ledow
Member
Just wanted to let everyone know about something great I found recently. It's a VNC backend for SDL... basically any SDL program that is compiled against an SDL library patched with this can also operate over VNC. It's great for testing things on GP2X remotely, for instance.
http://micolous.id.au/archives/2010/02/17/sdl-vnc-server-module-v2/
It needs an SDL library recompile, obviously, but the patch is clean and works great. It makes use of libvncserver (download from sourceforge, not their homepage - latest version is 0.9.7), so almost any VNC client will work with it, it offers tons of compression, bit-depth, etc. options, and you just run your app with SDL_VIDEODRIVER="vnc" in the environment and it will automatically create itself a local VNC session that you can connect to. You can do video mode changes, draw to the screen, etc. without even knowing it's a VNC session that you're drawing to and without changing any of your SDL code. You can also interact with your SDL program - clicks and keypresses on the VNC session jump right into your SDL event loops. And if you don't set that environment variable, it's just an ordinary SDL library that works with everything.
I've found it useful for everything from testing "touchscreen" apps on my F100 using my mouse on a remote computer, to running a new SDL game of mine from a 64-bit Linux headless server somewhere in the depths of the London Docklands over an SSH connection - no X-Windows required. It also makes creating a "VNC app" (i.e. something that's constantly pushing out a screen that you create, over VNC - like a status monitor or rolling presentation app) incredibly easy. I'm thinking of using it to push out a VNC session across my local network that I can do all sorts of fancy stuff with, just by pretending it's an SDL video surface.
Anyway, I thought it was a great piece of software and it's helped me in several ways. Maybe we can get it pushed into Open2X's toolchain SDL?
http://micolous.id.au/archives/2010/02/17/sdl-vnc-server-module-v2/
It needs an SDL library recompile, obviously, but the patch is clean and works great. It makes use of libvncserver (download from sourceforge, not their homepage - latest version is 0.9.7), so almost any VNC client will work with it, it offers tons of compression, bit-depth, etc. options, and you just run your app with SDL_VIDEODRIVER="vnc" in the environment and it will automatically create itself a local VNC session that you can connect to. You can do video mode changes, draw to the screen, etc. without even knowing it's a VNC session that you're drawing to and without changing any of your SDL code. You can also interact with your SDL program - clicks and keypresses on the VNC session jump right into your SDL event loops. And if you don't set that environment variable, it's just an ordinary SDL library that works with everything.
I've found it useful for everything from testing "touchscreen" apps on my F100 using my mouse on a remote computer, to running a new SDL game of mine from a 64-bit Linux headless server somewhere in the depths of the London Docklands over an SSH connection - no X-Windows required. It also makes creating a "VNC app" (i.e. something that's constantly pushing out a screen that you create, over VNC - like a status monitor or rolling presentation app) incredibly easy. I'm thinking of using it to push out a VNC session across my local network that I can do all sorts of fancy stuff with, just by pretending it's an SDL video surface.
Anyway, I thought it was a great piece of software and it's helped me in several ways. Maybe we can get it pushed into Open2X's toolchain SDL?
