Using the first tutorial as our base, we’ll delve more into the world of SDL surfaces. As I attempted to explain in the last lesson, SDL Surfaces are basically images stored in memory. Imagine we have a blank 320×240 pixel surface. Illustrating the SDL coordinate system, we have something like this:

This coordinate system is quite different than the normal one you are familiar with. Notice how the Y coordinate increases going down, and the X coordinate increases going right. Understanding the SDL coordinate system is important in order to properly draw images on the screen. Read the rest of this entry »

These tutorials are meant to teach someone with some experience using C++, or perhaps another programming language. If you have a hard time following certain ideas related to the code itself and not conceptual ideas (those relating to games), then I urge you to first read our tutorials that explain the C++ programming language. It’s not vital to understand everything about C++, but every little bit will help later on.

In these tutorials we will be referncing to CodeBlocks as our IDE of choice, with gcc and mingw for compilation. If you wish to use another IDE and compiler that is up to you, but it may be harder to follow along if you have limited experience with linking libraries. If you wish to download CodeBlocks, you can do so for free at http://www.codeblocks.org (download the one including the mingw package). We recommend you use the stable version, unless you want to spend the extra time and use the nightly builds.

Read the rest of this entry »