SDL Video Init causes Exception on Mac OS X 10.8

Question

I have just ported my C++ game to OS X and the first time it ran I get the following exception when trying to call SDL_SetVideoMode.

2012-09-28 15:01:05.437 SCRAsteroids[28595:707] * Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Error (1000) creating CGSWindow on line 259' * First throw call stack: ( 0 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8b53b716 __exceptionPreprocess + 198 1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x00007fff90e30470 objc_exception_throw + 43 2 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff8b53b4ec +[NSException raise:format:] + 204 3 AppKit 0x00007fff8a26a579 _NSCreateWindowWithOpaqueShape2 + 655 4 AppKit 0x00007fff8a268d70 -[NSWindow _commonAwake] + 2002 5 AppKit 0x00007fff8a2277e2 -[NSWindow _commonInitFrame:styleMask:backing:defer:] + 1763 6 AppKit 0x00007fff8a22692f -[NSWindow _initContent:styleMask:backing:defer:contentView:] + 1568 7 AppKit 0x00007fff8a2262ff -[NSWindow initWithContentRect:styleMask:backing:defer:] + 45 8 libSDL-1.2.0.dylib 0x0000000107c228f6 -[SDL_QuartzWindow initWithContentRect:styleMask:backing:defer:] + 294 9 libSDL-1.2.0.dylib 0x0000000107c20505 QZ_SetVideoMode + 2837 10 libSDL-1.2.0.dylib 0x0000000107c17af5 SDL_SetVideoMode + 917 11 SCRAsteroids 0x0000000107be60fb _ZN11SDLGraphics4initEP6IWorldii + 291 ) libc++abi.dylib: terminate called throwing an exception Abort trap: 6

My init code looks like this:

if (SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING) < 0)
  return false;

const SDL_VideoInfo *videoInfo = SDL_GetVideoInfo();
if (!videoInfo) {
  fprintf(stderr, "Video query failed: %s\n",
     SDL_GetError());
  return false;
}


/* the flags to pass to SDL_SetVideoMode */
videoFlags = SDL_OPENGL;       /* Enable OpenGL in SDL */
videoFlags |= SDL_GL_DOUBLEBUFFER; /* Enable double buffering */
videoFlags |= SDL_HWPALETTE;       /* Store the palette in hardware */

/* This checks to see if surfaces can be stored in memory */
if (videoInfo->hw_available)
  videoFlags |= SDL_HWSURFACE;
else
  videoFlags |= SDL_SWSURFACE;

if (w == 0) {
  widthViewport = videoInfo->current_w;
  heightViewport = videoInfo->current_h;
  cout << "Will use full screen resolution of ";   
  videoFlags |= SDL_FULLSCREEN;
} else {
  cout << "Will use full user supplied resolution of ";
  widthViewport = w;
  heightViewport = h;
  videoFlags |= SDL_RESIZABLE;       /* Enable window resizing */
}

cout << widthViewport << "x" << heightViewport << "\n";
  /* This checks if hardware blits can be done */
if (videoInfo->blit_hw)
  videoFlags |= SDL_HWACCEL;

/* Sets up OpenGL double buffering */
SDL_GL_SetAttribute(SDL_GL_DOUBLEBUFFER, 1);
/* get a SDL surface */
surface = SDL_SetVideoMode(widthViewport, heightViewport,
  SCREEN_BPP, videoFlags);

It gets into that last SDL call and throws the exception above. I have tried it in both full screen and resizable window mode, same thing.

I build my app old school, on the command line, as opposed to using Xcode.

Answer 1

SDL_main was yet again the culprit. My C++ main routine was in a file that does not include SDL.h, so it was not being redefined to SDL_main. The code that includes SDL is instead in a reusable static library, no main routine you see. I manually changed the name of my function to SDL_main and this means that SDL provides the essential main routine. I don't like doing this, but for the moment, on SDL 1.2.15 for Mac, it is necessary.

On Windows, the same new code causes linker conflicts. That's a new problem.

Answer 2

There are problems with calling the videocard in cocoa. So you need to initalize it before calling SDL_Setvideomode

Add the following method, and call it first in your main method

#include <dlfcn.h>  //To make it work on mac

//This must be called before playing with SDL, else it won't work on osx.

void pre_init()
{
    void* cocoa_lib;

    cocoa_lib = dlopen( "/System/Library/Frameworks/Cocoa.framework/Cocoa", RTLD_LAZY );
    void (*nsappload)(void);
    nsappload = (void(*)()) dlsym( cocoa_lib, "NSApplicationLoad");
    nsappload();
}

`