1. Run Xcode and create a new project using the iOS Game template, selecting the Objective C language and Metal game technology.
2. In the main view, delete all files except for Assets and LaunchScreen
3. Right click the project in the main view, select "Add Files...", and add the SDL project, Xcode/SDL/SDL.xcodeproj
4. Select the project in the main view, go to the "Info" tab and under "Custom iOS Target Properties" remove the line "Main storyboard file base name"
5. Select the project in the main view, go to the "Build Settings" tab, select "All", and edit "Header Search Path" and drag over the SDL "Public Headers" folder from the left
7. Select the project in the main view, go to the "General" tab, scroll down to "Frameworks, Libraries, and Embedded Content", and select "Embed & Sign" for the SDL library.
8. Add the source files that you would normally have for an SDL program, making sure to have #include "SDL.h" at the top of the file containing your main() function.
SDL for iPhone supports polling the built in accelerometer as a joystick device. For an example on how to do this, see the accelerometer.c in the demos directory.
The main thing to note when using the accelerometer with SDL is that while the iPhone natively reports accelerometer as floating point values in units of g-force, SDL_GetJoystickAxis() reports joystick values as signed integers. Hence, in order to convert between the two, some clamping and scaling is necessary on the part of the iPhone SDL joystick driver. To convert SDL_GetJoystickAxis() reported values BACK to units of g-force, simply multiply the values by SDL_IPHONE_MAX_GFORCE / 0x7FFF.
OpenGL ES for iOS supports several display pixel formats, such as RGBA8 and RGB565, which provide a 32 bit and 16 bit color buffer respectively. By default, the implementation uses RGB565, but you may use RGBA8 by setting each color component to 8 bits in SDL_GL_SetAttribute().
Finally, if your application completely redraws the screen each frame, you may find significant performance improvement by setting the attribute SDL_GL_RETAINED_BACKING to 0.
OpenGL ES on iOS doesn't use the traditional system-framebuffer setup provided in other operating systems. Special care must be taken because of this:
- If multisample antialiasing (MSAA) is used and glReadPixels is used on the screen, the drawable framebuffer must be resolved to the MSAA resolve framebuffer (via glBlitFramebuffer or glResolveMultisampleFramebufferAPPLE), and the MSAA resolve framebuffer must be bound to the GL_READ_FRAMEBUFFER binding point, before glReadPixels is called.
iOS now supports Bluetooth mice on iPad, but by default will provide the mouse input as touch. In order for SDL to see the real mouse events, you should set the key UIApplicationSupportsIndirectInputEvents to true in your Info.plist
Each application installed on iPhone resides in a sandbox which includes its own Application Home directory. Your application may not access files outside this directory.
Once your application is installed its directory tree looks like:
When your SDL based iPhone application starts up, it sets the working directory to the main bundle (MySDLApp Home/MySDLApp.app), where your application resources are stored. You cannot write to this directory. Instead, I advise you to write document files to "../Documents/" and preferences to "../Library/Preferences".
The SDL.xcodeproj file now includes a target to build SDL3.xcframework. An xcframework is a new (Xcode 11) uber-framework which can handle any combination of processor type and target OS platform.
In the past, iOS devices were always an ARM variant processor, and the simulator was always i386 or x86_64, and thus libraries could be combined into a single framework for both simulator and device. With the introduction of the Apple Silicon ARM-based machines, regular frameworks would collide as CPU type was no longer sufficient to differentiate the platform. So Apple created the new xcframework library package.
The xcframework target builds into a Products directory alongside the SDL.xcodeproj file, as SDL3.xcframework. This can be brought in to any iOS project and will function properly for both simulator and device, no matter their CPUs. Note that Intel Macs cannot cross-compile for Apple Silicon Macs. If you need AS compatibility, perform this build on an Apple Silicon Mac.
In addition, on Apple platforms, main() cannot be in a dynamically loaded library.
However, unlike in SDL2, in SDL3 SDL_main is implemented inline in SDL_main.h, so you don't need to link against a static libSDL3main.lib, and you don't need to copy a .c file from the SDL3 source either.
This means that iOS apps which used the statically-linked libSDL3.lib and now link with the xcframwork can just `#include <SDL3/SDL_main.h>` in the source file that contains their standard `int main(int argc; char *argv[])` function to get a header-only SDL_main implementation that calls the `SDL_RunApp()` with your standard main function.
Using an xcFramework is similar to using a regular framework. However, issues have been seen with the build system not seeing the headers in the xcFramework. To remedy this, add the path to the xcFramework in your app's target ==> Build Settings ==> Framework Search Paths and mark it recursive (this is critical). Also critical is to remove "*.framework" from Build Settings ==> Sub-Directories to Exclude in Recursive Searches. Clean the build folder, and on your next build the build system should be able to see any of these in your code, as expected:
Full-size, single window applications only. You cannot create multi-window SDL applications for iPhone OS. The application window will fill the display, though you have the option of turning on or off the menu-bar (pass SDL_CreateWindow() the flag SDL_WINDOW_BORDERLESS).
The optimal texture formats on iOS are SDL_PIXELFORMAT_ABGR8888, SDL_PIXELFORMAT_ABGR8888, SDL_PIXELFORMAT_BGR888, and SDL_PIXELFORMAT_RGB24 pixel formats.
This is disabled by default since it seems to break the terms of the iOS SDK agreement for iOS versions prior to iOS 8. It can be re-enabled in SDL_config_ios.h.
Game Center integration might require that you break up your main loop in order to yield control back to the system. In other words, instead of running an endless main loop, you run each frame in a callback function, using:
int SDL_iPhoneSetAnimationCallback(SDL_Window * window, int interval, void (*callback)(void*), void *callbackParam);
This will set up the given function to be called back on the animation callback, and then you have to return from main() to let the Cocoa event loop run.
e.g.
extern "C"
void ShowFrame(void*)
{
... do event handling, frame logic and rendering ...
Open the package contents of the older Xcode and your newer version of Xcode and copy over the folders in Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport
Then open the file Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS.sdk/SDKSettings.plist and add the versions of iOS you want to deploy to the key Root/DefaultProperties/DEPLOYMENT_TARGET_SUGGESTED_VALUES
Open your project and set your deployment target to the desired version of iOS
Finally, remove GameController from the list of frameworks linked by your application and edit the build settings for "Other Linker Flags" and add -weak_framework GameController