[sdljava-users] Upcoming Features

[Ivan Z. G. <iva...@ya...>]

Greetings,

I wanted to update you on features that will be in the next release. 

I'm adding a set of methods to SDLImage, SDLMixer and SDLTTF so that 
each module can load images, wav, music or ttf files like so:

    SDLImage.load(byte[] data)
    SDLImage.load(URL url)
    SDLImage.load(ByteBuffer data)

    SDLMixer.loadWAV(byte[] data)
    SDLMixer.loadWAV(URL url)
    SDLMixer.loadWAV(ByteBuffer data)
    SDLMixer.loadMUS(byte[] data)
    SDLMixer.loadMUS(URL url)
    SDLMixer.loadMUS(ByteBuffer data)

    SDLTTF.openFont(byte[] data)
    SDLTTF.openFont(URL url)
    SDLTTF.openFont(ByteBuffer data)

This should allow one to use these modules more naturally from java.  
I've already got it working for loadWAV using SDL_RWops on the C side 
and it works perfectly.  Thanks to Robert Schuster for the suggestion. 

I'm also planning to implement SDLSurface.updateRects(...) in a much 
faster way using Direct buffers.  Finally there will be a few new 
methods added called queueBlit(...) and queueUpdateRect(...).  What they 
will do is basically allow one to "queue" blits or updates, then later 
call either flushBlits() or flushUpdates() to send them to the native 
layer and have ALL the blits or updates processed at one time in C.  So 
for example if you did 100 blits normally that would be 100 separate JNI 
calls.  In this case it will mean one JNI to do all 100 updates.  I 
believe this should produce performance near to that which can now be 
achieved in C code.

Oh and I've been able to get a full OpenGL binding working via the 
import of the opengl from the Lightweight Java Game Library -- 
http://www.lwjgl.org/.  Actually needed to slightly hack the jar file to 
make a few methods public, however, I am able to use their opengl 
binding so far without any troubles.  I'm not sure that I want to stick 
with this forever due to certain aspects of its design, but, for now we 
would have the capability to fully utilize opengl from sdljava.  I'm not 
sure that this will make it into next release but if anyone really needs 
to use opengl in this way please let me know.

Next release should be in about one month.

Please let me know any suggestions, comments or questions.

Thanks,
-Ivan/