Allegro, a very popular game development library

[darksun4]

I agree.
I just say that when it comes to rapid prototyping (making a game fast and specially in Linux) , you will choose Allegro (a clean game dev lib) or SDL ( an all-around lib which).

Of course, learnin Allegron cannot be compared with learning the "real thing" (DirectX/OpenGL).

My whole point from the start is that, if you want to make a game, use Allegro and check SDL 'cause even if SDL is not a "just" a game dev, has almost everything you need (for making a game fast).

[tweakman]

I like Allegro because you don't have to do all the Windows and/or COM stuff to work with DirectX or deal directly with OpenGL. It takes care of a lot of the grunt work for you. This frees you to work on the logic of your game without having to worry about all the extra coding and I'm not looking for a game programming job anyway. It is also very good if you have a limited number of graphics. Allegro has functions to not only blit but you can also rotate, flip, scale and some allow you to do these at the same time. This make it easy to take one picture and manipulate it to make all of the frames of your animation at startup and store them in an array. Very cool trick! There is a tank game that is made and enhanced as you progress through the book "Game Programming All in One" and this technique is used to make all of the frames for the tanks directions.

I'm in chapter 9 tonight, Advanced Sprite Programming: Animation, Compiled Sprites, and Collision Detection. So far it is very interesting and fun!

[AssKoala]

My whole point from the start is that, if you want to make a game, use Allegro and check SDL 'cause even if SDL is not a "just" a game dev, has almost everything you need (for making a game fast).

SDL is comparable to DirectX.  It isn't as robust, but it is far more robust than Allegro.

I'm not saying not to use Allegro.  It's a great library (as is ClanLib and other libraries).  I'm just trying to stop the misinformation among non-programmers or new programmers who think that you should be using Allegro instead of a "real" API.

If what you're after is building a game with minimal programming but with more flexibility than a prebuilt engine, you can go with Allegro or ClanLib or whatever.  Our Icarus Engine may be made open source, so you may be able to avoid even more programming and have a far more flexible engine for work put in soon

If you're after building a flexible game engine, then you need to look at DirectX or SDL.

[darksun4]

I couldn't agree more!
Knowing the API is a must if you want to really dive into game programming.
But to experiment and hack a game really fast, allegro is unique!