Question

I wish to have a semi-transparent SDL background (nothing to do with sub-surfaces or images), such that instead of having a black background it is actually transparent, but the other things I draw are not. My current code is a slightly modified copy of Code::Blocks’ SDL project, similar to how various applications have rounded borders or odd shapes besides rectangles.

#ifdef __cplusplus
    #include <cstdlib>
#else
    #include <stdlib.h>
#endif
#ifdef __APPLE__
#include <SDL/SDL.h>
#else
#include <SDL.h>
#endif

int main ( int argc, char** argv )
{
    putenv("SDL_VIDEO_WINDOW_POS");
    putenv("SDL_VIDEO_CENTERED=1");

    // initialize SDL video
    if ( SDL_Init( SDL_INIT_VIDEO ) < 0 )
    {
        printf( "Unable to init SDL: %s\n", SDL_GetError() );
        return 1;
    }

    // make sure SDL cleans up before exit
    atexit(SDL_Quit);

    // create a new window
    SDL_Surface* screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(640, 480, 16,
                                           SDL_HWSURFACE|SDL_DOUBLEBUF|SDL_NOFRAME);
    if ( !screen )
    {
        printf("Unable to set 640x480 video: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
        return 1;
    }

    // load an image
    SDL_Surface* bmp = SDL_LoadBMP("cb.bmp");
    if (!bmp)
    {
        printf("Unable to load bitmap: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
        return 1;
    }

    // centre the bitmap on screen
    SDL_Rect dstrect;
    dstrect.x = (screen->w - bmp->w) / 2;
    dstrect.y = (screen->h - bmp->h) / 2;

    // program main loop
    bool done = false;
    while (!done)
    {
        // message processing loop
        SDL_Event event;
        while (SDL_PollEvent(&event))
        {
            // check for messages
            switch (event.type)
            {
                // exit if the window is closed
            case SDL_QUIT:
                done = true;
                break;

                // check for keypresses
            case SDL_KEYDOWN:
                {
                    // exit if ESCAPE is pressed
                    if (event.key.keysym.sym == SDLK_ESCAPE)
                        done = true;
                    break;
                }
            } // end switch
        } // end of message processing

        // DRAWING STARTS HERE

        // clear screen
        SDL_FillRect(screen, 0, SDL_MapRGB(screen->format, 0, 0, 0));

        // draw bitmap
        SDL_BlitSurface(bmp, 0, screen, &dstrect);

        // DRAWING ENDS HERE

        // finally, update the screen :)
        SDL_Flip(screen);
    } // end main loop

    // free loaded bitmap
    SDL_FreeSurface(bmp);

    // all is well ;)
    printf("Exited cleanly\n");
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

I think what you’re trying to do is in fact a shaped window (parts of the window are transparent depending on a mask that you provide). It seems there’s no way to do that with SDL 1.2, however there is a SDL_SetWindowShape function just for this in SDL 1.3 for which you can find a pre-release snapshot here but it’s not even in beta yet so I suggest waiting until it’s officialy released 🙂