Ubuntu Manpage: SDL::Tutorial - introduction to Perl SDL

Provided by: libsdl-perl_2.546-2build1_amd64

NAME

       SDL::Tutorial - introduction to Perl SDL

   CATEGORY
       Tutorials

SYNOPSIS

               # to read this tutorial
               $ perldoc SDL::Tutorial

               # to run this tutorial
               $ perl -MSDL::Tutorial -e 1

SDL Manual

       "SDL::Tutorial" are incomplete and old. A new book has been started to provide a complete
       tutorial for SDL. See <http://bit.ly/hvxc9V>.

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/>. 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.

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.

AUTHORS

       chromatic, <chromatic@wgz.org>.

       Written for and maintained by the Perl SDL project, <http://sdl.perl.org/>. See "AUTHORS"
       in SDL for details.

COPYRIGHT