I've decided to learn sfml

[Disch]

Recently, I compiled that (in assembly), with OpenGL to exactly 2.7KB (1:522)... SFML could never do that.

So? Neither could SDL. Neither could <insert any lib here that was not written in assembly or written for the sole, specific purpose of drawing a rotating cube>

Why do you hate SDL 1.2? I agree it's outdated, but it was good for it's time.

Yes it was good for its time. But its time was 10-15 years ago. It's not that time any more.

And I don't hate it. I just don't think it should be recommended to new programmers. For the same reason I think new programmer should not be introduced to graphics.h or dos.h: It teaches you extremely outdated concepts that have no practical application in modern programming.

Plus modern hardware tends to have dropped support for accellerating the kind of drawing it does, which means it often gets crap performance.

[3qX21hU5]

I agree it's outdated, but it was good for it's time.

That is the whole point. It is past its time it uses outdated rendering techniques that drastically slow down performance among other things.
If you want any kind of reasonable performance with SDL you will have to use SDL's openGL interface to get it.

There is other reasons but this has been discussed many times on these forums so just do a search if you want to know more.

And my reasons are not ill-informed, I simply don't like bulky libraries.

Are we back in the age of only 500mb of storage? Last time I checked most computers have around 500gb - 1TB of storage... Which you would need about 1 million 1MB files to fill...

[S G H]

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83943521/Screens/f/cplpl/hdsize.png

And I won't care if I find another game who weights more than 1MB.
Because you won't be doing any successful game nowadays, who doesn't use any physics engine, rendering engine, sound engine, input engine, network engine.

Reasons?

Realism and Entertainment
Visible Feedback
Audible Feedback
Input
Playability

[o1vk4iN6]

I don't get all the hate on SDL, it's a viable solution if you just want window/input management. SDL 2.0 also supports Android and iOS and not much else out there really does.

[Disch]

I don't get all the hate on SDL, it's a viable solution if you just want window/input management.

If that's all you're interested in, FreeGlut is an all around superior alternative. SDL 1.x doesn't even allow for multiple windows -- and last time I tried it, it trashed the GL context when you switched windowed<->fullscreen (though maybe they fixed that in 1.3).

SDL 2.0 also supports Android and iOS

I've never said anything bad about SDL 2.x. In fact you'll notice that I specifically point out 1.x as the one that's outdated.

[Mitch]

Disch, you are absolutly right, don't use DOS.h, or graphics.h!!!!
I have seen that far too often... Is SDL1.2 really that old... I never noticed.


My computer (which was built only two years ago),
only has 450 GBs, not a TB (it's a laptop though).

But I don't think that just because it can store an unbelievable amount, it should.
I really think programmers are getting lazier, and choosing ease of development over efficiency,
(which only bothers me), that's why I really hate interpreted languages (especially embedded into games).


EssGeEich, HOW did you manage to fill all that memory?
Wow... My computer has less than 50GBs used (I clean it a lot).

I really like SDL, it's really well maintained, and easy to port.

[3qX21hU5]

Well lets all go back to programming in Assembly then. That would be a blast. The argument "Well just because we have the technology doesn't mean we should use it" makes no sense to me.

Not everything needs to be top of the line efficient. With computers now days speed is much less of a factor in most software. So why not choose a language where you can cut development costs by a good amount when the efficiency isn't needed?

Programmers aren't "getting lazy" as you say they are getting smart and using the technology that is available to them.

[S G H]

Mitch wrote:

EssGeEich, HOW did you manage to fill all that memory?

______________
Games (D:)
Hitman Games: 6GB
EA Games: 4.5GB
Fallout 3: 5GB
Quake 3 + STALKER SoC + Terraria + TESV + GTAVC + GTASA + CoD4: 25GB
Steam Games + Workshop: 145GB
______________
Windows (C:)
Programs: 23+GB
Windows: 16+GB
Old files I kept for Backup: 11+GB
C++ Projects and Related Files: 4GB
Songs: 2.66GB

And I got too tired to wait for all C: drive scans.
They're quite slow, they take a lot of time to complete.

But I think I handled partitioning in a lucky way, to get those 9GB of free space.
I could also remove TESV, anyways...

For cleaning, I'm used to do it once a month (did it less than a week ago) with CCleaner.
Removed 2GB of temp files/crash reports.


+1 for seeing SDL1.2 is quite old, as SDL1.6 is the last 1.x :D


Ah, and the last drive, FYI, is NOT porn.
It was supposed to store data for both Windows and Linux OS's.
But it's almost half a year I removed linux.
Should check it out if it's true that Source Engine runs faster on it.

BTW last format has been done two years ago.

[N36fSL3A]

EssGeEich wrote:

Ah, and the last drive, FYI, is NOT porn.

Riiiiggghhttt.

[a k n]

sfml haters wrote:

SFML is huge , massive , bad , memory hungry etc.

I too have some numbers -
On my linux installation , i compiled SFML 2.0 from source...
SFML
libsfml-system.so.2.0 -- 51K
libsfml-sound.so.2.0 -- 76K
libsfml-graphics.so.2.0 -- 262K
libsfml-network.so.2.0 -- 122K
libsfml-window.so.2.0 -- 92K
SDL
libSDL_sound-1.0.so.1.0.2 -- 158K
libSDL-1.2.so.0.11.4 -- 2.0M
These are the shared librararies.

And yeah,I just compiled the "opengl" example included with sfml (the rotating box with a background and a little text),and the executable size is -- 18K.

Now,who's bulky

I was looking for buying a new hard-drive for my pc,some of the local stores had the least capacity hdd of 500GB.

Footnote : .so file : linux :: .dll file : windows
I am using g++/gcc version 4.6.3

[Disch]

Mitch wrote:

Is SDL1.2 really that old... I never noticed.

It uses "blitting" and dirty rects. The last low-level lib I know of to support that was DirectDraw, and MS marked that deprecated back in DirectX 8 (2001 : 12 years ago).

Hardware has been built to accelerate 3D graphics over 2D for a similar length of time. I find it extremely unlikely that you will find any graphics card that is newer than 8 years old which has support for surface to surface blitting -- which means SDL 1.2 is doing all of that in software (read: SLOOOOOOW)

I really think programmers are getting lazier, and choosing ease of development over efficiency,

That is absurd. I'm not going to get into the reasons why that isn't true, and why it isn't economically viable to write everything low-level.... and I'll just tell you that the industry evolved because the demands of programs have evolved.

Worrying over every cycle made sense when cycles were limited and programs were simplistic. In modern PC computing the reverse is true, so the style of programming has to adapt.

This industry moves fast. Get with the times or forget about it.

[N36fSL3A]

Disch wrote:

This industry moves fast. Get with the times or forget about it.

My technology teacher said the same thing about technology. Are you him?

[BHX]

Fredbill30 wrote:

My technology teacher said the same thing about technology. Are you him?

The game industry is technology.