Using .c/.h images exported with gimp in SDL

Question

I wonder if someone has any idea if it's possible to use .c or .h images with SDL exported in gimp. I know there is .xpm but I can't somehow enable transparency for .xpm images.

I do know there are some complex ways to render .c/.h files in C, but I'd rather use SDL, since I'm trying to learn it.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

gimp header export function use it's own format, providing a macro used to uncrunch it, more details here

you can load raw data buffer into a sdl surface using SDL_CreateRGBSurfaceFrom

as you want load pictures into sdl, i can suggest you simply convert pictures files as a C array, not as raw pictures but still as bmp or png,

you can use this tool to convert any binary file to a .h

this will provide you file size as a define and a pointer to the file buffer,

#define dataSize 93722

unsigned char data[dataSize] = {
    'B',    'M',    0x1A,   'n',    0x1,    0x0,    0x0,    0x0,
    0x0,    0x0,    'z',    0x0,    0x0,    0x0,    'l',    0x0,
...
};

as it's sdl you will need to convert the buffer to a SDL_RWops structure,

SDL_RWops * z = SDL_RWFromMem(data,dataSize);

now for load this structure into a fresh sdl surface you need to use *_RW functions,

if you plain to use classic bmp files, it's directly supported in sdl with SDL_LoadBMP_RW the same thing exist in sdl image for all supported pictures types,

SDL_Surface * titleScreen = SDL_LoadBMP_RW(z,1);

for define the transparent color value of a sdl surface, you can use the SDL_SetColorKey function

SDL_SetColorKey( titleScreen, SDL_SRCCOLORKEY, 10);

if you want a concrete example, check this old source, it's uncrunch & load several bmp pictures into sdl from an in memory rar file,

as raw data or bmp are not crunched your executable size can grow up fast, maybe have a look at upx executable compressor, compressing the whole exe will compress his shipped data too, bitmap or raw will be crunched but still raw in your program