Hello, someone (not on this site) suggested that SDL's "ancient" blitting techniques are "supported on modern graphics cards only as a legacy, if at all". Does that mean that if I use SDL_HWSURFACE as a flag to SDL_Init(), then someone with a modern graphics card with the hardware acceleration will not be able to use my straight-SDL game? If that's true, then to me it would be a design flaw on the part of the video card manufacturers to make something so non-backward-compatible, and it's time for SWSURFACE. It makes me think that MSPaint won't work on newer computers, unless the MSguys used a software blitter to allow people to move clipped images. Someone tell me I'm wrong in more than 2 words, please. This is not a comfortable delusion to be living under! -B

P.S. The guy was very anti-SDL and probably wan't ill-intentioned, just ranting about awesome postmodern hardware and SFML's OpenGL backend, etc.

P.P.S. It's good you have this section of the forums for moments like these; I'd hate to "crap on" libsdl with a question like this!

It's been a while since I've used SDL, but I think its hardware acceleration implementation is platform-dependent, and that Windows-based SDL applications will take the hardware acceleration flag more as a "suggestion" than a rule. I think HW acceleration will work anyway, but as the guy you're talking about said, it's probably way out of date and generic. I'd be surprised if you would see any improvement on modern *PC* hardware (things might be different on certain embedded systems).

If you're working on 2D games, though, I don't see why you would have to have HW acceleration for modern systems -- they are plenty capable of handling advanced 2D animation (though performing complex filters on-the-fly might cause a problem). So, if you're worried, just use software rendering for 2D applications.

(It is notable that the new OpenGL 3.1 spec completely removes legacy fixed-function-pipeline routines. Although I doubt most graphics chips will adhere that closely to the spec anytime soon, it is something to keep in mind. Nothing in the software world is future-proof, it seems.)

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Well thanks, SW surface has better performance on my single-core than the HW surface anyway. -B