It doesn't work for me. Custom css makes all posts white. Heh. (Way easier to read, I might add, I tried reading the forum with default thing the other day, man that sucked.)

Marcello

Yuck! They are terrible. Are they all by different artists or something?

EDIT: I'm sure Marcello can still see the faint blue/grey image in my avatar.

BAF, you raise a serious topic.

There is a lot of attitude from Allegro members, something that was not in the early days.

It is because no one dares to be open, because they will get someone immediately after them trying to disprove them. Allegro.cc has been turned to a smartass competition!

The sad fact is that you can't do much with just Allegro. There are a lot of tools and libraries that are needed for good games. And as I have said many times before, the lack of good tools is due to the lack of a good gui. Like it or not, it is the tools that would make or break Allegro.

I totally agree. My experience is that newbies easily find Allegro on the web (there are a lot of links), but it is generally considered difficult to use and outdated. Hardcore programmers are turned to DirectX and newbies to Dark Basic and such tools that are more high level than Allegro, and more rewarding in the short term.

The local magazine PC master had a review of amateur programming environments (dark basic, blitz basic etc) but no Allegro. I mailed them about Allegro, and they told me that they knew about it, but it is considered difficult and low level, and there are no known tools to accompany it.

For example, with Dark Basic, you get a 3d object editor, and with a few lines of code you can put the 3d objects you have made with the editor inside the 3d game, which is very easy to set up (and includes a screen update API by default).

Allegro is going nowhere without high level support. Having bitmaps blitting, video mode setup and drawing functions no longer cuts it. People expect more stuff right out of the box. But Allegro people deny this...to further support this argument, allegro devs deny to have the screen update API inside the core lib, without any concrete argument about why. It's all about egos. Allegro will not go very far with such attitude.

I can enum the people in here; we are very few. Almost all regular posters have posted in this thread.

The visual experience dominates all other human experiences these days, especially with computers. It's all about the graphics. Sadly, one can't do good graphics without tools.

The discussion has degenerated to talk about avatars and other silly stuff. I know I will get flamed about this, but I really don't care, as long as the truth comes out.

Axilmar, while this is going more off-topic, I don't exactly see much of this thread as a bastian of intelligent debate, so here.

Dark Basic does what it does because that is what it is meant to do. You don't program it in C; you write in a language they invented.

Allegro can never be that. Unless you have the AllegroEngine, you're not going to have the basic ease-of-use that Dark Basic and such programs enjoy. And, even with an AllegroEngine, it's still C or C++, so that limits the people who are going to effectively be able to use it. Joe-newbie off the street who just got his first computer 3 weeks ago isn't going to be using C/C++ anytime soon. Even if the AllegroEngine were designed to provide rediculous ease-of-use, just getting even VC++ up, running, and compiling user-code with the AllegroEngine itself is a challenge that no newbie is going to master.

Tools (map editors, sprite animation editors, GUI layout editors, etc) are reliant on a code-side system to exist. A map editor tool is useless without something that can read the map format and use it in-game. However, a map editor is more than just about drawing a background/foreground for sprites. It needs to define the locations upon which the character can walk (if the character walks at all). This is very different for a top-down game than a side-scroller. The nature of the sprite animation system is very different for different kinds of games. A 2D fighter needs to be able to do some things that a normal Mario-esque side scroller just doesn't need to.

The ultimate destination of what you are suggesting is the AllegroEngine. That is, a full-fledged game engine built using Allegro at its core. Unfortunately, this doesn't work nearly as well for a 2D game than for 3D games. You can turn a 3rd person 3D game into a first-person game with a quick camera change; not so with 2D. In 2D, the difference between a top-down Zelda and a side-scrolling Metroid are truly worlds apart, even though they're based on similar tech. While, yes, you could build an engine that could handle both (with one switch at the beginning telling the system what archetype of 2D game to use), doing so would be the equivalent of building a 2D platformer, 2D side-scrolling shooter, and a top-down scrolling game all in one engine.

There may be some kind of middle ground, where you could supply some higher-level systems, like a tilemap system, a sprite animation system, a GUI, and maybe a few others. However, beyond that, you're walking directly into engine territory.

The most you might be able to accomplish (and now, I mean the "royal" you. Re: the Allegro community) would be to build a number of separate engines or pseudo engines for various kinds of 2D games.

Allegro, as it approximately stands now, does have a place. There are people who have graduated from Dark Basic-esuqe things and want to try something more powerful, or people who might use DirectX, but would be willing to use something easier and more cross-platform. The current issue is that Allegro 4 isn't the best software in this "market".

Korval: are you going to make AllegroEngine?

KC: It is only tomasu's ones that aren't posted by ML. And i am on www. (remember, it doesnt work without the www anymore )