• 13-10-2002 - SDL 1.2.5 beta released.
  This version updates SDL to the latest source tree and fixes some bugs of the previous version. The most important one is the SixK P96 fix for hicolor modes.
  

  The archive cointains:

  • GCC 68k static library.
  • GCC morphos static library.
  • SAS/C static library
  • The 68k SHARED SDL.library, works with any language or compiler able to parse an .fd file.
  • A few SDL examples with a GCC Makefile to build them.
  • Inlines, pragmas and .fd files for the 68k shared library.
  • Includes and HTML docs from the original SDL archive.

  All the examples are compiled for the shared version of SDL to save space and bring users and developers to choose the shared library solution but they all works (at least on my system) also with the static one.

  Being a beta it prints some debug informations to your serial port. You can catch this information with sushi, sashimi or similar tools.

  Why shared is better? Because you need only to update the library to fix a problem of it instead of rebuild all your SDL apps, because you can use it with any language/compiler and because it's the only way to distribute CLOSED source software in a legal way with SDL (the LGPL SDL license requires to dinamically link against SDL if you want to distribute your closed source application).
  

  Click here to download it!
  Amiga specific sources are available here too.
  
  

• 10-6-2002 - SixK ports page.
  This page contains a lot of open source ports of SDL games made by SixK. Check it if you want to try some nice games!

  If you want to try to port to AmigaOS a SDL game this is a good starting point where to search for it.
  
  

• 19-12-2001 - SDL 1.2.3 released.
  You can find it on the SDL official Site in ZIP format or in any Aminet mirror in LHA format, click here to see some download locations.
  The archive contains the library documentation, SDL includes, an amiga related README covering some of the amiga related SDL issues, the official LGPL licence and the binaries of the link libraries to use with SAS/C, GCC (68k/MorphOS), StormC 4 (68k/PPC). The sources are available in the official SDL CVS tree, a smaller amiga-only source archive will be released in this web page this weekend.
  
  
• 15-12-2001 - SixK has set up a page with a lot of nice SDL game ports. Click here to go download them!
  
  
• 9-12-2001 - SDL Mixer 1.2.0 released (68k, MorphOS). Click here to grab it. It's enable to play many different sample formats, midi songs (with timidity samples installed) and various .mod formats.
  
  
• 2-12-2001 - Some additional libraries (SDL_image, libjpeg, libpng, libz) have been released in MorphOS version. Click here to download the archive, here are the same libraries in 68k format.
  
  
• 30-11-2001 - A new mailing list has been created: SDL-Amiga.
  This list is dedicated to Amiga SDL programmers. The list will be used mainly to discuss problems of the SDL amiga implementation or related with the development or the porting of SDL applications for Amiga (68k, WOS/PUP, MorphOS). To subscribe the list you can send an empty e-mail to this address or click here.
  
  

Overview

To see what SDL can do go to the official page.

...take a look also for instance at the HUGE games section, many of them can be recompiled on AmigaOS with a few minutes of work! With the help of the Amiga community and SDL we'll can bring a lot of new apps and games to our beloved Amiga!

Here you can get the amiga version of XRick (133kb, executable only), a Rick Dangerous clone, that uses SDL, only a "make" is needed to build it from the original opensource sources that you can find here (look there also for the docs and the current features of this clone of the old amiga classicRick Dangerous), a 16/24bit WB is suggested, otherwise press "1" to go fullscreen.

I've just compiled for GCC/SASC some link libraries often used in SDL programs, these are libjpeg,libpng, libz, SDL_image.
This archive contains the link libraries of these four packages (as said before in GCC .a or SAS/C .lib format) and the includes needed to compile programs using them!
This is only for lazy programmers since these packages can easily be compiled with ANY amiga C compiler both for PPC and 68k without a SINGLE modification to the source files (only some makefile hacking).

Here you can find the same libs for MorphOS!

Here it's a small list of suggestion/FAQ about compiling SDL programs on AmigaOS.

Requirements & features

Not yet supported:

• Reading/playing of CDRom audio tracks.

Downloads

Click here to download SDL 1.2.3 (libs, includes, docs, examples)! (ZIP, 2.5MB from www.libsdl.org)

These are a some Aminet URL where you can get SDL 1.2.3 (LHA, 2.5MB):

Italy:

• Libs, includes, docs, examples
Germany:

• Libs, includes, docs, examples
USA:

• Libs, includes, docs, examples
SWEDEN:

• Libs, includes, docs, examples

Hints about compiling SDL programs

(and things to know about the amiga port!)

• 1.2.3 libraries include OpenGL support through StormMESA. It should work quite well both in fullscreen and windowed mode, anyway if you have a Warp3D-supported board you may need to set the enviroment variable ENV:mesa/veryfast to 1 or, in the wrost cases, disable something in the code of the opengl application to use you board 3d engine instead of the (slow) software version.

• If you use 1.2.3 GL enabled libraries you need always to link with the StormMESA glue code (available in the StormMESA developer archive), also if your application don't use OpenGL. For this issue we have built also SDL binaries without OpenGL support.

• If you want to compile an automake project you may have some problems with the SDL testing code of the configure script, to be able to succesfully complete the test you should edit the provided sdl-config file to the path where your SDL includes/libraries are located and place it in your gg:bin directory.

• All the library version are build with debug output enabled, I decided to release them this way since the debug stuff is really small compared with the library and it's always placed in not time critical parts of the code. If you want to see the debug output link the code with the provided debug.lib (SAS/C) or libdebug.a (GCC). If you use another compiler you may try also my shared debug library that comes with PPC includes, you can download it here. If you don't need debug simply define anywhere in your code something like this:

  void kprintf(char *a,...)
  {
  }
  

• Often SDL programs need additional library, typically libz, libpng, libjpg, SDL_image... All of these can be found, precompiled, here (gcc/sasc 68k) and here (MorphOS).

• The SAS/C version is built with debug enabled, strip it in the link stage (with the slink STRIPDEBUG keyword) otherwise your binaries will be quite big :)

• From 1.2.3 the GCC link library is fully compatible with libnix. The use of libnix instead of ixemul is strongly raccomeneded since I've found that libnix programs are generally faster (15/20% in some cases!). To link with libnix simply add -noixemul to your linker option in your makefile. Remember also that if you link with ixemul and your application is multithread (every SDL application that use sound IS multithread) you should also link with pthread. You can find it in one of the geekgadgets mirrors.

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gabriele.greco@aruba.it, Gabriele Greco, Last updated: Mo Jul 15th 2002