Tille's Site

Programming with Linux libraries for real dummies

or

SDL for real dummies

Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge of the C programming language: variables, operations, functions, structures, the printf program etc. Using your favorite search engine will probably give some results for an on-line course, such as this one by Steve Holmes.
• Basic knowledge of the shell and UNIX commands. Check with the Intro to Linux guide.
• Use of a text editor, preferably one supporting syntax highlighting, such as vim, emacs or gvim.
• You need to have the SDL package and the SDL-devel package on your system, download from libsdl.org if they're not installed.

Objective

Having a first experience in interacting with Linux libraries.

Not covered in this document

• Installing new programs, see your system documentation for that.
• Writing games in SDL.
• Installing libraries (see The Program-Library-HOWTO).

Content

To keep it easy, most programs are included entirely. This is the web, I'd advise not to print this one.

• Introduction
• A very simple program
• Introducing graphics, exercise
• Defining functions from examples
• Defining your own functions
• Random effects
• Catching user input
• Going fullscreen

This is a work in progress. Part of it comes from libsdl.org.