|
What is SDL? SDL is a set of units which provide a free, easy and platform-independent access to features needed for developing high performance games and applications. This includes easy access to graphic, sound and input handling (keyboard, mouse, joystick) for Freepascal. (Read more here.)
Who made SDL? Originally SDL was developed under C/C++ (by S. Lantinga for Loki Games) but fortunately the headers got translated to Pascal units (JEDI-SDL project maintained by D. Louis) so the SDL library is quite usable for Pascal developers as well. Both SDL and the JEDI-SDL project are under further development today. What is this page about? This page is made to help you configure your Windows system to work with the SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) library under Freepascal and to acquaint yourself with SDL's concepts and commands. Be aware though that my tutorial gives just a brief overview and introduction to the SDL library and is far from being all-embracing. The tutorial aims at Pascal programmers knowing the basic concepts (loops, functions, pointers) of Pascal and now like to progress to SDL. |
| 1st November 2009 | Updated chapter 2 and 3. Explanation of variable type UInt32 shifted from chapter 3 to 2. I decided to give the exact definition for any function provided in my tutorial according to the corresponding source code. So instead of general arguments like "components" or "parameters", the exact parameter list and their variable types are shown. |
|---|---|
| 27th September 2009 | Took me longer than expected, but added now the new chapter 8 describing how to prepare Freepascal and SDL for OpenGL programming. Thanks to Roin who mentioned a now fixed major bug which let the source code snippets appear centered instead of left aligned in many browsers (Epiphany, Firefox, IE). Changes in main page. Reworked chapter 3. Moved information about SDL_DELAY function from chapter 4 to chapter 3. Added a result box at the end of any chapter describing what the program is going to do if working correctly. |
| 8th July 2009 | Along with the new URL www.Freepascal-meets-SDL.net, a whole bunch of updates come up. I reworked and shortened chapter 1 now giving some information about the recently provided JEDI-SDL units of FPC since version 2.2.2. Renamed chapter 1b to 1a. More details on SDL_DELAY function in chapter 4. Reworked the table of chapter 5. Added new chapter 3a describing the usage of different image format (e.g. JPG, PNG, GIF...). I'm working and planning to release two new chapters in the next time, so stay tuned. Please don't forget to update your links or bookmarks to the new URL. |
| 13th July 2008 | Reader Robvdl mentioned that Firefox users aren't able to view many images and to download some files. I fixed this now. Thanks Robvdl. I also added a new subforum now for questions related to programming. |
| 26th April 2008 | New chapter 7 added! Now you learn how to introduce music and sound to your programs. I reworked chapter 3 and now explain not only how to display a picture but how to blit parts of pictures which is a quite important feature at all. Updated chapter 1 and link section a little. | 13th January 2008 | Happy new year! I reworked the first chapter because the JEDI-SDL project now provides an auto-installer. The new chapter 1b describes the installation and configuration of Lazarus. This surely isn't directly related to SDL but the combination of SDL and Lazarus yields a quite powerful development kit. The links are updated and I started adding copyright information. |
| 7th October 2007 | Read in a pascal development forum that someone had problems getting my tutorials to run because he didn't know about CRT unit which I used habbitually in any chapter. When I thought about it, it seemed really avoidable in most cases so I reworked all chapters and removed it if possible. |
| 26th July 2007 | Reworked chapter 6 for JEDI-SDL and added mouse handling. |
| 15th June 2007 | Reworked chapter 5 for JEDI-SDL. |
| 6th May 2007 | Reworked chapter 4 for JEDI-SDL. |
| 4th May 2007 | Major changes have been applied to this site. Since the SDL4FP project seems to be dead I will now rewrite all tutorials for JEDI-SDL project. This project is alive and in development and has much more translated headers. The first three chapters are finished and can be accessed by the menu. The old chapters for SDL4FP are available, too but you should really think about switching to JEDI-SDL. |
| 3rd April 2006 | Added first part of chapter 6, which describes event handling. Furthermore I updated some chapters, added some links and a brand new tables page which contain two useful tables. I will add new tables if I think they could be useful. |
| 15th October 2005 | Added new chapter, added links and download area. |
| 22nd July 2005 | Made some updates to the site and added a new chapter. |
| 20th July 2005 | Today page got online with first three chapters describing how to configure a windows system to use Freepascal and SDL library. Furthermore there is a forum to keep contact if needed. |