Sam Lantinga released an SDL preview release today of SDL3 for helping to encourage developers to test out the new SDL 3.0 API.

[1]SDL3 has been seeing many improvements for this cross-platform hardware/software abstraction layer that is commonly used by cross-platform games. A [2]Vulkan renderer is added, [3]a storage API , [4]colorspace and HDR related improvements , [5]rumble support for the Steam Deck , [6]child pop-up windows , [7]preferring Wayland over X11 , and [8]gutting a lot of old code .

In today's SDL 3.0 pre-release announcement, the API additions have been described as:

- The API has been significantly reworked to be easier to use and more consistent

- The 2D rendering API now has support for more advanced colorspaces and HDR rendering

- The 2D rendering API now has a Vulkan backend

- An example of hardware accelerated video playback using ffmpeg has been added in test/testffmpeg.c

- The shaped window API has been replaced with transparent windows

- Time and date functions have been added in SDL_time.h

- Support for webcam video capture has been added in SDL_camera.h

- Support for handling pens and tablets has been added in SDL_pen.h

- Support for file open and save dialogs has been added in SDL_dialog.h

- Cross-platform functions for working with files and directories are available in SDL_filesystem.h

- A cross-platform abstraction for working with user and game data has been added in SDL_storage.h

- Handling of main() has been moved to a header library and an optional callback-based program flow is available

- Support for simple object properties has been added in SDL_properties.h. These properties are available on many SDL objects, and can be used for more advanced functionality.

Downloads and more details on this SDL 3 developer preview release via [9]GitHub .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/SDL3

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-Vulkan-Renderer

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-SDL_Storage-API-Merged

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-Adds-Colorspace-HDR

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-Steam-Deck-Rumble

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-Child-Popup-Windows

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL-3.0-Wayland-Default-Prefer

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/news/SDL3-Dumping-Old-Code

[9] https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/releases/tag/prerelease-3.1.0