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Allegro is a portable game programming library.
Allegro is a game programming library for C/C++ developers distributed freely, supporting the following platforms: DOS, Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris, Darwin), Windows, QNX, BeOS and MacOS X. Allegro project provides many functions for graphics, sounds, player input (keyboard, mouse and joystick) and timers.
It also provides fixed and floating point mathematical functions, 3d functions, file management functions, compressed datafile and a GUI.
Here are some key features of "Allegro":
Vector drawing:
· pixels, lines, rectangles, circles, ellipses, arcs, Bezier splines
· shape fill, with or without pattern
· polygons: flat, Gouraud, textured (3D) and translucent
· Sprites:
· masked, compressed and compiled sprites
· blitting, rotation, stretching, reduction, alpha blending, Gouraud shading
· native support for BMP, LBM, PCX and TGA files (others supported with library extensions)
· Color palettes:
· color palette manipulation (reading, writing, conversion)
· conversion of color formats RGB HSV
· Text:
· support for different encodings and conversion, default is UTF-8
· bitmap fonts (masking, colouring, alignment)
· Misc:
· draw directly on the screen or on any-size memory bitmaps
· hardware scrolling and triple buffering (where available), mode-X split screen
· animation functions for FLI/FLC format
· Unix:
· X Window, DGA, fbcon
· SVGAlib
· VBE/AF
· mode-X
· VGA
· Windows:
· DirectX (windowed or full-screen)
· GDI
· MacOS X:
· Quartz (windowed or full-screen)
· BeOS:
· BWindowScreen
· BDirectWindow
· Dos:
· VGA 13h mode
· mode-X (23 VGA resolution plus unchained 640x400 extended mode)
· SVGA modes in 8, 15, 16, 24 and 32 bits per pixel
· linear VBE 2.0 framebuffer access
· hardware acceleration through VBE/AF API if supported
· additional graphic drivers through FreeBE/AF project
· OpenGL:
· The AllegroGL addon allows to use OpenGL graphics with Allegro.
What's New in This Release:
Graphics:
· Renamed al_clear() to al_clear_to_color().
· Renamed al_opengl_version() to al_get_opengl_version().
· Changed the direction of rotation for al_draw_rotated* from counter-clockwise to clockwise.
· Added new pixel format ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ABGR_8888_LE which guanrantees component ordering.
· Added ALLEGRO_NO_PRESERVE_TEXTURE flag.
· Fixed horizontal flipping in plain software blitting routines.
· Fixed some blending bugs in the OpenGL driver.
· Made OpenGL driver fall back to software rendering if separate alpha blending is requested but not supported.
· Added a config option which allows pretending a lower OpenGL version.
· Implemented al_get_num_display_formats(), al_get_display_format_option() and al_set_new_display_format() for WGL.
· Fixed bug in al_get_display_format_option() with the GLX driver.
· Fixed a bug in the D3D driver that made display creation crash if the first scored mode failed.
· Made the OpenGL driver prefer the backbuffer format for new bitmaps.
· Defer FBO creation to when first setting a bitmap as target bitmap.
Input:
· Renamed some joystick functions.
· Account for caps lock state in OS X keyboard driver.
· Made UTF-8 input work on X11.
File I/O:
· Separated part of fshook API into a distinct file I/O API (actually generic streams).
· Make the file I/O API match stdio more closely and account for corner cases. (incomplete)
· Made it possible to set a stream vtable on a per-thread basis, which affects al_fopen() for that thread.
· Added al_fget_ustr() to read a line conveniently.
· Change al_fputs() not to do its own CR insertion.
· Add al_fopen_fd() to create an ALLEGRO_FILE from an existing file descriptor.
Filesystem:
· Changed al_getcwd, al_get_entry_name to return ALLEGRO_PATHs.
· Renamed al_get_path to al_get_standard_path, and to return an ALLEGRO_PATH.
· Changed al_readdir to return an ALLEGRO_FS_ENTRY.
· Added al_path_create_dir.
· Removed some filesystem querying functions which take string paths (ALLEGRO_FS_ENTRY versions will do).
Config routines:
· Added functions to traverse configurations structures.
· Change al_save_config_file() return type to bool.
· Removed an arbitrary limit on the length of config values.
· Renamed configuration files to allegro5.cfg and allegro5rc.
String routines:
· Allegro 4-era string routines removed.
· Added al_ustr_to_buffer().
Other core:
· Renamed al_thread_should_stop to al_get_thread_should_stop.
· Added a new internal logging mechanism with configurable debug "channels", verbosity levels and output formatting.
· Cleaned up ASSERT namespace pollution.
Font addons:
· Renamed font and TTF addon functions to conform to conventions.
· Added al_init_ttf_addon.
Implemented slightly nicer text drawing API:
· functions are called "draw_text" instead of "textout"
· centre/right alignment handled by a flag instead of functions
· functions accepting ALLEGRO_USTR arguments provided
· substring support is removed so 'count' arguments not needed in usual case, however ALLEGRO_USTR functions provide similar thing.
· Removed al_font_is_compatible_font.
· Sped up al_grab_font_from_bitmap() by five times.
· ttf: Fixed a possible bug with kerning of unicode code points > 127.
Image I/O addon:
· Renamed everything in the IIO addon.
· Exposed al_load_bmp/al_save_bmp etc.
Audio addon:
· Renamed al_mixer_set_postprocess_callback.
· Added two config options to OSS driver.
· Made ALSA read config settings from [alsa] section.
Native dialogs:
· Added al_show_native_message_box() which works like allegro_message() in A4. Implemented for GTK and OS X.
PhysicsFS addon:
· Added PhysicsFS addon.
Primitives addon:
· Removed global state flags.
· Removed normals from ALLEGRO_VERTEX.
· Removed read/write flags from vertex buffers.
Examples:
· Added an example that tests al_get_display_format_option().
· Added an example which shows playing a sample directly to a voice.
· Added an example for PhysicsFS addon.
· Added a (silly) example that loads an image off the network using libcurl.
· Added ex_dir which demonstrates the use of al_readdir and al_get_entry_name.
Other:
· Many bug and documentation fixes.
link : http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownl...nload-295.html
Allegro is a game programming library for C/C++ developers distributed freely, supporting the following platforms: DOS, Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris, Darwin), Windows, QNX, BeOS and MacOS X. Allegro project provides many functions for graphics, sounds, player input (keyboard, mouse and joystick) and timers.
It also provides fixed and floating point mathematical functions, 3d functions, file management functions, compressed datafile and a GUI.
Here are some key features of "Allegro":
Vector drawing:
· pixels, lines, rectangles, circles, ellipses, arcs, Bezier splines
· shape fill, with or without pattern
· polygons: flat, Gouraud, textured (3D) and translucent
· Sprites:
· masked, compressed and compiled sprites
· blitting, rotation, stretching, reduction, alpha blending, Gouraud shading
· native support for BMP, LBM, PCX and TGA files (others supported with library extensions)
· Color palettes:
· color palette manipulation (reading, writing, conversion)
· conversion of color formats RGB HSV
· Text:
· support for different encodings and conversion, default is UTF-8
· bitmap fonts (masking, colouring, alignment)
· Misc:
· draw directly on the screen or on any-size memory bitmaps
· hardware scrolling and triple buffering (where available), mode-X split screen
· animation functions for FLI/FLC format
· Unix:
· X Window, DGA, fbcon
· SVGAlib
· VBE/AF
· mode-X
· VGA
· Windows:
· DirectX (windowed or full-screen)
· GDI
· MacOS X:
· Quartz (windowed or full-screen)
· BeOS:
· BWindowScreen
· BDirectWindow
· Dos:
· VGA 13h mode
· mode-X (23 VGA resolution plus unchained 640x400 extended mode)
· SVGA modes in 8, 15, 16, 24 and 32 bits per pixel
· linear VBE 2.0 framebuffer access
· hardware acceleration through VBE/AF API if supported
· additional graphic drivers through FreeBE/AF project
· OpenGL:
· The AllegroGL addon allows to use OpenGL graphics with Allegro.
What's New in This Release:
Graphics:
· Renamed al_clear() to al_clear_to_color().
· Renamed al_opengl_version() to al_get_opengl_version().
· Changed the direction of rotation for al_draw_rotated* from counter-clockwise to clockwise.
· Added new pixel format ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ABGR_8888_LE which guanrantees component ordering.
· Added ALLEGRO_NO_PRESERVE_TEXTURE flag.
· Fixed horizontal flipping in plain software blitting routines.
· Fixed some blending bugs in the OpenGL driver.
· Made OpenGL driver fall back to software rendering if separate alpha blending is requested but not supported.
· Added a config option which allows pretending a lower OpenGL version.
· Implemented al_get_num_display_formats(), al_get_display_format_option() and al_set_new_display_format() for WGL.
· Fixed bug in al_get_display_format_option() with the GLX driver.
· Fixed a bug in the D3D driver that made display creation crash if the first scored mode failed.
· Made the OpenGL driver prefer the backbuffer format for new bitmaps.
· Defer FBO creation to when first setting a bitmap as target bitmap.
Input:
· Renamed some joystick functions.
· Account for caps lock state in OS X keyboard driver.
· Made UTF-8 input work on X11.
File I/O:
· Separated part of fshook API into a distinct file I/O API (actually generic streams).
· Make the file I/O API match stdio more closely and account for corner cases. (incomplete)
· Made it possible to set a stream vtable on a per-thread basis, which affects al_fopen() for that thread.
· Added al_fget_ustr() to read a line conveniently.
· Change al_fputs() not to do its own CR insertion.
· Add al_fopen_fd() to create an ALLEGRO_FILE from an existing file descriptor.
Filesystem:
· Changed al_getcwd, al_get_entry_name to return ALLEGRO_PATHs.
· Renamed al_get_path to al_get_standard_path, and to return an ALLEGRO_PATH.
· Changed al_readdir to return an ALLEGRO_FS_ENTRY.
· Added al_path_create_dir.
· Removed some filesystem querying functions which take string paths (ALLEGRO_FS_ENTRY versions will do).
Config routines:
· Added functions to traverse configurations structures.
· Change al_save_config_file() return type to bool.
· Removed an arbitrary limit on the length of config values.
· Renamed configuration files to allegro5.cfg and allegro5rc.
String routines:
· Allegro 4-era string routines removed.
· Added al_ustr_to_buffer().
Other core:
· Renamed al_thread_should_stop to al_get_thread_should_stop.
· Added a new internal logging mechanism with configurable debug "channels", verbosity levels and output formatting.
· Cleaned up ASSERT namespace pollution.
Font addons:
· Renamed font and TTF addon functions to conform to conventions.
· Added al_init_ttf_addon.
Implemented slightly nicer text drawing API:
· functions are called "draw_text" instead of "textout"
· centre/right alignment handled by a flag instead of functions
· functions accepting ALLEGRO_USTR arguments provided
· substring support is removed so 'count' arguments not needed in usual case, however ALLEGRO_USTR functions provide similar thing.
· Removed al_font_is_compatible_font.
· Sped up al_grab_font_from_bitmap() by five times.
· ttf: Fixed a possible bug with kerning of unicode code points > 127.
Image I/O addon:
· Renamed everything in the IIO addon.
· Exposed al_load_bmp/al_save_bmp etc.
Audio addon:
· Renamed al_mixer_set_postprocess_callback.
· Added two config options to OSS driver.
· Made ALSA read config settings from [alsa] section.
Native dialogs:
· Added al_show_native_message_box() which works like allegro_message() in A4. Implemented for GTK and OS X.
PhysicsFS addon:
· Added PhysicsFS addon.
Primitives addon:
· Removed global state flags.
· Removed normals from ALLEGRO_VERTEX.
· Removed read/write flags from vertex buffers.
Examples:
· Added an example that tests al_get_display_format_option().
· Added an example which shows playing a sample directly to a voice.
· Added an example for PhysicsFS addon.
· Added a (silly) example that loads an image off the network using libcurl.
· Added ex_dir which demonstrates the use of al_readdir and al_get_entry_name.
Other:
· Many bug and documentation fixes.
link : http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownl...nload-295.html