SDLU 2.0.1 released!

2.0.1 is a feature release. The source code is available from the downloads page at bitbucket.

What's new in SDLU 2.0.1 (24/10/13)

Build System:

• Added CMake based build system, as an alternative to the existing premake build system.
• Eliminated Visual Studio warnings.
• Small improvements to the premake4 build system.
• Updated Makefile.minimal.

Added new APIs:

• SDLU_SpriteDrawRotated(): set whether the sprite is being drawn rotated, works nice with SDLU_SetSpriteDirection().
• SDLU_GetSpriteDirection(): query the direction of movement from a sprite.
• SDLU_RenderSetPoints(): supply multiple points for polygon rendering with a single call.
  

Misc changes:

• Added contributing guidelines.
• Updated windows premake4 binary

-- Aggelos Kolaitis

Added CMake build system!

Surprise!! After one full week of coding and testing, the new CMake-based build system for SDLU is finally ready! This does not mean that the premake-based system will be ditched. A lot of work has been done there, and it's still the only way to go if you want to build the ports for iOS and Android.

I believe, however, that due to the fact that CMake is a little more well-known than premake, this move will make it easier for more people to build and try out the library.

Of course, the system is still under development, this is just a first draft that actually works (okay, not exactly a first draft, I paid extra attention into keeping it simple and well-structured).

-- Aggelos Kolaitis

SDLU 2.0 released!

The SDL Utility Library (SDLU) is a cross-platfrom development library
that provides APIs to make development of SDL2 apps faster and easier.

It works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, iOS and Android, with a Raspberry Pi
port planned for the future.

The source code is available at bitbucket. There is also a website
and a small blog which I mostly use to announce the development
progress.

The library is available under the zlib license (same as SDL2).

Some of its main features are a powerful Button API that blends with SDL
nicely, an extensible 2D Sprite API, collision detection functions,
OpenGL texture loading functions, a simple to use Text Rendering API
and much more.

The library is considered to be stable with many of the bugs having been
fixed. New features are planned, and I'm very open to your suggestions and/or
feature requests.

This is the first public release, and is intended to make the library known
to the world, in the hope that it will be useful for every SDL developer out
there.

You can download the 2.0 source code from bitbucket, or the website.
Source code releases include pre-generated documentation in HTML format.

-- Aggelos Kolaitis

Development State [14th October]

For the last few days, I concentrated mostly on stabilizing the build system both for the main library as well as for the iOS and Android ports. I'm proud to say that everything went as planned, and the build system is almost (if not already) ready for a release.

Other changes were the addition of a new hint SDLU_HINT_GL_ADD_PADDING, which may be set to change how SDLU_GL_LoadTexture() handles non-power-of-two-textures. See SDLU_hints.h and here for details.

Finally, many changes were made to the README files, to be as helpful and accurate as possible.

Expect a new snapshot in the next few days.

Source code snapshot [03/10/13]

I have uploaded the source code snapshots as zip or tar.gz archives in the Downloads section of the repository over at bitbucket. The snapshots contain the latest source code, along with pre-generated documentation by doxygen.

If you have a copy of the git repository, the snapshot is tagged with the name snapshot-031013. (031013 stands for 3/10/13, I just don't like having slashes '/' in the tag name).

As always please test the library, run the test programs and report issues at the issue tracker.

-- Aggelos Kolaitis

Development state [3rd October]

In my last post [about a week ago], I had said that the weekend would see some API changes that were planned to happen anyway. I decided it would be better for them to happen before the first release [it's going to be 2.0].

Well, the weekend turned out to be a week, because of some other tasks I had to fulfill over the last few days. Anyway, the changes are now in the main git repository here.

API Additions

• Added two new functions, SDLU_GetSpriteVelocity() and SDLU_GetSpriteAdvance()

API Changes

• Merged the functionality of SDLU_Get/SetSpritePaused() into SDLU_PauseSprite()
• Merged the functionality of SDLU_Get/SetButtonHidden() into SDLU_HideButton()
• Renamed SDLU_LoadTextureEx() to SDLU_LoadTextureWithColorkey()

API Removals

• Removed the shorter FPS_* macros, to avoid conficts with other libraries
• Removed SDLU_GetButtonPress(). Not only is it not required any more, but also using it would had negative impact in visuals and performance

Important changes

• Added new premake action ios, used to build the iOS port of the library (oh yeah!). See README-ios for details.
• Removed un-needed hard-coded stuff from the NetBeans project. Also, the project is now usable in NetBeans version 7.3 [may also work for older versions].
• Made several improvements and fixes at the README files

With those changes applied, and with the official (finally) iOS support, we are getting closer to a stable 2.0 release. Expect a new code snapshot soon.

-- Aggelos Kolaitis