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Allegro5 - Allegro game programming library v5.x [message #36963]

Wed, 01 August 2012 03:24

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Messages: 301
Registered: November 2008

Senior Member

Homepage:
http://alleg.sourceforge.net

License:
zlib

Version:
5.1.9 (Jan 3, 2015)

Description:
Allegro 5 is cross-platform library mainly aimed at video game and multimedia programming. It handle common, low-level tasks such as creating windows, accepting user input, loading data, drawing images, playing sounds, etc. and generally abstracting away the underlying platform. However, Allegro is not a game engine: you are free to design and structure your program as you like.

According to the Oxford Companion to Music, Allegro is the Italian for "quick, lively, bright". It is also a recursive acronym which stands for "Allegro Low LEvel Game ROutines". Allegro was started by Shawn Hargreaves in the mid-90's but has since received contributions from hundreds of people over the net.

Allegro 5 is the latest major revision of the library, designed to take advantage of modern hardware (e.g. hardware acceleration using 3D cards) and operating systems. Although it is not backwards compatible with earlier versions, it still occupies the same niche and retains a familiar style.

Allegro v5.1 supports the following platforms:
- Unix/Linux
- Windows (MSVC, MinGW)
- MacOS X
- iPhone
- Android

Allegro only supports 2D graphics primitives natively, but it is perfectly reasonable to use Allegro alongside a 3D API (e.g. OpenGL, Direct3D, and higher level libraries), while Allegro handles the other tasks. Allegro is also designed to be modular; e.g. if you prefer, you can substitute another audio library.

Documentation:
http://alleg.sourceforge.net/a5docs/refman/index.html

In the attachments you could find Allegro5 source code and addons converted to U++ packages and documentation (in pdf format).

To note:
Originally, Allegro5 uses CMake build system, which generates special configuration header files for supported platforms and available dependencies/features. The packages in the attachments are configured to support Windows and Unix/Linux operating systems only with specific dependencies, but other (e.g. *.m for MacOS X and IPhone, etc.) files still there, if you want to include them to build and configure.
Also this is slightly modified version of Allegro5 to support U++ package structure and features.

Requirements:
1. Third party dependency libraries (as U++ packages) from below message with following configured assembly package nests:

Allegro;Libraries;upp\uppsrc

where Allegro - the path of extracted Allegro5 libraries; Libraries - the path with third party dependency libraries; upp\uppsrc - the path to U++ uppsrc directory with *.upt templates to create packages.

2. a) On Windows you need to install DirectX SDK headers and libraries and configure them for appropriate TheIDE builder(s), e.g.
for MSC compiler: download and install June 2010 SDK and add following paths to TheIDE builder:

Include directories:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK\Include
LIB directories (for 32 bit operating system):
C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK\Lib\x86
LIB directories (for 64 bit operating system):
C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK\Lib\x64

for MinGW GCC compiler: Download and extract dx9mgw.zip to preferred directory. Then add include and lib directories to TheIDE builder respectively.

2. b) On (Ubuntu based distributive of) Linux you need to install:
- Development libraries for X11: xorg-dev
- Development libraries for OpenGL: libgl1-mesa-dev, libglu-dev
- Development libraries for GTK (native dialog support): libgtk2.0-dev

Edit: Updated to 5.1.9 (WIP) version.

Attachment: Allegro_v5.1.9.7z
(Size: 1.25MB, Downloaded 335 times)

[Updated on: Mon, 02 February 2015 16:12]

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