# TILES and SDLTILES builds diff

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/tiles-and-sdltiles-builds-diff/10313>\
**Category:** The Toolbox\
**Created:** [August 11, 2015, 9:23am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/tiles-and-sdltiles-builds-diff/10313 "2015-08-11T09:23:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![LazyCat-rus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LazyCat-rus](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/LazyCat-rus)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2015, 9:23am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/tiles-and-sdltiles-builds-diff/10313/1 "2015-08-11T09:23:38Z")

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What difference between TILES and SDLTILES defines?

Guess this is can be useful on Windows build.  
CURSES=draw text by Windows draw system(i don’t know name).  
SDLTILES=draw text by SDL, not use tiles.  
TILES=draw text and tiles by SDL.

But SDLTILES behavior can be reached simple by disabling “Use tiles” option in TILES build

Should SDLTILES build flag be purged?

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**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2015, 11:05pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/tiles-and-sdltiles-builds-diff/10313/2 "2015-08-11T23:05:48Z")

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I’ve only seen CURSES in src/CMakeLists.txt. Curses build is built if TILES isn’t defined, explicitly invoking `make CURSES=1` will not do anything.

Pretty sure TILES implies SDLTILES. If this is the case, they could probably be merged.  
Running a simple search+replace would probably be enough.

Still, SDLTILES is an internal flag, not listed in the makefile or compiling guides, so it’s relatively low priority.

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**Author:** ![BevapDin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/bevapdin/32/228_2.png) [@BevapDin](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/BevapDin)\
**Post date:** [August 12, 2015, 11:17am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/tiles-and-sdltiles-builds-diff/10313/3 "2015-08-12T11:17:40Z")

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Yeah, merging them, good idea, someone should do it, _cough_ [https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/13235](https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/13235) (-;

A SDL-build without tiles isn’t that much different from a SDL-build with tiles. The only hard requirements that tiles had was SDL\_image with PNG support, but this was also required for loading bitmaps as font (like Dwarf Fortress tilesets [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset\_repository](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository)). And SDL\_image was listed as requirement anyway. In fact, the Makefiles makes no difference between SDLTILES and TILES, only some C++ code makes a difference.

It would also require more special code to handle more build variations.

In short: I believe there is not much gain of having a SDL-build without tiles.