What's the best, erm, window handling thing?

[ferum]

Sorry for the ambiguous title, I don't know what to call it, but I'm talking about an API to handle window creation, managment, and keyboard and mouse input. I've been using GLUT, but I thought I check and see which is best. Thoughts?

[OneSadCookie]

Depends what you want. GLUT is simple, but probably not good in the longer term. SDL is not very mac-like. Cocoa requires you to hack around a reasonable amount of the built-in functionality to get what you want for a game. Carbon is incredibly verbose. GameShell has poor mouse handling in either windowed or full-screen, depending on your perspective (though if anyone can tell me what it *should* do, I'll be happy to fix it :) )

[akb825]

If you just want a window (or full screen) and events, I'd say SDL is a pretty good choice. It's fairly straight forward, full featured (much more so than GLUT), and cross-platform. If you don't care about any "Mac-like" features, it's definitely the way to go. A bunch of commercial games use it, too. The two I know of for sure are Quake IV and UT2k4. (at least on the Mac)

[OneSadCookie]

The Mac port of Feeding Frenzy also uses SDL -- in fact, just about everything that Ryan Gordon ported does :)

[ferum]

:shock: And it doesn't force me to do object-oriented programming!
ding ding ding ! We have a winner! :)
Thanks for the help!

[Jones]

:shock: And it doesn't force me to do object-oriented programming!
ding ding ding ! We have a winner! :)
Thanks for the help!

Does GLUT? :???:

[AnotherJake]

No, GLUT does not require object-oriented programming.

[Duane]

yea, but using it feels like wading through a tub of sand up to your neck.