OpenGL ES vs SMFL vs SDL

[jomoengineer]

I've seen and worked through some examples of running SDL and SMFL on something like a Raspberry Pi so I was wondering if there is an advantage of using OpenGL ES over these graphic options.  Recently I heard a podcast where the guest was talking about using SDL for the interface development they were working on. It seemed like an interesting option. 

Any thoughts on these?

[Brian Beuken]

SDL is just a layer above OpenGL, it provides a standard interface so you as a coder don't need to worry quite so much about what type of Graphic system your system has. As such is a very cool interface, it is showing its age a bit though and SDL2 is a much bigger API with a lot of new stuff that might be overkill added to it. Its intended to be quite light and so its focus os mostly on creating a graphic framework

SFML is also an interface, and like SDL/SDL2 its there to make getting things up and running fairly easy and hid the different tech aspects of different systems from you with a safe reliable and consistant interface. SFML is quite a bit more detailed that SDL, but both are attempting to do the same thing.

I like them both, and find them to be very helpful. But as my background is oldskool/console coding, I've always preferred to go direct to the hardware of a specific system which gives total control of that system... but can make cross platform very hard work.

[jomoengineer]

Oh, cool. Thanks for the clarification. I see many game development tutorials that use either SDL or SFML which I suspect, as you mention, is easier than teaching OpenGL. I too like the idea of learning what is under the hood, so sharing your knowledge of OpenGL development is greatly appreciated.