SDL::Tutorial(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation SDL::Tutorial(3)NAMESDL::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 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.
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.
perl v5.14.1 2011-07-18 SDL::Tutorial(3)
