Hello all!

I don't post much here, but I am an active user on the allegro.cc forums. I go by the same name there. I'm an 11 year veteran programmer in C and C++ and for almost all of that time I have been using Allegro in its various forms. I have to say, it's a great little library, and lets you do so much with little to no effort. For the past few years I have been compiling unoffical Allegro binaries for both legacy Allegro 4.4.3+ and modern day Allegro 5.2.4+. My binaries include dynamic debugging executables of all the example, test, demo, and tool programs that come with Allegro, unlike the official binaries, which only come with libs and headers. I provide a CHM manual for both versions of Allegro that makes it super easy to read the fine manual like every good programmer does.

I'm writing this post because I want everyone to know that allegro development has NOT stopped, and that modern day Allegro 5 gets you up and running with HWAccel graphics, event driven input, multimedia and more.

You can see the latest release of Allegro 5.2.4 here : https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/617292

You can get my binaries for Allegro 4.4.3 and Allegro 5.2.4 in this thread : https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/617424

They were built with the MinGW-W64 compiler using GCC 8.1 . You can find a link to the compiler on my thread, as well as links to the binaries, and the chm manuals.

Download the binaries and try the example and demo programs today! You'll be amazed at what Allegro can do for you.

The official website for Allegro is https://liballeg.org/ .

You can catch me over at the allegro.cc forums almost anytime, and if you have comments or questions, please ask away, whether it's here or there makes no difference.

Edgar Reynaldo

I love Allegro. I've been using it for over a decade! Helpful forums too.

I've heard of this library over the years...how would it fare on a Raspberry Pi?  I've tried SDL 2 in the past and the hardware performance was too slow, even on a Pi3.

I'd say a BIG... maybe?

It's not Allegro or SDL's fault, AFAIK. We had a guy recently try his Pi (and I tried mine). The Rasbian Foundation people were... very... unsupportive. Basically, it boils down to they don't actually support OpenGL (only OpenGL ES? IIRC), so it runs in software emulation (which also has bugs like colors being wrong). You can turn on the "experimental" OpenGL driver but it still doesn't help. The colors get corrected but its still slow.

I asked the Raspian guys about it and they just said "unsupported."

So whatever issue you had with SDL is most likely the same one we had with Allegro. If there was a real need, we could write a driver for Allegro that uses some other Linux/Rasbian supported graphics API.  Possibly all it needs is porting the OpenGL code to OpenGL ES. But as it stands, AFAIK, the issue is Rasperry Pi doesn't actually support OpenGL.

1 minute ago, Chris Katko said:

Possibly all it needs is porting the OpenGL code to OpenGL ES

Don't the Android and iOS ports both already use OpenGL ES? Desktop OpenGL isn't available on either of those platforms.

I haven't personally used the Android/iOS ports but that's very likely. But straight Linux uses OpenGL proper (AFAIK--I'm not a dev, just a long-time user). So that may be an easier-than-expected port. Take the rendering code from iOS/Android, and keep everything else in the Linux port.

Also, sidenote: Allegro5 has GREAT D-language bindings by one of the developers.

https://github.com/SiegeLord/DAllegro5

Definitely, use those over the "Derelict" ones, as they're maintained on a daily / current-to-mainline-patches basis. The Derelict ones are way behind.

4 hours ago, Chris Katko said:

I haven't personally used the Android/iOS ports but that's very likely. But straight Linux uses OpenGL proper (AFAIK--I'm not a dev, just a long-time user). So that may be an easier-than-expected port. Take the rendering code from iOS/Android, and keep everything else in the Linux port.

It is pretty much this, and shouldn't be a massive deal. Expect desktop OpenGL to be available on .. mostly desktops, and OpenGL ES to be available on .. embedded systems, phones, tablets, tv boxes, raspberry pis, low power things and stuff that isn't a desktop. That is pretty much the modern landscape.

OpenGL ES may also be available on desktop (it is on my linux via the MESA drivers). And SDL2 works with OpenGL ES, I'm using it for my linux build, it was very easy to get working (caveat I am only using SDL2 for stuff like input etc, I've never used SDL2 for drawing stuff, you'd have to check that in the docs).

Historically (I'm speaking of a few years ago) the Raspberry PI port worked. I don't know what happened, but newer models versions of the PI totally broke the graphics drivers. It was building on the PI since Trent G ported it to PI in 2013 ( https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/611802/975070#target ) .

As of the beginning of the last year it was actually working, and working pretty well on the PI 2 and 3 for martinohanlon : ( https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/616673/1027519#target ) .

He made a complete game called Mayhem 2 ( https://github.com/martinohanlon/mayhem-pi ) .

@Chris Katko

Weren't you involved in a thread about issues with the PI 2 and 3 being totally slow? Do you remember what the issue was or the thread where we discussed that?

Here it is : https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/617378

and the issue on the rpi forums https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=191791

Here's what he came up with for possible solutions : https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/617378/1037321#target

I really like allegro, I think it is very good library to start when you already know basics of programming language and you want to improve your skills.

I have choosen allegro because I liked the fact that I can use C, which basics I know and I dont necessarily need to learn C++ to use it. Another plus is that allegro is cross-platform. There is sufficient number of examples on liballeg site. You can use forum to get help which is still quite active.

All I want to change is forum, design looks old (someone can say retro) but this is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is, in my opinion, that all the answers are automatically locked up quickly and older topics are automatically hidden and can not be easily viewed. Also some manuals on liballeg site are outdated.

I would like to thank for this library and for all the help and willingness of the developers or other contributors who help in the forum or in some other way. Keep going guys

18 minutes ago, Valach said:

All I want to change is forum, design looks old (someone can say retro) but this is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is, in my opinion, that all the answers are automatically locked up quickly and older topics are automatically hidden and can not be easily viewed.

Also some manuals on liballeg site are outdated.

I would like to thank for this library and for all the help and willingness of the developers or other contributors who help in the forum or in some other way. Keep going guys

The forum is maintained by Matthew Leverton. Suffice it to say, he's been quite busy with RL. You can reach him by PM on allegro.cc.

Which manuals are you referring to? I have two up to date manuals for Allegro 4.4.3 and Allegro 5.2.4 in CHM format.

https://bitbucket.org/bugsquasher/unofficial-allegro-5-binaries/downloads/Allegro443.chm

https://bitbucket.org/bugsquasher/unofficial-allegro-5-binaries/downloads/Allegro524.chm

You're very welcome. Stop by the forums and say hello!