Achieving a constant frame rate in SDL

Question

I'm trying to make an SDL program that runs with a constant frame rate. However I'm finding that even though my program is lagging a lot and skipping a lot of frames (even though it's running at a low frame and isn't rendering much).

Do you guys have any suggestions to make my program run smoother?

#include "SDL.h"
#include "SDL/SDL_ttf.h"

//in milliseconds
const int FPS = 24;
const int SCREENW = 400;
const int SCREENH = 300;
const int BPP = 32;

void apply_surface(int x, int y, SDL_Surface* source, SDL_Surface* destination) {

    SDL_Rect offset;

    offset.x = x;

    offset.y = y;



    if(SDL_BlitSurface(source, NULL, destination, &offset) < 0) {
        printf("%s\n", SDL_GetError());
    }

}

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
    //calculate the period
    double period = 1.0 / (double)FPS;
    period = period * 1000;
    int milliPeriod = (int)period;
    int sleep;

    SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_EVERYTHING);
    TTF_Init();

    TTF_Font* font = TTF_OpenFont("/usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeMono.ttf", 24);
    SDL_Color textColor = { 0x00, 0x00, 0x00 };

    SDL_Surface* screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(SCREENW, SCREENH, BPP, SDL_SWSURFACE);
    SDL_Surface* message = NULL;

    Uint32 white = SDL_MapRGB(screen->format, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);

    SDL_Event event;

    char str[15];

    Uint32 lastTick;
    Uint32 currentTick;
    while(1) {
        while(SDL_PollEvent(&event)) {
            if(event.type == SDL_QUIT) {
                return 0;
            }
            else {
                lastTick = SDL_GetTicks();

                sprintf(str, "%d", lastTick);
                message = TTF_RenderText_Solid(font, str, textColor);
                if(message == NULL) { printf("%s\n", SDL_GetError()); return 1; }

                //the actual blitting
                SDL_FillRect(screen, &screen->clip_rect, white);
                apply_surface(SCREENW / 2, SCREENH / 2, message, screen);

                currentTick = SDL_GetTicks();

                //wait the appropriate amount of time
                sleep = milliPeriod - (currentTick - lastTick);
                if(sleep < 0) { sleep = 0; }
                SDL_Delay(sleep);

                SDL_Flip(screen);
            }
        }
    }

    TTF_CloseFont(font);
    TTF_Quit();
    SDL_Quit();

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

There is a small example of how to do this at http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.15/docs/html/guidetimeexamples.html:

#define TICK_INTERVAL    30

static Uint32 next_time;

Uint32 time_left(void)
{
    Uint32 now;

    now = SDL_GetTicks();
    if(next_time <= now)
        return 0;
    else
        return next_time - now;
}


/* main game loop */

    next_time = SDL_GetTicks() + TICK_INTERVAL;
    while ( game_running ) {
        update_game_state();
        SDL_Delay(time_left());
        next_time += TICK_INTERVAL;
    }