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The other thread on this board got me thinking a little. I use allegro a little right now but I've always looked at it mostly as a fun thing and some day I have to learn opengl or directx. But do I? Is allegro really an alternative to any of these? Anyone who's good at this, is it worth to learn allegro properly or should I go for one of the others?
I'm talking mainly about game programming by the way.
Well, you know my vote. :D I knew most of DirectX and some other proprietary libs when I stumbled upon Allegro. The proprietary libs were cross platform, expensive, and usually pretty limited, but necessary for some of the projects I had. When I got Allegro going, I couldn't believe that it actually outperformed some of these libs because it can take advantage of hardware acceleration (something most of these did in a limited or poor fashion). DirectX, for example can also take advantage of HW acceleration. But DirectX isn't cross platform and makes porting a bit clucky. Allegro is clean, open source, as fast as the libs it wraps, and free.
It is nice to look under the hood and understand what is going on, so maybe picking up a little DirectX, OpenGL, networking libs, various sound libs, etc would be beneficial to you. Then again, why not reinvent DirectX or OpenGL? Personally, I would just use Allegro for what it is good at, and learn about plugging in OpenGL for HW 3D, and various networking libs and call it good. Why remake something that exists and has been refined for years?
I guess in other words, it depends on your taste. In the end, there are many ways to do equivalent things.
-Justin
EDIT: If you want to get hired as a pro game maker, you need to know a lot more though. It wouldn't be a bad idea to know all of DirectX, all of OpenGL, and Allegro couldn't hurt either. Also, even more important, specialize in something, like learn all about AI theory or 3D, or networking. Often, we learn things for credentials, then use the most practical thing.
Ok, thanks for the advice.
The main problem I see about allegro is the lack of books and good tutorials. Are the at all any existing books about allegro?
Or does anyone know a really good and descriptive tutorial suitable for an intermediate allegro programmer?
Learning only from the examples included is quite hard.
www.allegro.cc is the official Allegro game programming community. From there, there are oodles of tutorial links etc. I'm unaware of books specifically for Allegro, but it wouldn't surprise me anymore.
DirectX is the best
"DirectX is the best" opinion!
I believe that openGL is the best, but that is my opinion
no one cares about your opinion they care about mine and DirectX is the Best
hey it rhymes.....
"DirectX" and "best" doesn't rhyme...
> "DirectX" and "best" doesn't rhyme...
They're half rhymes (but that's english class -- and I hate English).
Hey, Justin, can you take a look at the thread I started "start game programming"? maes and I are having some problems with the allegro library.
Thanks.
--Garfield the non-English Programmer
Sorry for the delay, I had to be out of town this weekend and didn't have access to an internet account. :p