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From what little I understand libsdl2 made it lot better to do gaming than libsdl 1.2 . But I have not understood the changes they have bought. I am not a programmer but an end-user. Could someone explain to me how SDL2 would benefit me as a gamer specifically in the graphics dept. ?

There are a few games who still use 800x600 resolution ? Would it be possible for those games to be played on 1600x900 and such resolutions? Also would bigger tiles be also possible in games ? I have no idea what limitations did SDL 1.2 which SDL2 has overcome. Looking forward to know.

Just to note I'm on Debian Jessie.

Update: Based on @Mario's answer, I have an integrated Intel G33 chipset. (I know it's an old chipset :( ) but if a programmer of a game changed to SDL 2 are there any features which could make games better for people who have for example an Intel G33 chipset.

shirish
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Disclaimer: I haven't written anything with SDL recently. I stopped using it during the 1.3/2.0 development due to (IMO) horrible interfaces and some limitations.

Probably one of the biggest changes between SDL (1.x) and SDL 2 has been the fact that they included hardware blitting/rendering.

In essence, when you used SDL 1.x to create a window, you might have gotten a OpenGL context and potentially hardware acceleration, but all drawing has been done in software mode. This offers the best compatibility between different platforms, but at the same time is very, very slow compared to modern accelerated graphics stuff (it's been even back then).

So SDL2 allows programmers more easier access to fast rendering capabilities and stuff.

However, the version jump doesn't mean that games look better or there'd be higher resolutions available or anything like that.

With SDL 1.x many programmers used SDL to create a window and OpenGL context in a cross-platform way, then used their own custom drawing/OpenGL calls to actually draw.

So the whole question essentially boils down to one question:

How good was the original code with SDL 1.x?

With good optimizations and while using hardware rendering, you'll hardly notice any difference just because some program switched from SDL 1.x to SDL 2. This won't magically unlock some new capabilities in general (it might do, depending on how the original program's been written).

If there've been resolution limitations, those have been imposed by the programmer (e.g. to prevent extreme slow downs when using software rendering) or it's some compatibility thing.

Mario
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