PureBasic Forums - English

SDL has to be installed separately by the user?
Can't be included with the game without the user to know this?

Blade wrote:SDL has to be installed separately by the user?
Can't be included with the game without the user to know this?

i wouldnt like it, when i think i install only a game and the game is intalling any 3rd part stuff in the background without informing me! (its like spyware)... not serious!

You can put the SDL.dll in your pogram dir so you don't need to install a 3rd part package.

You guys are nuts... Third party stuff you don't like?

Ahem... I recommend you all browse through \windows\system32 and look at all the lovely DLLs that were installed for you by DirectX games. Then check the game's directory itself and find even more.

OH NO THIRD PARTY!!! AAAAAAAAAAH!

But SDL is wrapping OpenGL/DirectX.
So there's no point using it.

Polo wrote:But SDL is wrapping OpenGL/DirectX.
So there's no point using it.

thats exactly the point!

The point is to decrease development time. It takes care of the quirks of cross platform development and creates a common grounds.

DX9 includes 2D drawing too (DD)
So can not be understood your nonsense fear.

Other than the fact that DX8/9 does NOT have 2D. DD died with DX7. DX8 & above use emulated 2D. If Fred ports the commands to DX8/9, we will be having emulated 2D and will lose the compatibility with a variety of systems as people will now need a DX8/9 compatible video card just to play a 2D game. Games that would otherwise run 100% fine on the millions of older systems that are more than compatible with PBs current 2D methods.

a game requiring SDL is a game that will be diretly deleted on my hd! I dont want install any 3rd part drawing-system

Nothing to install, other than a small DLL that is included in the same dir as your game when you install it.

on the other hand i think people should update their system -like take over to Win2000/XP and using latest DirectX version!

Sorry I can't afford to buy my EUs new systems. And that would be pointless since the latest versions of DX do not even handle 2D, they emulate it. PB as it stands now has TRUE 2D.

But SDL is wrapping OpenGL/DirectX.
So there's no point using it.

Correction, as we are discussing it, it would wrap DirectDraw. If, Fred ports the 2D commands to DX8/9, then we will no longer be able to use DirectDraw and we will lose compatibility with millions of systems.

Jeez. All this makes me want to make a script to automatically apply the variable types and stuff to that partially done SDL wrapper thats floating around here on the forums.

dracflamloc wrote:The point is to decrease development time. It takes care of the quirks of cross platform development and creates a common grounds.

What development time, Fred is doing the programming, not us. If he wants to support DirectX in Windows, which is in my opinion the best solution, it's up to him.

Brice Manuel wrote:If Fred ports the 2D commands to DX8/9, then we will no longer be able to use DirectDraw and we will lose compatibility with millions of systems.

2D is "emulated" by DX9, yes, but by hardware; which means an increase of speed due to newer VGA. So you can continue using 2D stuff and DD stuff usually faster than DX7.
The only disadvantage i find is that there would be needed a modern VGA allowing DX9, which i consider it should be an absolute inconvenient.
So, i don't know, may be the solution would be to choose in preferences between DX7 or DX9 compilation ...

No biggie in the long run, because if DD support was dropped, I just wouldn't update PB anymore or start running multiple installations.

You must never worry about that, because it can not happen.
I suppose and hope DD will be maintained and if modified, then 2D will have more useful and improved stuff.

Psychophanta wrote:You must never worry about that, because it can not happen.
I suppose and hope DD will be maintained and if modified, then 2D will have more useful and improved stuff.

DD has already been dropped. No changes will ever be made to it by MS.

And dev time has alot to do with it. We are doing the programming and testing on multiple platforms as well.

You must never worry about that, because it can not happen.

Fred said in another post they planned to port the sprite commands to DX8 (or was it DX9). If Fred dropped the DX7 routines for the Sprite commands, PB would no longer have 2D.

I wish people would quit assuming that if the sprite commands were ported to DX 8/9 that we would still be using DirectDraw. This isn't true. DirectDraw died for good with DirectX 7. In DirectX 8 MS introduced DirectX Graphics in which everything is 3D and all 2D is emulated. Unless you are using 2D based on DirectX 7 or below, 2D no longer exists in DirectX and never will again. And it appears that in DX10 since it will not be backwards compatible, it will not even run DirectDraw and will force it to run via 3D emulation.

For those who ever doubted, BlitzMax has certainly proved that "emulated" 2D is NOT faster than DirectDraw. (But many of us already knew this.) In BMax whether using the OpenGL or the Direct3D 7 drivers to emulate 2D, the 2D is much slower than B2D & B+'s DX routines were. But this is to be expected, because of the increased overhead that emulated 2D has.

There are literally millions of systems in use out there that support DirectDraw just fine, but would not support emulated 2D because of the increased overhead. This is why people are looking for alternatives. Some of us like 2D and 2D is still hugely popular, just ask the developers who are making all the $$ off of 2D desktop games.