Mr. Jabberwocky Pssst! Making a game from the ground up

[yaustar]

http://seb.fotons.nl/Jabberwock.html

A collection of posts made at the GP32X forums Jabberwocky's progress reports on his development on a game. While I question some parts of his coding style, I can't deny the amount of detail inserted. It gives a clear idea on the steps and blocks taken to build a game using SDL and getting it finished.

[SG57]

I have tried to learn SDL (way way back in the past) but never really like how it's so jammed packed full of everything, even things you won't need in your project meaning over kill. I applaud anyone who has/can make quality PSP homebrew using SDL

[yaustar]

It is no more packed then OSLib since it has the same functionality (but less optimised for the PSP).

[placo23]

Originally Posted by yaustar

It is no more packed then OSLib since it has the same functionality (but less optimised for the PSP).

But OSLib is quite easy to learn, while SDL is a bit too complicated in the begining.

Cheers

[yaustar]

Originally Posted by placo23

But OSLib is quite easy to learn, while SDL is a bit too complicated in the begining.

Cheers

What makes you think that? It is no more complicated then most APIs I have used. Initialise SDL, load image, blit image, free image close SDL. The only part that would be slightly confusing is the event system.

[placo23]

Originally Posted by yaustar

What makes you think that? It is no more complicated then most APIs I have used. Initialise SDL, load image, blit image, free image close SDL. The only part that would be slightly confusing is the event system.

Well when I started to look for an API for graphical stuff I looked into SDL and OSLib. I picked OSLib 'cause the documentation is very complete and I couldn't find any propper documentation for SDL. I then thought that the learning curve would be very high for SDL as I would need to "discover" most of the basical things by myself, and I didn't want to waste a lot of time with that.

Of course, sometimes I have the impression that in some kind of tasks, SDL would be much better, so I'd like to learn it. But I don't wanna have to dig into somebody elses code to learn it.

Do you know any good source for documentation?

Also, can you make a comparison about the two methods? I klnow you're a very experienced developer, and believe that you are the one who can change my mind about the API's

Also, sometimes I feel that OSLib ain't very good for programming on the PC (as Brunni mentioned), and I miss the that sometimes as it's much easier to test functionality on PC and then move to the PSP

Cheers

[yaustar]

All the information is in the header files of SDL as the documentation is auto generated from source.

http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi/
http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/index.php

SDL is great for massively multi cross platform work as there is a port for most consoles and hardware out there. If you are focusing on PSP, then stick with OSLib for performance reasons. PC you have a huge wealth of APIs and engines that SDL can be a poor choice depending on what you want to do.

[placo23]

Originally Posted by yaustar

All the information is in the header files of SDL as the documentation is auto generated from source.

http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi/
http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/index.php

SDL is great for massively multi cross platform work as there is a port for most consoles and hardware out there. If you are focusing on PSP, then stick with OSLib for performance reasons. PC you have a huge wealth of APIs and engines that SDL can be a poor choice depending on what you want to do.

Humm cool.. nice piece of information.

Cheers