SDL  2.0
docs/README-ios.md
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1 iOS
2 ======
3 
4 ==============================================================================
5 Building the Simple DirectMedia Layer for iOS 5.1+
6 ==============================================================================
7 
8 Requirements: Mac OS X 10.8 or later and the iOS 7+ SDK.
9 
10 Instructions:
11 1. Open SDL.xcodeproj (located in Xcode-iOS/SDL) in Xcode.
12 2. Select your desired target, and hit build.
13 
14 There are three build targets:
15 - libSDL.a:
16  Build SDL as a statically linked library
17 - testsdl:
18  Build a test program (there are known test failures which are fine)
19 - Template:
20  Package a project template together with the SDL for iPhone static libraries and copies of the SDL headers. The template includes proper references to the SDL library and headers, skeleton code for a basic SDL program, and placeholder graphics for the application icon and startup screen.
21 
22 
23 ==============================================================================
24 Build SDL for iOS from the command line
25 ==============================================================================
26 
27 1. cd (PATH WHERE THE SDL CODE IS)/build-scripts
28 2. ./iosbuild.sh
29 
30 If everything goes fine, you should see a build/ios directory, inside there's
31 two directories "lib" and "include".
32 "include" contains a copy of the SDL headers that you'll need for your project,
33 make sure to configure XCode to look for headers there.
34 "lib" contains find two files, libSDL2.a and libSDL2main.a, you have to add both
35 to your XCode project. These libraries contain three architectures in them,
36 armv6 for legacy devices, armv7, and i386 (for the simulator).
37 By default, iosbuild.sh will autodetect the SDK version you have installed using
38 xcodebuild -showsdks, and build for iOS >= 3.0, you can override this behaviour
39 by setting the MIN_OS_VERSION variable, ie:
40 
41 MIN_OS_VERSION=4.2 ./iosbuild.sh
42 
43 ==============================================================================
44 Using the Simple DirectMedia Layer for iOS
45 ==============================================================================
46 
47 FIXME: This needs to be updated for the latest methods
48 
49 Here is the easiest method:
50 1. Build the SDL library (libSDL2.a) and the iPhone SDL Application template.
51 2. Install the iPhone SDL Application template by copying it to one of Xcode's template directories. I recommend creating a directory called "SDL" in "/Developer/Platforms/iOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates/" and placing it there.
52 3. Start a new project using the template. The project should be immediately ready for use with SDL.
53 
54 Here is a more manual method:
55 1. Create a new iOS view based application.
56 2. Build the SDL static library (libSDL2.a) for iOS and include them in your project. Xcode will ignore the library that is not currently of the correct architecture, hence your app will work both on iOS and in the iOS Simulator.
57 3. Include the SDL header files in your project.
58 4. Remove the ApplicationDelegate.h and ApplicationDelegate.m files -- SDL for iOS provides its own UIApplicationDelegate. Remove MainWindow.xib -- SDL for iOS produces its user interface programmatically.
59 5. Delete the contents of main.m and program your app as a regular SDL program instead. You may replace main.m with your own main.c, but you must tell Xcode not to use the project prefix file, as it includes Objective-C code.
60 
61 ==============================================================================
62 Notes -- Retina / High-DPI and window sizes
63 ==============================================================================
64 
65 Window and display mode sizes in SDL are in "screen coordinates" (or "points",
66 in Apple's terminology) rather than in pixels. On iOS this means that a window
67 created on an iPhone 6 will have a size in screen coordinates of 375 x 667,
68 rather than a size in pixels of 750 x 1334. All iOS apps are expected to
69 size their content based on screen coordinates / points rather than pixels,
70 as this allows different iOS devices to have different pixel densities
71 (Retina versus non-Retina screens, etc.) without apps caring too much.
72 
73 By default SDL will not use the full pixel density of the screen on
74 Retina/high-dpi capable devices. Use the SDL_WINDOW_ALLOW_HIGHDPI flag when
75 creating your window to enable high-dpi support.
76 
77 When high-dpi support is enabled, SDL_GetWindowSize() and display mode sizes
78 will still be in "screen coordinates" rather than pixels, but the window will
79 have a much greater pixel density when the device supports it, and the
80 SDL_GL_GetDrawableSize() or SDL_GetRendererOutputSize() functions (depending on
81 whether raw OpenGL or the SDL_Render API is used) can be queried to determine
82 the size in pixels of the drawable screen framebuffer.
83 
84 Some OpenGL ES functions such as glViewport expect sizes in pixels rather than
85 sizes in screen coordinates. When doing 2D rendering with OpenGL ES, an
86 orthographic projection matrix using the size in screen coordinates
87 (SDL_GetWindowSize()) can be used in order to display content at the same scale
88 no matter whether a Retina device is used or not.
89 
90 ==============================================================================
91 Notes -- Application events
92 ==============================================================================
93 
94 On iOS the application goes through a fixed life cycle and you will get
95 notifications of state changes via application events. When these events
96 are delivered you must handle them in an event callback because the OS may
97 not give you any processing time after the events are delivered.
98 
99 e.g.
100 
101  int HandleAppEvents(void *userdata, SDL_Event *event)
102  {
103  switch (event->type)
104  {
105  case SDL_APP_TERMINATING:
106  /* Terminate the app.
107  Shut everything down before returning from this function.
108  */
109  return 0;
110  case SDL_APP_LOWMEMORY:
111  /* You will get this when your app is paused and iOS wants more memory.
112  Release as much memory as possible.
113  */
114  return 0;
115  case SDL_APP_WILLENTERBACKGROUND:
116  /* Prepare your app to go into the background. Stop loops, etc.
117  This gets called when the user hits the home button, or gets a call.
118  */
119  return 0;
120  case SDL_APP_DIDENTERBACKGROUND:
121  /* This will get called if the user accepted whatever sent your app to the background.
122  If the user got a phone call and canceled it, you'll instead get an SDL_APP_DIDENTERFOREGROUND event and restart your loops.
123  When you get this, you have 5 seconds to save all your state or the app will be terminated.
124  Your app is NOT active at this point.
125  */
126  return 0;
127  case SDL_APP_WILLENTERFOREGROUND:
128  /* This call happens when your app is coming back to the foreground.
129  Restore all your state here.
130  */
131  return 0;
132  case SDL_APP_DIDENTERFOREGROUND:
133  /* Restart your loops here.
134  Your app is interactive and getting CPU again.
135  */
136  return 0;
137  default:
138  /* No special processing, add it to the event queue */
139  return 1;
140  }
141  }
142 
143  int main(int argc, char *argv[])
144  {
145  SDL_SetEventFilter(HandleAppEvents, NULL);
146 
147  ... run your main loop
148 
149  return 0;
150  }
151 
152 
153 ==============================================================================
154 Notes -- Accelerometer as Joystick
155 ==============================================================================
156 
157 SDL for iPhone supports polling the built in accelerometer as a joystick device. For an example on how to do this, see the accelerometer.c in the demos directory.
158 
159 The main thing to note when using the accelerometer with SDL is that while the iPhone natively reports accelerometer as floating point values in units of g-force, SDL_JoystickGetAxis() reports joystick values as signed integers. Hence, in order to convert between the two, some clamping and scaling is necessary on the part of the iPhone SDL joystick driver. To convert SDL_JoystickGetAxis() reported values BACK to units of g-force, simply multiply the values by SDL_IPHONE_MAX_GFORCE / 0x7FFF.
160 
161 ==============================================================================
162 Notes -- OpenGL ES
163 ==============================================================================
164 
165 Your SDL application for iOS uses OpenGL ES for video by default.
166 
167 OpenGL ES for iOS supports several display pixel formats, such as RGBA8 and RGB565, which provide a 32 bit and 16 bit color buffer respectively. By default, the implementation uses RGB565, but you may use RGBA8 by setting each color component to 8 bits in SDL_GL_SetAttribute().
168 
169 If your application doesn't use OpenGL's depth buffer, you may find significant performance improvement by setting SDL_GL_DEPTH_SIZE to 0.
170 
171 Finally, if your application completely redraws the screen each frame, you may find significant performance improvement by setting the attribute SDL_GL_RETAINED_BACKING to 0.
172 
173 OpenGL ES on iOS doesn't use the traditional system-framebuffer setup provided in other operating systems. Special care must be taken because of this:
174 
175 - The drawable Renderbuffer must be bound to the GL_RENDERBUFFER binding point when SDL_GL_SwapWindow() is called.
176 - The drawable Framebuffer Object must be bound while rendering to the screen and when SDL_GL_SwapWindow() is called.
177 - If multisample antialiasing (MSAA) is used and glReadPixels is used on the screen, the drawable framebuffer must be resolved to the MSAA resolve framebuffer (via glBlitFramebuffer or glResolveMultisampleFramebufferAPPLE), and the MSAA resolve framebuffer must be bound to the GL_READ_FRAMEBUFFER binding point, before glReadPixels is called.
178 
179 The above objects can be obtained via SDL_GetWindowWMInfo() (in SDL_syswm.h).
180 
181 ==============================================================================
182 Notes -- Keyboard
183 ==============================================================================
184 
185 The SDL keyboard API has been extended to support on-screen keyboards:
186 
187 void SDL_StartTextInput()
188  -- enables text events and reveals the onscreen keyboard.
189 
190 void SDL_StopTextInput()
191  -- disables text events and hides the onscreen keyboard.
192 
193 SDL_bool SDL_IsTextInputActive()
194  -- returns whether or not text events are enabled (and the onscreen keyboard is visible)
195 
196 
197 ==============================================================================
198 Notes -- Reading and Writing files
199 ==============================================================================
200 
201 Each application installed on iPhone resides in a sandbox which includes its own Application Home directory. Your application may not access files outside this directory.
202 
203 Once your application is installed its directory tree looks like:
204 
205  MySDLApp Home/
206  MySDLApp.app
207  Documents/
208  Library/
209  Preferences/
210  tmp/
211 
212 When your SDL based iPhone application starts up, it sets the working directory to the main bundle (MySDLApp Home/MySDLApp.app), where your application resources are stored. You cannot write to this directory. Instead, I advise you to write document files to "../Documents/" and preferences to "../Library/Preferences".
213 
214 More information on this subject is available here:
215 http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html
216 
217 ==============================================================================
218 Notes -- iPhone SDL limitations
219 ==============================================================================
220 
221 Windows:
222  Full-size, single window applications only. You cannot create multi-window SDL applications for iPhone OS. The application window will fill the display, though you have the option of turning on or off the menu-bar (pass SDL_CreateWindow() the flag SDL_WINDOW_BORDERLESS).
223 
224 Textures:
225  The optimal texture formats on iOS are SDL_PIXELFORMAT_ABGR8888, SDL_PIXELFORMAT_ABGR8888, SDL_PIXELFORMAT_BGR888, and SDL_PIXELFORMAT_RGB24 pixel formats.
226 
227 Loading Shared Objects:
228  This is disabled by default since it seems to break the terms of the iOS SDK agreement for iOS versions prior to iOS 8. It can be re-enabled in SDL_config_iphoneos.h.
229 
230 ==============================================================================
231 Game Center
232 ==============================================================================
233 
234 Game Center integration might require that you break up your main loop in order to yield control back to the system. In other words, instead of running an endless main loop, you run each frame in a callback function, using:
235 
236  int SDL_iPhoneSetAnimationCallback(SDL_Window * window, int interval, void (*callback)(void*), void *callbackParam);
237 
238 This will set up the given function to be called back on the animation callback, and then you have to return from main() to let the Cocoa event loop run.
239 
240 e.g.
241 
242  extern "C"
243  void ShowFrame(void*)
244  {
245  ... do event handling, frame logic and rendering ...
246  }
247 
248  int main(int argc, char *argv[])
249  {
250  ... initialize game ...
251 
252  #if __IPHONEOS__
253  // Initialize the Game Center for scoring and matchmaking
254  InitGameCenter();
255 
256  // Set up the game to run in the window animation callback on iOS
257  // so that Game Center and so forth works correctly.
258  SDL_iPhoneSetAnimationCallback(window, 1, ShowFrame, NULL);
259  #else
260  while ( running ) {
261  ShowFrame(0);
262  DelayFrame();
263  }
264  #endif
265  return 0;
266  }