Basic SDL2 macOS Project Setup (Second Attempt: Success)

After my initial failed attempt to set up a macOS project using SDL, I decided to try an older version of SDL.

Using SDL2

I followed Lazy Foo’ Productions tutorial to set up a macOS Xcode project using SDL2: lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/01_hello_SDL/mac/xcode/

Here are the steps I followed:

1. Create a new macOS app with interface: XIB and language: Objective-C.
2. Delete the template project files (AppDelegate.m, AppDelegate.h, main.m).
3. Add the example main.c, updating the include directive from #include <SDL/SDL.h> to #include <SDL2/SDL.h>.
4. Add the SDL2.framework to the project (under the “General” tab).

I am using SDL2 version 2.30.11.

Game Loop and CPU Usage

Upon checking the resource usage of the example program, it was utilizing 99% of the CPU.

I believe the issue lies in the busy loop that keeps the window open, but I didn’t find any practical alternative implementations of the game loop. Some implementations include a delay call (SDL_Delay) between game loop iterations, but I chose not to modify the loop.

I attempted to update the example to use SDL_WaitEvent instead of SDL_PollEvent. The main difference is that SDL_WaitEvent blocks while waiting for an event to trigger. However, this change didn’t make sense because event handling should not block the game loop.