Trag has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Are there any good graphics alternatives to SDL or GL for
Perl? Specifically something for programming a
simple game.

Thanks

*********************************************
print "Just another iconoclastic Perl hacker";

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Alternative to SDL or GL?
by PodMaster (Abbot) on May 11, 2004 at 12:00 UTC
[reply]
      Wow... Having read the GUI FAQ, I just got Prima and
      watched the Matrix demo... I think that might cover my needs for now.

      Thanks Podmaster

      *********************************************
      print "Just another iconoclastic Perl hacker";
[reply]
Re: Alternative to SDL or GL?
by LTjake (Prior) on May 11, 2004 at 12:12 UTC

    I've played around with Allegro before. I really like it. Recently I found some perl bindings for it. Though, honestly, I was never able to get them to work. :/

    --
    "Go up to the next female stranger you see and tell her that her "body is a wonderland."
    My hypothesis is that she’ll be too busy laughing at you to even bother slapping you.    " (src)

[reply]
Re: Alternative to SDL or GL?
by halley (Prior) on May 11, 2004 at 13:28 UTC
    If you want to do graphics and sounds, and remain anything resembling portable, the SDL is your best bet.

    If you want to do 3D graphics, and remain anything resembling portable, the OpenGL implementations are your best bet.

    However, the Perl bindings for both have some issues.

    There was a fork of the Perl-SDL effort, which also includes some framework packages to facilitate game development.

    I am also working on a library of framework packages, but they're not geared to the same kind of game development that everyone finds in game development books.

    Game development has never been a high-level pursuit. Expect to dig in and learn a lot about the lowest levels of the application. Write your own helper classes which will facilitate your game concept.

    --
    [ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

[reply]
Re: Alternative to SDL or GL?
by zentara (Cardinal) on May 12, 2004 at 14:56 UTC
    You might like Tk and the Canvas widget. And even more useful is Zinc

    The nice thing about Zinc is it easily does transformations, rotations and zooming ( only 2d though).

    Here are a couple of simple games I made with Zinc. PONG with TkZinc or

    Zinc: TripleRotatingWheel

    The only thing about Zinc, is that it is hard to get going on windows, and there are versioning problems. You need to be using Tk800.025, but they are working on the port to Tk804.027. Other than these minor problems, Zinc is absolutely fantastic and fast.

    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh
[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom