Q:

How can I clear a SDL_Surface to be replaced with another one?

Been trying to find this online for a while now.
I have a SDL_Surface with some content (in one it's text, in another is a part of a sprite). Inside the game loop I get the data onto the screen fine. But then it loops again and it doesn't replace the old data but just writes over it. So in the case of the text, it becomes a mess.
I've tried SDL_FreeSurface and it didn't work, anyone know another way?
fpsStream.str("");
fpsStream << fps.get_ticks();
fpsString = fpsStream.str();

game.fpsSurface = TTF_RenderText_Solid(game.fpsFont, fpsString.c_str(), textColor);
game.BlitSurface(0, 0, game.fpsSurface, game.screen);

A:

Try something like:
SDL_FillRect(screen, NULL, 0x000000);
at the beginning of your loop.

A:

If you are drawing something with transparency (eg. stuff from SDL_ttf) then the transparent areas between the text won't be altered, meaning previous writes will remain. This isn't usually a problem because the usual behaviour is for the program to clear the frame buffer and redraw the entire scene once per frame. In the old days it was common to only redraw the 'dirty' parts of the screen but that is not so common now.

