After Years In Development, SDL 2.0.0 Has Finally Been Released!

Posted on Tuesday, August 13, 2013 by RICHARD HARRIS, Executive Editor

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D. It is used by video playback software, emulators, and popular games including Valve's award winning catalog and many Humble Bundle games.

These are the most important new features in SDL 2.0:

- Full 3D hardware acceleration

- Support for OpenGL 3.0+ in various profiles (core, compatibility,

debug, robust, etc)

- Support for OpenGL ES

- Support for multiple windows

- Support for multiple displays

- Support for multiple audio devices

- Android and iOS support

- Simple 2D rendering API that can use Direct3D, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, or

software rendering behind the scenes

- Force Feedback available on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

- XInput and XAudio2 support for Windows

- Atomic operations

- Power management (exposes battery life remaining, etc)

- Shaped windows

- 32-bit audio (int and float)

- Simplified Game Controller API (the Joystick API is still here, too!)

- Touch support (multitouch, gestures, etc)

- Better fullscreen support

- Better keyboard support (scancodes vs keycodes, etc).

- Message boxes

- Clipboard support

- Basic Drag'n'Drop support

- Proper unicode input and IME support

- A really powerful assert macro

- Lots of old annoyances from 1.2 are gone

- Many other things!

After Years In Development, SDL 2.0.0 Has Finally Been Released!

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