'idiomatic' porting of c and or c++ code that does NULL checking

[nikki via Digitalmars-d-learn]

I am learning SDL by following the lazyfoo SDL2 tuorials, I am 
alos new to D so I have a question:

I the lazyfoo tutorials there are many functions that have a bool 
success whiich gets set at various places when something goes 
wrong to be returned afterwards.

http://lazyfoo.net/tutorials/SDL/02_getting_an_image_on_the_screen/index.php
for example:
[code]

bool init()
{
    //Initialization flag
    bool success = true;

    //Initialize SDL
    if( SDL_Init( SDL_INIT_VIDEO ) < 0 )
    {
        printf( "SDL could not initialize! SDL_Error: %s\n", 
SDL_GetError() );
        success = false;
    }
    else
    {
        //Create window
        gWindow = SDL_CreateWindow( "SDL Tutorial", 
SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED, SDL_WINDOWPOS_UNDEFINED, SCREEN_WIDTH, 
SCREEN_HEIGHT, SDL_WINDOW_SHOWN );
        if( gWindow == NULL )
        {
            printf( "Window could not be created! SDL_Error: 
%s\n", SDL_GetError() );
            success = false;
        }
        else
        {
            //Get window surface
            gScreenSurface = SDL_GetWindowSurface( gWindow );
        }
    }

    return success;
}


[/code]


in my D code I just change the NULL into null and the printf to a 
fitting writeln.
But I am wondering if D offers me much cleaner ways of writing 
this, I am guessing the scope() but what would be the best/D way 
of writing this function?

How would you write it?