SDL-Perl: Developing cross platform games

[Harman]

Hello,

A little long email, so in the interest of time you could skip directly to
the section marked "Question" in bold below :)


*Context:*
Currently using:
SDL Version 1.2
Platform (Windows for development)
Visual Studio 2010
*
*
I wanted to create cross platform games on Android/iOS/Windows which is
where I came across SDL.

I am proficient in unix shell scripting so I initially started out with
learning python pygame as my language for games. Unfortunately I realized
the games are not cross platform and I read about a few folks struggling
online when porting. Lost 2 weeks

I then started with SDL/C++ ( despite having being warned online against
starting directly on C++). After 3 more weeks of learning SDL modules,
tutorials, videos, I realized the warnings were not out of order :)

C++ has never been the language of choice for me ( when I studied it in my
degree course). Now it seems its a completely new language and a simple
loop through a list of strings took me a while to code. (something which a
1 line ls command in unix would do).

Also today I spent 14+ hours finding a code base on how to render videos
through SDL. ffMPEG, SMPEG on SDL didnt work since everytime there was a
library file version mismatch with the code available online.


*Question:*
My 3rd attempt at game programming would be on perl since its again the
closest to bash scripting ( I dont think I can handle C++ anymore ). Would
be great if you could provide some pointers on the following:

1) Are games on perl+SDL cross platform? i.e. Android/iOS/Windows
2) How do I best approach learning the 2? as in which documents to read
first for perl followed by SDL-perl tutorials?
3) Unrelated: I did not come across touch screen handling in SDL in my
limited study of it. How are the same handled in SDL events?


Would be great if you could provide some direction on this. Frankly my
brain is scrambled after a decent start with SDL 2 weeks back.


Cheers
Harman

[Tobias Leich]

Hi Harman,

Well, there was/is an Android port of Perl, but I don't think it is in a
useful state right now.
iOS/Windows and Linux shouldn't be a problem though.

> 2) How do I best approach learning the 2? as in which documents to read
> first for perl followed by SDL-perl tutorials?

This should be a good start:
https://github.com/PerlGameDev/SDL_Manual/raw/master/dist/SDL_Manual.pdf
For learning Perl there should be books even in your local Stores :o)

> 3) Unrelated: I did not come across touch screen handling in SDL in my
> limited study of it. How are the same handled in SDL events?

The current SDL library we use will treat touch screens like a normal
mouse. But we are currently working
on libSDL2 bindings, which is capable of that.

>
>
> Would be great if you could provide some direction on this. Frankly my
> brain is scrambled after a decent start with SDL 2 weeks back.
>
>
> Cheers
> Harman
>

Cheers, Tobias