SDL::Tutorial(3pm)
NAME
SDL::Tutorial - introduction to Perl SDL
SYNOPSIS
# to read this tutorial $ perldoc SDL::Tutorial # to create a bare-bones SDL app based on this tutorial $ perl -MSDL::Tutorial -e 1
SDL BASICS
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/>.
- 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 SDL::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
- SDL::App makes it easy to initialize video and create a surface.
Here's how to ask for a windowed surface with 640x480x16 resolution:
use SDL::App;my $app = SDL::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 SDL::App;- my $app = SDL::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. - Working With The App
- Since $app from the code above is just an SDL surface with some extra
sugar, it behaves much like SDL::Surface. In particular, the allimportant "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.
SEE ALSO
- SDL::Tutorial::Drawing
- basic drawing with rectangles
- SDL::Tutorial::Animation
- basic rectangle animation
- SDL::Tutorial::Images
- image loading and animation
AUTHOR
chromatic, <chromatic@wgz.org>.
Written for and maintained by the Perl SDL project,
<http://sdl.perl.org/>.
COPYRIGHT
- Copyright (c) 2003 - 2004, chromatic. All rights reserved. This
module is distributed under the same terms as Perl itself, in the hope that it is useful but certainly under no guarantee.