I started with mIRC (not exactly a lib, and I believe it's using GDI).

I've spent quite some time with allegro, starting a few game projects.

Now I'm planning to finally complete a game with the XNA framework (Windows + XBOX360).

But after that I'll probably go back to Allegro and OpenLayer for a platform independent multiplayer game.

I've worked with other popular libs, namely DirectX, OpenGL, and SDL. I've also worked with no libs at all back in the DOS days

Allegro does what I need it to do with a minimum of fuss. That, and I'm comfortable with it.

The first C/C++ compiler I used was Turbo C++, so it used the Borland Graphics Library, which was horrible. Then I heard about libgrx when I got an internet connection through work, which was much better. Through libgrx, I learnt of DJGPP, through which I learnt of Allegro.

According to the date on the 100+ page print-out I made of the Allegro manual (my employers would have killed me if they knew I used their fancy laser printer for such a purpose), that was in 1998.

I've been using Allegro on and off ever since, and I doubt I'll switch to another library, as Allegro more than meets my needs (I don't program games, I just use Allegro as a graphics library when I need one for some reason).

If I ever develop an attention span long enough to attempt to write one of the games I have in my head, I'll probably look into OpenLayer. Don't anybody hold your breath though, I think the longest I've manged to maintain interest in a project over the last ten years is about two weeks. Usually if I don't finish writing a program in one sitting it never gets revisited.

FMOD 3.75 did work great for me (although I don't use it anymore), it played my ImpulseTracker files perfectly. What were your problems?

I use Allegro mostly for hacks (MinorHack, XmasHack, maybe next SpeedHack) and for retro games. Because in this fields it's the best game library you can get.
I once wanted to make a cross-platform game, including the DOS platform -> Allegro was the best choice.
I wanted to make a game for the GP2X which has no FPU -> Allegro fixed point arithmetics
It also is one of the few, if not the only open-source libraries that have a gift-ware licence. This is worth a lot in some cases.

On the other hand, when it comes to high-tech things, like 3D or surround sound, Allegro is pretty useless.
I currently play around with OpenGL and OpenAL. I use SDL for input because it's smaller and it has an event-based input system.

I have been using Allegro since version 3.12, and stuck with it when I had the choice. For university projects, I came in touch with several other libs, none of which I liked enough to substitute Allegro with.

Nowadays, I'm using a colorful mixture: Allegro, OpenLayer, FMOD, zlib, Boost, guichan, ...

Right...

My very first programming contact was ZX Spectrum BASIC. I didn't get to use it much, because it wasn't my computer. I got first an Acorn Electron (with BBC BASIC) and later a SAM Coupé (with it's own BASIC that is quite similar to Spectrum BASIC). Thankfully none of these computers are useless C64 style rubbish, so they all had useful graphics commands and capabilities from BASIC. The first game I remember writing was a simple up the screen scroller where you as a car made from maybe the letter T drove up a track demarked by asterisks. I also definitely did a version of the tron bikes type game. My first "major" programming project was actually a Word Processor — my most 'impressive' achievement being that it supported reading and writing of ordinary ASCII documents. But I was only about 12, so give me a break!

We got a 486 PC in about 1993 or 1994 and the first gamelike stuff I produced was in QBASIC. Which I thought was thoroughly rubbish and have no nostalgia for whatsoever. I list my final QBASIC project (a parallel projected 3d thing) as 1995/6 on my website, I'd be surprised if it was actually that late. It's horrid, but thankfully the sources survive! In fact 95% of the projects I'm going to mention from here on in survive on my members.allegro.cc website or elsewhere.

After that I switched to Turbo C++ & BGI, of which I think I share LennyLen's opinion. It's really meant for business apps, and has a nice API for that purpose, but is slow as heck. But I learnt it all — not very well — from the online docs, so probably missed a lot of stuff. In particular I remember it being a revelation when I found out that if you set the border colour then you get a vsync for free, which made all my graphics much nicer from then on. Although in retrospect there is probably a vsync call that I just never found. My main Turbo C++ app was a forward port of my 3d thing from QBASIC. Lost is a 3d breakout clone I made with most of the same code. I also did millions of 3d graphics experiments because this is before I really had access to the 'net and I was just making all this stuff up myself.

Anyway, I never really got the weirdo DOS memory models so when I heard that DJGPP didn't have them I switched. Having a shiny new P200 was also a factor so we're probably in circa 1996. Initially I rolled my own Mode 13h but some of the "algorithms" I invented for it were horrid. I wrote a line drawer (fixed point DDA) then implemented a triangle filler by using the line drawer to get pixel locations along one edge of the triangle, and then drew lines from the opposing vertex to each. Incredibly slow! I had figured out perspective projections in the meantime though.

In late 1996 I joined the Allegro fray and, ignoring the Allegro software 3d even after it had eventually been added, improved my own stuff. I eventually ended up with my own polygon fillers for gouroud/perspective texture/constant-z perspective (so it'd do a perspective step along edges, then a linear fill either horizontally or vertically — very Doomish but without the trig optimisations you can make to the stepping if you assume a horizontal or vertical face) and so on.

Anyway, I more or less stuck with Allegro through to about 2000. I got some sort of trial version of MSVC 5 (same as the full version, but you can't disable a startup dialogue that says you used a trial copy) and knocked up a Deatchase 3d game in Win32 API and OpenGL. I'd had a 3dfx Voodoo for a while and had tried Glide/LCC and another otherwise forgotten library called (I think) Red X, but the toolchain never quite clicked somehow. A guy called David Raven sent me a free copy of the complete MSVC 5 just because he liked the game, and I'd moved into the realm of Windows.

2000 is also the year I began my emulator, ElectrEm. I'd done about 1,000,000 emulators before but ElectrEm was a smart move because the machine it emulates, the Electron, was reasonably popular and until then not properly emulated by anyone. The emulator got a following and I still update it.

It's while developing the emulator that I really started to stray from Allegro. At the end of its first implementation cycle it could be built with Allegro, DirectX, SVGALib, GGI or SDL. It then had builds for DOS, Windows and Linux. I used Allegro for the DOS port, DirectX for the Windows port, and any of the others for Linux as you saw fit to build.

In 2003 I essentially forced a break in code development and started again for SDL only as it had very quickly become my favourite of the many because it has a quite perfect combination of lightness versus features in my opinion, and I like it's essentially modular design.

Since then I've done most of my development on SDL. It's what all my personal library code works with, principally in OpenGL mode (though the emulator is just using it for a framebuffer).

My last two "significant" projects with Allegro were my part of what was then "the new Allegro demo game" and is now almost invisible and the 2005 ChristmasHack. My last significant contribution to the Allegro community was my small part in improving the DirectX acceleration for the current release in whatever capacity the changelog records.

Also along the way I recall trying or using Prometheus True Colour and an old software 3d thing called Plush. So, a complete list of game related APIs I currently recall using, BASICs excluded:

Allegro, SDL, GGI, SVGALib, PTC, Plush, DirectX, Borland Graphics Interface, Glide, Red X, DUMB

As I said, a lot of what I've attempted over the years is archived at my members.allegro.cc site. I'm currently working on an archive of old ElectrEm releases but have some gigantic holes. Not that I imagine anyone else is interested much! And I'm sure I've forgotten a lot from this mini-history of mine.

Before Allegro? I wrote my own stuff. And then I realized I didn't have to because it was already made for me

Now, I use a mix of Allegro+AllegroGL for all my graphic apps. It's just not worth spending time rewriting window creation and event management code.

If I don't use graphics for my app, I usually skip Allegro and write my own things Chances are those apps either don't need to be portable, don't use any other Allegro features, or Allegro is far too heavy-weight for them.

If there was, it's not mentioned in the manual either. I still have it after all these years (I use it as a C++ reference even though it's antiquated). I just looked through the section on "Video Functions" and it's not there.

Java
Game Maker (version 4 and 5)
Visual Basic 6 with the DirectX 7 (later, 8) bindings
C++ and Allegro, then later, AllegroGL

Now: C# with the Tao Framework of wrappers for GLFW, OpenAL and OpenGL (works in .NET and Mono)

I started with QBasic, first doing only text things, then using the builtin VGA code, and then using the Blast library for Mode-X and high memory access. When I learned C I picked up Allegro, and right now I'm using pure OpenGL, though we also used Ogre for a recent school project.

Nothing.

Allegro for graphics.
ZoidCom for networking.

For personal use, probably just Allegro.
For professional use, Torque with XNA, Direct X, Open GL.

Really, I know all the fundamentals of 3D programming and the general structure of using both Direct X and Open GL. (clueless about XNA except for the fact that we're learning it next semester...) But I don't see it as useful unless I had a group of people, not just myself. You see, I'm an OCD modeller and texturer, so to do anything in 3D would take a ton of art time and not something that I would prefer to subject myself to.

My little 2D exploits are just fine for a creative outlet right now. Anything that has to be 3D, I just draw and/or write about for future projects.

For various reasons, early computer hardware used bitplanes instead of grouping all the bits for a particular colour together. Although this can be awkward for drawing multi-coloured sprites, you can mix overlapping colours at no additional cost. That way, I managed to implement Video Games 1 on the Atari ST (the PC version simulates this effect by OR'ing the pixel-values together).

Ah yes. I had one of those as well. I definitely also remember a lot of the things you mentioned in your post. I cut my programming teeth on Atari Basic. Even managed to create a graphics mode with was a GTIA mode with a regular text-window (I used a DLI for that even though it was more of a modification of someone else's code than my own).

After that, got myself an Atari ST. Started with the supplied ST Basic but quickly moved onto GfA Basic, and then STOS Basic. I upgraded my ST to an STE two years later.

Several years later, I graduated from university (where I used all sorts of languages) and got myself a PC. This is where I discovered Allegro. At first, my Allegro programs were a mixture of C and 80x86 assembly, but nowardays, are mostly C (although sometimes C++ too). I still use Allegro for my hobbyist programming and even make contributions to the library.

Professionally, I've mostly used C++ and have worked with Dive (a fork of Renderware), the 3DSMAX SDK, and various other in-house bits and bobs. I also used the Mophun library when I got involved with the mobile-phone games bandwagon.

For a collection of games I've done over the years, see http://software.wackonet.net/ and get your emulators out.

AE.