Is there a way to play a video file ( like .avi ) in Allegro?

Note that APEG won't play AVI files. It will play MPEG-1 and Ogg Vorbis/Theora files, though.

If you're making a freeware / opensource game you could use Fmod vor music and sound effects

not that I know..

wav is good for soundeffects for other things ude MP3 or trackermusic ( mod s3m etc) midi sounds bad

You do realize that .gif files are images (albeit with limited animation possibilities), not audio or video files?

There is a png library that you can use (which is much more flexible than gif, and about the same size) if you don't need animation, gif limits you to 256 colors anyway, why not use the built in pcx? (also loading gif animations would be a lot harder than putting a list of images into a single pcx file, the only limits that I know of with pcx is that allegro will only load 8 bit pcx files, no loss compared to gif tho) also pcx are RLE encoded so you see a huge compression compared to bmp. (png is still smaller)

So.... I tried to download the Apeg. But I found only the code, so needs to compile.... but as always.... ERRORS:
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C:\Hangar6\apeg\main.cpp In function `void setenv(const char*, const char*, int)':

38 C:\Hangar6\apeg\main.cpp `_putenv' undeclared (first use this function)

C:\Hangar6\apeg\main.cpp In function `int check_obj_deps(char*, time_t)':

143 C:\Hangar6\apeg\main.cpp invalid conversion from `void*' to `char*'

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Missing Library?
Is there a place where I can download the compiled version?

How to use the makefile?

I copied "make.exe" to the same folder where the "makefile" is. I ran the "make.exe" but it complains: "Couldn't find the file."

I tried with the "mingw32-make.exe", but got the same error.

There are 2 makefiles: "Makefile" and "Makefile.win".

Do I need to use any command with the "make.exe" or just run it?

...I am lost...

I downloaded a program called "nmake" for Windowns 2000. But it didn't work. Is there a "nmake" for XP? ( My Windows is XP )

And.... isn't there an easier way to use apeg?

make will automatically load "makefile." from the directory you run it from (as in makefile with NO extension) to make anything else you need to supply a file name.

As KC already said you do NOT need it to be in the same folder; remove it now.

As for version of windows, make has nothing to do with the version of windows you have, but instead has to do with the version of the compiler it was designed for, nmake is with microsoft's visual c++, you should use the same make that you built allegro with (or whatever make APEG is compatable with...)

That's a really good point.

Unless you have no runs, or 90% of your colors are above like 240 (or so?) in the pallette this really isn't an issue; 99% of image conversions should be smaller than bitmaps, and I've never encountered one that wouldn't be, it really seems like you'd have to doctor it that way, or have an extreemly prominant background color as index 255.

One of the reasons that I complain that we don't have enough built into allegro, if your project uses APEG, now you also have to manually install libogg, libvorbis, libtheora (and any dependencies they have).... and ANYONE who wants to recompile your code not only needs allegro, but also libogg, libvorbis, libtheora (and any dependencies they have), and APEG.... and APEG is not an isolated case for this; there are many other libraries with nighmareish cascading trees of dependencies...

edit: (Also consider, who knows what version of which library a specific library is dependant on? and NO it's not as simple as just downloading it and running make; first off it's finding the files to download, which I kid you not for some auxiallary libraries I gave up on... and some simply do not make(current build is broken) or are the wrong version... etc etc, I've run into MANY problems of this type before, and it's not just typing make.)

Dependancies can be a bitch, unfortunately. Some pacakge managers can help, by installing the dependancies before the requested package automatically (which is why I'd recommend distros like Gentoo or Sourcemage). Unfortuantely Windows isn't very well off in this regard, not only by not having a package manager, but also by having a crippling shell. You can use MSYS, which I was able to use to build libogg/libtheora/libvorbis/etc, but that would be yet another dependancy..

And this is why Allegro doesn't support PNG or ZIP or any of that stuff built in, or else it'd have the same dependancy issues. Dynamicly loading shared libs would absolve the need for them to be required at compile time (and thusly become a run-time thing), but that will only work on platforms that can use shared libs and would lock your program into needing the shared libs without any easy way of staticlinking them.