SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) is a very good cross platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to 2D video framebuffer, audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick...

Since this lib has been ported on a wide range of architectures and OS, I’ve try to compile the demo of a friend Jeff on all my “exotic” linux computers.

Jeff’s demos is an invitation to a “retrogaming party” called Infoticaires. You will find further information on the Obsolete Tears website.

The Infoticaires Demo 2005 source code is available on the Jeff's programs page.

Since Jeff prefers that linux users compile his demo themselves, you will only find building instructions to target particular architectures.

At the end of this page you will also find a very good and high quality demo found on pouet.net. If I found other SDL demos compiling fine on several archs, I’ll try to update this page accordingly.

Built using the precompiled SDL libs available on the Linux for PS2 community website. The Makefile used on PS2 includes the Mac OS build modifications. Sound has not been tested.

The demo has been compiled direct right out the archive.

Not an extraordinary computer but building this demo on OSX was a good experience. Even if I’ve used fink to build this demo, you will have to make some adjustments to get it working.

Infoticaires2005.c:
 
change <SDL/SDL.h> by <SDL.h>
change <SDL/SDL_audio.h> by <SDL_audio.h>
 
all files with <malloc.h>:
 
include "stdlib.h" instead of "malloc.h"

Change the Makefile rules to get the following build process

gcc -g -c `sdl-config --cflags` Infoticaires2005.c
gcc -o 3drout.o -c ../common/3drout.c -O3
gcc -o utils.o -c ../common/utils.c -O3
gcc -o modplay.o -c ../common/modplay.c -O3
gcc -o mainrouts.o -c ../common/mainrouts.c -O3
gcc -o pack.o -c ../common/packer/pack.c -O3
gcc -o lzw.o -c ../common/packer/lzw.c -O3
gcc -lc -lm  -g `sdl-config --libs` Infoticaires2005.o 3drout.o
utils.o modplay.o mainrouts.o pack.o lzw.o -o Infoticaires2005

The Demo has been executed on a 1,5Ghz G4 mac mini and it’s really fast (too fast). Sound is distorted for obvious reasons.

Very good demo by Fit. Tested on OSX and build by myself on the ULTRA5. You can see some screenshots just below.

If the build failed at the last step, use the following syntax:

gcc `sdl-config --static-libs` -lm  \
main.o noise.o halftone.o cgm.o cgm_soft.o wurms.o maf.o render.o writer.o sade.o \
-o main cool_mzx/cool_mzx.a data/data.a

and if you are not yet conviced, here are some extra pictures...

Article by Stellae (N. Lemouël) February, 21st 2007 website@stellae.fr

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