Fun times ahead for game developers, as the very popular SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) has a preview of the upcoming SDL 3 now available for feedback and testing.
What is SDL used for? It's a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware on many different platforms like Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.
Yesterday, March 24th, Sam Lantinga of Valve announced the preview.
Some of the highlights of SDL 3 include:
- The API has been significantly reworked to be easier to use and more consistent
- The 2D rendering API now has support for more advanced colorspaces and HDR rendering
- The 2D rendering API now has a Vulkan backend
- An example of hardware accelerated video playback using ffmpeg has been added in test/testffmpeg.c
- The shaped window API has been replaced with transparent windows
- Time and date functions have been added in SDL_time.h
- Support for webcam video capture has been added in SDL_camera.h
- Support for handling pens and tablets has been added in SDL_pen.h
- Support for file open and save dialogs has been added in SDL_dialog.h
- Cross-platform functions for working with files and directories are available in SDL_filesystem.h
- A cross-platform abstraction for working with user and game data has been added in SDL_storage.h
- Handling of main() has been moved to a header library and an optional callback-based program flow is available
- Support for simple object properties has been added in SDL_properties.h. These properties are available on many SDL objects, and can be used for more advanced functionality.
Additionally, one thing that seems to be changing, is moving the default back to X11 instead of Wayland due to various issues that need solving.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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pleasereadthemanual Mar 26
Quoting: Marlockthey could delay SDL3... but that only helps if Wayland devs clearly signal they'll solve their end of the issue soon with high priority... which seems a bit unlikely, though Valve does have plenty of people working for them on both things, iircThis was brought up in the pull request, but it doesn't seem like something SDL is interested in doing. Either because they just don't believe they can get this protocol and implementations sorted out in time for the next release (ideally, that might take 6 months?), or because they don't want to delay it at all. That might change as SDL3 gets closer to release.
There are definitely Valve employees like Joshua Ashton who engage in Wayland Protocol discussion. Joshua Ashton has also done a few implementations for Wayland protocols such as in Mesa. I'm sure there's more I don't know about. For this particular protocol, at least Xaver Hugl (KDE), Joshua Ashton (Valve), Simon Ser (wlroots, gamescope) and Derek Foreman (Collabora) have been working on it. No idea how close it is to completion, and it seems to depend on another protocol that isn't finished.
Oh, and even flibitijibibo is commenting on the SDL pull request.
Last edited by pleasereadthemanual on 26 March 2024 at 8:45 am UTC
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