SDL, the Simple DirectMedia Layer, is a cross-platform multimedia library. These are the Perl 5
bindings. You can find out more about SDL at <http://www.libsdl.org/>. You can find out more about SDL
perl at <http://sdl.perl.org>.
Creating an SDL application with Perl is easy. You have to know a few basics, though. Here's how to get
up and running as quickly as possible.
Surfaces
All graphics in SDL live on a surface. You'll need at least one. That's what SDLx::App provides.
Of course, before you can get a surface, you need to initialize your video mode. SDL gives you several
options, including whether to run in a window or take over the full screen, the size of the window, the
bit depth of your colors, and whether to use hardware acceleration. For now, we'll build something
really simple.
Initialization
SDLx::App makes it easy to initialize video and create a surface. Here's how to ask for a windowed
surface with 640x480x16 resolution:
use SDLx::App;
my $app = SDLx::App->new(
width => 640,
height => 480,
depth => 16,
);
You can get more creative, especially if you use the "title" and "icon" attributes in a windowed
application. Here's how to set the window title of the application to "My SDL Program":
use SDLx::App;
my $app = SDLx::App->new(
height => 640,
width => 480,
depth => 16,
title => 'My SDL Program',
);
Setting an icon is a little more involved -- you have to load an image onto a surface. That's a bit more
complicated, but see the "name" parameter to "SDL::Surface-"new()> if you want to skip ahead.
WorkingWithTheApp
Since $app from the code above is just an SDL surface with some extra sugar, it behaves much like
SDL::Surface. In particular, the all-important "blit" and "update" methods work. You'll need to create
SDL::Rect objects representing sources of graphics to draw onto the $app's surface, "blit" them there,
then "update" the $app.
Note: "blitting" is copying a chunk of memory from one place to another.
That, however, is another tutorial.