putting Galaxy Gameworks on hold, Lantinga announced that SDL 1.3 (which would then later become SDL 2.0) would be licensed under the zlib License. Lantinga announced SDL 2.0 on 14 July 2012, at the same time announcing that he was joining Valve Corporation, the first version of which was announced the same day he joined the company. Lantinga announced the stable release of SDL 2.0.0 on 13 August 2013.
SDL 2.0 is a major update to the SDL 1.2 codebase with a different, not backwards-compatible API. It replaces several parts of the 1.2 API with more general support for multiple input and output options.
Some feature additions include multiple window support, hardware-accelerated 2D graphics, and better Unicode support.
Support for Mir and Wayland was added in SDL 2.0.2 and enabled by default in SDL 2.0.4.
Better support for Android in forthcoming 2.0.4.
Software architecture
SDL is a wrapper around the operating-system-specific functions that the game needs to access. The only purpose of SDL is to provide a common framework for accessing these functions for multiple operating systems (cross-platform). SDL provides support for 2D pixel operations, sound, file access, event handling, timing and threading. It is often used to complement OpenGL by setting up the graphical output and providing mouse and keyboard input, since OpenGL comprises only rendering.
A game using the Simple DirectMedia Layer will not automatically run on every operating system, further adaptations must be applied. These are reduced to the minimum, since SDL also contains a few abstraction APIs for frequent functions offered by an operating system.
The syntax of SDL is function-based: all operations done in SDL are done by passing parameters to subroutines (functions). Special structures are also used to store the specific information SDL needs to handle. There are a few different subsystems SDL categorizes its functions under.
SDL can be used instead of XInput and XAudio2.
Subsystems
SDL is divided into several subsystems:
Besides this basic, low-level support, there also are a few separate official libraries that provide some more functions. These comprise the "standard library", and are provided on the official website and included in the official documentation:
Other, non-standard libraries also exist. For example: SDL_Collide on Sourceforge created by Amir Taaki.
Language bindings
The SDL 2.0 library has language bindings for C, C++, Pascal, Perl (via sdl.perl.org), Python (via PySDL2.0), C#, Lua, OCaml, Rust, Nim, Vala and Genie.
Supported back-ends
Because of the way SDL is designed, much of its source code is split into separate modules for each operating system, to make calls to the underlying system. When SDL is compiled, the appropriate modules are selected for the target system. Following back-ends are available:
SDL 1.2 has support for RISC OS (dropped in 2.0).
An unofficial Sixel back-end is available for SDL 1.2.
Reception and adoption
Over the years SDL was used for many commercial and non-commercial video game projects, for instance MobyGames listed 120 games using SDL in 2013 and the SDL website itself listed around 700 games in 2012. Important commercial examples are Angry Birds or Unreal Tournament, from the open source domain OpenTTD, The Battle for Wesnoth or Freeciv.
The cross-platform game releases of the popular Humble Indie Bundles for Linux, Mac and Android are often SDL based.
SDL is also often used for later ports on new platforms with existing legacy code, for instance the PC game Homeworld was ported to the Pandora handheld and Jagged Alliance 2 for Android via SDL.
Also, several non video game software uses SDL, examples are the emulators DOSBox and VisualBoyAdvance.
There were several books written for the development with SDL (see further readings).
SDL is used in university courses teaching multimedia and computer science, for instance, in a workshop about game programming using libSDL at the University of Cadiz in 2010, or a Game Design discipline at UTFPR (Ponta Grossa campus) in 2015.