"Still with the release of the IESDK, some questions have
surfaced from the online discussions at IDN. I had a chance to
respond to many of them on the IDN mailing lists, but I think this
article is a great opportunity for me to go over some of the more
popular questions."
"First off, the Simple Direct Media Library or SDL is not part
of the IESDK. This is for good reason. We are developing
OpenStream, a video API which would conflict with the current
method of using SMPEG. Secondly, we are looking to optimize the
game engine around 3D performance, not 2D. There is nothing
stopping a developer from including a version of SDL with their
distributed game, however both must be included when you submit the
game for certification. SDL will run on top of OpenGL, and so you
should still see good game performance, but we still recommend that
you master the OpenGL library as separate from SDL. In future
releases of the IESDK, you may see parts of SDL, but we have no
immediate plans to include it. The IES runtime environment (IESRT)
is what we call the components of each library, kernel code,
drivers, and digital rights management which run in the actual IES
console device. No source code or compilation capability will be
embedded in the console itself. And SDL will not be included in the
IESRT, so if you must use SDL, your best bet is to include the
correct version with your game and submit the entire certification
package to us."
"Another way to draw 2D in an IES game is to simply draw a
sprite onto a planar surface in OpenGL and ignore the z data. You
can do this by using standard OpenGL API calls."