SDL 1.3 Mix In - OpenGL >= 3.0

[phibermon]

Sorry for my absence, yes we are indeed working on the SDL 1.3 header translations, but upon research I have some concerns about the future of SDL 1.3. It would appear that the Original Developer of SDL (and the IP holder) has intent on a commercially licensed version of SDL 1.3 along with the LGPL version. "He can't do that" I hear you say. Well no, you can still use all the LGPL code in Commercial apps, but according to his company's web page, he's working on large portions specific to Iphone development that I can only assume will not be part of the LGPL version.

Why is this bad? well it means that one of the SDLs best developers is not focused on the project. There are trivial bugs that have been sitting reported for up to a year in some cases, broken mouse support in windows and while there is modern GL context creation, currently no method for setting which Profile you wish to use (Core or compatibility, defaults to compatiblity which from my understanding will cause problems with some Core features)

That tied in with the fact they have no formal release schedule suggests that the project is being managed poorly at present hence the delays.

Don't be too worried however, it's still quite active and 1.3 will almost certainly be with us eventually. But it's not going to be any time soon.

We are still continuing with our 1.3 translation (I've nearly finished the most important parts of the headers) and I will do what I can to ensure our hard work does not go to waste. For windows at least I'll be certain to release 32bit and 64bit SDL1.3 DLL's which contain any available patches (and a few tweaks of my own) so you can use SDL1.3 without being impacted by it's current shortcomings

Linux, Mac OSX developers : I'll do what I can to provide you with workable solutions, feel free to query my obtained knowledge on the subject.

[chronozphere]

I did some additional research and things might not be as bad as you picture them.

First of all, the FAQ states that:

What is included with the commercial license?
You get SDL under a commercial license that grants you the ability to statically link SDL with your application.

So you can still dynamicly link for free. Also:

Q: Do I really need the commercial license, even if I have a commercial game?
Absolutely not!

If you're building on platforms that support shared objects (e.g. Windows DLL, UNIX shared libraries, Mac OS X frameworks), then you can just link with the shared library and include a README mentioning that you use SDL and where it can be updated and you're done.

If you're building on an embedded platform that doesn't support shared objects (e.g. Nintendo DS) or they are prohibited by the vendor's license (e.g. iPhone) then you can link with SDL statically and then provide your source to your customers so they can rebuild your application with a customized SDL library.

However, if you would like the comfort of a solid company backing the product, or would like to statically link SDL into your application and don't want to release the source, then the commercial license is the one for you.

So indie dev is perfeclty possible. Dynamicly link for free or staticly link and provide the SDL source. The license is only for those who need official support or want to make their own closed changes to the lib.

And most importantly:

Can I evaluate SDL for free before buying a license?
Yes!

The commercially licensed version and the open source versions of SDL are exactly the same. You can evaluate SDL for as long as you want during development, the only limitation is that you must obtain a license before releasing your product to the public.

The current PRE-RELEASE snapshot of SDL 1.3 can be downloaded here.

So we all get the good stuff.

[petethepoet]

Hi all,

Dominique was kind enough to send me the sdl.pas version 1.2 unit a few days ago.

Does anyone have the Lazarus translations of the other units from Delphi to Lazarus for 1.2 or 1.3 ?

I am particularly interested in the SDLMonoFonts.pas unit and the Lazarus conversion of it.

Best Regards,
pew

[Cybermonkey]

Any news about a SDL 1.3 unit? I would really like to port my project over to 1.3.

[chronozphere]

This project is pretty dead now. But maybe it will come back to life depending on SDL's status and motivation.

[Stoney]

I made a Github repository for SDL 1.3: https://github.com/Stoney-FD/sdl13-pascal
They are currently for iOS only and incomplete, I haven't tested it for any other platforms, but I'm sure they could work on other platforms if the library constants would be changed.