pyxissociety/sandal2

SDL2 wrapper in C

SANDAL2

SANDAL2 is a graphics engine based on SDL2 which purpose is to make object managment and graphic display easier.

To generate the Doxygen documentation, use the command:
doxygen Doxyfile

About the author

      I hope you will enjoy using this tool, and if you have any comment or advice, do not feel shy and tell me (by posting an issue here) ! I will really appreciate it.

Contributors

dabaldassi : version 1.2.3

Useful links

From this "read-me", you can either go to :

• the read-me with more informations about the project in itself ;
• the documentation of the projet
• a small tutorial explaining how to use it ;
• or the page to report an issue about a tutorial lacking things, an update that could be done or anything that comes to your mind here.

To Install/Uninstall On Linux (Debian)

Regardless the way you install SANDAL2, you'll need to include SANDAL2.h and use -lm -lSDL2 -lSDL2_ttf -lSDL2_image compilation flags. To install SDL2, you only needs to enter those commands :

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-image-dev
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-ttf-dev

I. Using the Debian Package only

Installing :

sudo wget https://github.com/PyxisSociety/SANDAL2/raw/master/downloadable/sandal2.deb
sudo dpkg -i sandal2.deb

Then you'll need to add -lSANDAL2 as a compilation flag before all the SDL2 flags.

Uninstalling :

dpkg --purge sandal2

II. Using the github repository

If the package is not made for your computer, or you simply want to use the github directory, you can clone the github project. Once you have it, and you are in the directory of the repository, you can install the package using this command :

sudo make install

You can also directly use the source code. A Makefile is provided in downloadable.

Compilation tools

I. Make

A pseudo generic makefile is downloadable here

II. CMake

A FindSANDAL2.cmake file was created for this project. Also, find files can be found for SDL2_ttf and SDL2_image. All those files are downloadable here.

sandal2's Issues

[BUG] setPlanElement

When calling setPlanElement to change the plan of the element, the element disapear.

a = createBlock(0,0,50,50,white,0,0);
setPlanElement(a,0,4);

Adding Test coverage

Add sound

Use SDL2 to add sound utilities

• Bind sound to animations (continuously and on occurrence)
• Bind sound to a window (which can optionally be blocked if window not focused)
• Add sound on event occurrence (on element AND on window)

How to unset Keypress / keyrelease ?

Change setImageTexture for setImageSurface

Old version:

int setImageTextureElement(Element *e,SDL_Texture * image);

Wanted version:

int setImageSurfaceElement(Element *e,SDL_Surface * image);

Add joystick support

Analyze SDL2 joystick support to see how to add it

Add a scenary graph

add a function isActive which tells if the window is active or not

Add a function to rotate the element around a point directly

Not using the rotation point of SDL2_RenderCopyEx

MouseMotion should test if windows hovered is the current displaied

Add tutorials

Add tutorials on those subjects:

• Move the window origin
• Having more than one window
• scenary graph

[BUG] setPlanElement

From examples/setPlan/main.c

 /* initializing blocks */
    //for(i = 0; i < 4; ++i)
    createBlock(20 + 0 * 60, 200, 50, 50, colors[0], 0, 1);
    
    e = createBlock(20, 150, 60 * 4, 60, colors[4], 0, 0);
    if(!e){
	run = 0;
    }else{
	setKeyPressedElement(e, keyElement);
    }

    setPlanElement(e, 0, 2);

The red element should be over the white but it is not.

Also :

 /* initializing blocks */
    for(i = 0; i < 4; ++i)
      createBlock(20 + i * 60, 200, 50, 50, colors[i], 0, i);
    
    e = createBlock(20, 150, 60 * i, 60, colors[i], 0, 0);
    if(!e){
	run = 0;
    }else{
	setKeyPressedElement(e, keyElement);
    }

    setPlanElement(e, 0, 5);

works fine when calling setPlan with a plan < 3 but if the plan is > 3 it does not work #anylonger.

Adding Unitary Tests - Font

Add unitary tests using LAssert

[BUG] Segfault when focus is changed

Since I pulled the new version of SANDAL2 there is a segfault when I changed from my game to another window (my shell for example)

Add Action library to quickly interact with elements

It should be interesting to add some prebuild actions to speed up the manipulation of elements.

Change the action prototype

Actually, the action attribute of EventElement has the following prototype:

void (*action)(struct Element*);

I think it should be important to include a second parameter dt corresponding to the ellapsed time since the last call of this function:

int (*action)(struct Element*, float);

The return type int indicates the action is finished when the function return TRUE.

The action library

In some game engines, there are functions (or class) which allows to handle the element characteristics like position, scale, rotation, ... in a short instruction. I add links here to the cocos2d-x action documentation and th libGDX action documentation.

Here is an example. If I want to move my element by 200 pixels to the right during 1 seconds then scale it by 2 during .5 seconds and make a 360° rotation during .5 seconds, I should write something like:

setActionElement(actionSequence(
    actionMoveBy(100, 0, 1), /* (x, y, time) */
    actionScaleBy(1, .5),  /* (scaleXY, time) */
    actionRotateBy(360, .5), /* (angle, time) */
    NULL
));

The NULL parameter is only used to simplify parsing the variadic function actionSequence(...). Obviously, the syntax of this example can be improved but I think the idea is clear.

Here is a list of actions frequently used on other game engines:

action	description
moveBy / moveTo	Move an element (by a 2D vector / to a specific position)
scaleBy / scaleTo	Scale an element by/to a scalar or a 2D vector
rotateBy / rotateTo	Rotate an element by/to an angle
fadeIn / fadeOut	Gradually change the opacity from 0 to 1 (or inversely)
sequence	Execute a set of actions one after the other
parallel	Execute a set of actions simultaneously

To go further, it is also possible to define the interpolation method. For example, it allows to avoid the boring linear movement of an element and make a funky elastic appearance! I put here a plot of the interpolation functions used in cocos2d-x:

Add pre made action functions

See #19 for details

Add UT for Window

Add CMake support

The current Make process does not take into consideration the prerequisites such as:

• SDL2
• Doxygen
• Coverage tools
  ...

A CMakeLists would improve the way to find the requirements, to define easier more steps and to split among several targets the UT, E2E tests, Coverages...

Moreover, that will be a nice advance for the Continuous Integration.

Add a default entry key pressed function

[Enhancement] Add transparency for blocks

Add UT for Element

Add a "run" function

Add a blocking run function that contains the main loop and can be regulated to set a number of frame per seconds to be displayed
Add an "auto regulated" version of this function so that if one iteration (update / display) is longer than the time needed for the number of frames per seconds, the restriction for the next run will be less time.

Add ids to elements

Add ids to element and allow retrieving them using their ids

Add UT for SANDAL2 (.h/.c)

Add add/remove action behavior (action list list instead of only action list)

Adding CI

Adding Continuous integration to prevent regressions

Add createImageBlock function

create an equivalent of createBlock which creates a rotable block

Add UT for DisplayCode

Merge SANDAL2_documentation repo

Fuse SANDAL2_documentation repo and put SANDAL2 doxygen documentation in docs folder (github architecture)

Add UT for Sprite

Add Action UT

Add a "forever" mode on action list

Correct entry characters size

Add UT for Clickable

Update examples

Change from Makefile to CMakeLists and update readme to integrate cmakelists