Hi. How far along is allegro 5.1? Also, is Android support going to be included?

I ask because I'm doing a mobile game with a group I'm in and the quick graphics demo for 5.0 is already running on another of my group's iPhone.

Wow, that's great. Even if it's not ready by the time we're done with the current project, It'll definitely be a great choice in the future.

I've almost got support for android's native image loading routines in the image addon. Means it'll do jpeg, png, webp and whatever else it supports, as well as allegro's simple (bmp, tga, pcx, etc) formats.

Man, I don't know, I have been reading a lot about the Java language in these weeks, I have even made very tiny apps, you know those which comes with the tutorials, and I have to say that the language isn't so bad as I thought.

You don't have multi-inheritances but you have all the interfaces, isn't the same, but you can get used to.

I think the Android API is pretty good too, with the frames thing and the big amount of functions that the frameworks has, but damn, I still prefer C++, the thing is I don't know if it's going to be more trouble in the long run programming with C++ or with Java... I haven't read about NDK or the other native code stuff, but I also use a lot libraries like cURL and I don't know if I can use it on Android, so if I program a game using Allegro and want some network libraries, can I use the Android APIs? or do I have to find a C/C++ networking library for Android?

Some questions:

• I still can create a manifest.xml file when using Allegro, isn't it?

• There will be an onCreate(), onStart(), onResume(), onPause(), onStop(), onDestroy() functions, or how can we handle those events?

• Can I run the game in the emulator on the PC?

• Which IDE do you recommend?, Eclipse has the ADT plug-in, it's going to work when programming with Allegro?

Thanks man, I'm a little lost.

Well I think that is because porting a Java graphic library is trivial. You know that wherever java runs as far as there is OpenGL your library is going to run too. And obviously the emulator should work too. But porting a C library to Java it's not possible, at least you re-write everything from scratch using the Java API or the Android API, in fact Thomas can do it because Android has the NDK. But without it I think it wouldn't be possible. If the idiots at Microsoft had implemented something like the NDK in their phone, probably a Windows Phone7 port could be also possible.

Fortunately Android seems to be improving the NDK each day, they have support for OpenGL 2.0 now, well since version 2.0, and they released a new version on November 2011.

They say

I want to use it just because I prefer to program in C++...

hmmm I see.

I can't wait to program an android game using Allegro. I need to find a cheap device, something like the Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0...

I have been reading for some reason Ogre3D is not able to run on Android , they say:

I thought that exceptions were an important aspect of OOP languages... They wrote that on October, 2010, I wonder if still applies... I know that I said that Allegro5 + Ogre3D would be a dream, but no, now I think that Allegro5 + Ogre3D + Android THAT! would be a dream, this is the last one I swear it!

Galaxy Nexus does not a cheap device make.

Last I heard NDK got mostly full C++ support including exceptions. Since the r5 release of the NDK, it has had exception support. It may or may not be tricky to get them to work properly, some people have had issues getting C++ Exceptions working on android.

Currently no. I'm not sure how we'd fit them in either.

Where's the nice tree view?

That treeview is strictly for loaded files. Kate does indeed have a symbol viewer though. I just don't often use it.

APPEND/UPDATE:

I just committed full WORKING native image loading support.

Fixed a load of bugs too. Turns out I was playing fast and loose with the jni code quite a bit. Lots of errors there.

Actually had to root my phone to get access to some of the more useful debugging features.

Anyhow, have fun people. Please break it

AMCerasoli, do you use Windows? What method did you use to compile the Allegro libs for Android?

[edit] Did you have to cross-compile anything?

Addon that calls into the java code (much like the image addon). The camera api is pretty straightforward to use. And I assume the addon would be useful for iOS as well. Maybe make it generic enough to use webcams on desktops?

Can you rephrase that? I just woke up, and my brain can't parse that.

You have to cross compile allegro even when on linux. But the Android NDK (Native Development Kit) comes with the cross compiler you need.

The README_Android.txt should explain how to get started. If there's anything you don't get feel free to ask

Well, there would be no need to play with intents. The *cough* intent of the addon would allow allegro programs to capture pictures via the standard api, not make allegro apps act as a camera app.

As for the ingrained API, indeed. But so is the bitmap loading. You just have to write some java code, and call into it from the C to get things done.