Re:Professional game developer says: There is! (Score 1)

No kidding. I was nearly pulling my hair out when I was trying to get things working under both X11 and DirectX, and had all sorts of messy implementation layers and whatnot, and the ugliness of it all still makes me physically cringe.

Then I tried SDL out, and I think the first words out of my mouth were "SOMEONE GOT IT RIGHT!" Had the whole layer ported to SDL in about 30-40 minutes and it worked like a charm. My only qualms now really only deal with poor file i/o (no directory support) and lack of decent WM functions.

Rereading that makes it sound like a religious experience, or a really horrible advertisement. May have been. ;)

The main complaint I hear about a lack of a DirectX equivalent is that sound has quite some ways to go, and there are no rendering functions for SDL. Audio is looking more and more like OpenAL will be the way to go, and if I ever finish my current work I'll probably try to work on rectifying the renderlib. (Like I'll ever get around to that. Heh.)