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This chapter treats two very important SDL3 concepts, namely SDL3 surfaces and SDL3 textures.

Briefly: The Basics of Graphics Programming

Loading and the movement of objects in a game (or other applications) is a major concept in (game) programming. These images are then refered to as sprites, usually. Let’s have a look at a simple example:

Here are two screenshots from a simple game. The player has to move the green paddle up- and downwards to prevent the bouncing blue ball from getting through to the right side. The game uses two sprites, the blue ball sprite and the green paddle sprite (see left screenshot). The background color is set to black. The left screenshot is how the game appears to the player. The right screenshot demonstrates what happens if each frame is drawn onto each other without clearing it in between. – Now it is clearly visible that the sprites are redrawn again and again with slightly different coordinates, and that is how (game) graphics work (even for the most sophisticated 3d games):

1. Draw the (new) frame
2. Show the frame (in a window on screen)
3. Clear the frame (and go back to step 1)

Briefly: The Relation between Graphic Objects (e.g. Sprites) and Hardware

Actually there are just three locations where these images are stored in your computer system.

1. All images (photo images, drawings, sprites for 2d games, textures for 3d games) are stored on your harddrive somewhere.
2. If you start a photo viewer, a paint program, a 2d game or a 3d game, in all cases the corresponding images need to be loaded from your harddrive to RAM (Random-Access Memory) since displaying and manipulation (e.g. rotation of a photo image by 90°) of images loaded to RAM is much, much faster.
3. Especially for games a fast access to the image data is highly important! And finally there isn’t just one RAM but two, a CPU controlled one located on the motherboard used by every program/application that needs some RAM. The second RAM is located right at your graphic board and controlled by the so-called GPU (graphics processing unit). This is what we want to use if we develop games since it is dedicated, optimized and just hungry for tasks related to fast image processing.

Many games and applications do not only target at common computer systems, but for mobile devices, e.g. smart phones. The principles described are also true for these devices even though there may be differences in detail.

The SDL3 Surface

The SDL3 surface allows you to represent graphic objects like sprites. Every SDL2 surface has a width and height, a pixel format and other properties. The surfaces have the advantage that they are very easy to use and understand conceptually.

SDL3 surfaces are usually represented by a PSDL_Surface handle.

The SDL2 Texture

The SDL3 texture allows you to represent graphic objects just like the SDL3 surface does, although there is a major difference: It is hardware accalerated. So the graphic object is stored in the graphic board’s RAM and any manipulation is done by the graphic board’s GPU.

So as a rule,

always use SDL3 Textures to render your graphic objects in a game

then you go for high performance! You can barely manipulate them directly. SDL3 textures are usually represented by a PSDL_Texture handle.

Oftentimes the workflow is to prepare some graphics using SDL3 surfaces, but then it is transformed into a SDL3 texture for rendering in a game.

Three Ways to the PSDL_Texture

So, how to get a PSDL_Texture? In principle there are three ways to create SDL3 textures. For way 2 and 3 the flow diagram may illustrate how it works.

Way 1: From Scratch

You create a SDL3 texture from scratch, so you set a pixel format and texture access format and have to fill in your texture data manually. This is the most sophisticated way and will not be covered at this point.

Way 2: From SDL3 Surface

2) You create a SDL3 surface from an image file first and then you create the SDL3 texture from the SDL3 surface. This way is shown in the diagram but it means two steps: From left to bottom and from bottom to top.

Way 3: Directly from Image File

3) You create a SDL3 texture from an image file directly. This is shown in the diagram, too. This is the simplest way to create a SDL3 texture.

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