I just checked this release, code and docs, great work!
the A5 WIP looks promising.

Heh. I just want that most A5 programs written under Windows will run equally under Linux and OSX. If there is a reason to have Windows-specific features, then I don't have anything against that. Just experience with A4 shows that people used Windows specific stuff all the time for no good reason. So with A5, we should not encourage the same by advertising any platform specific functions. The same goes the other way around, Linux or OSX specific functions should not be normally used. Unless it makes sense of course, if you make a high quality game it may be worth the time to do things differently for platforms, so it's good if Allegro 5 allows doing so.

OpenGL is a different matter. We simply can't provide all the same functionality OpenGL (or DirectX) provide in Allegro, even though it all is useful for games. It has been done in projects like Ogre or Wine maybe, but those are huge compared to Allegro. And OpenGL already is cross-platform and usually works under Windows, so I don't see a big problem to use it whenever the Allegro API isn't enough.

Indeed. Which is why I'd be in favor of supporting more blending modes, and things like shaders and whatnot. Make it so even fairly complex Allegro 5 games can use completely platform neutral code, including no direct GL.

I'm also in favor of it from a user view, I just don't think it's realistic to expect we will get developers to implement it. Also, if we add support for shaders, there wouldn't be much need for the fixed blending modes - we would just have some example shaders doing what the fixed ones do. Not sure about the memory functions - if Mesa supports shaders, we likely could require it, or another free library, if one exists.

So, any volunteers for adding support for pixel shaders?

Ah! Now that is a wholly different issue. We probably could use an extra pair of hands there. I currently lack the knowledge it would take to help out with something like that (as in, I've never done anything similar with OpenGL).

Ok.

Hehe... these days I think of something else when I see "mesa". Interesting how that works (no, I'm sure that one does not support shaders of any kind).

Perhaps I'm getting mixed up with how the display flags work, I saw:

ALLEGRO_OPENGL - require the driver to provide an initialized opengl context after returning successfully
ALLEGRO_DIRECT3D - require the driver to do rendering with Direct3D and provide a Direct3D device

And figured that to get hardware acceleration (or however the library implements the functions) you had to specify one of them (or both for a random choice) and got software everything if you didn't.

And this is exactly why we need something to offer people using the default setup.

Shader add-on based on one of said libs? I'm for it.

Nope. The point is to get hardware acceleration by default.

Best get a move on then, I was searching for some stuff on opengl performance and near the top of the search list was this, dates just a few months ago at gamedev.net. Be warned, it'll have you spitting blood

The "macro hack" reminds me, what about removing END_OF_MAIN from Allegro 5? I sent a patch to the mailing list to do so some time ago, but got no conclusive comments. That patch doesn't change any functionality, just instead of having

int main()
{
}
END_OF_MAIN()

you would then have:

int allegro_main()
{
}

This was originally suggested by Peter Hull, and I think it is much less hackish, no macros at all involved.

I'm thinking into installing Allegro 4.9.8 and give it a try (that announcement in the main page really got me).

October then, at the beginning of the current more regular release schedule.
As I said, it's been maturing a lot since then (obviously most of the work was done before that time).

Would anyone be willing to try my binaries to see if you have trouble with the audio? The ex_saw works fine and I get sound, but the demo doesn't load and such. It seems something is amiss with the kcm_audio addon, but I don't know...Everything else seems to be fine.

Libs
Error from demo:

/*
Keyboard driver installed.
Error loading sample (null)
Failed to load demo\data\sfx\big_explosion.ogg
Error loading resources.
Error in initialization.
*/

I checked...the sample is there and plays fine in media player classic.
This is my cmake cache.
Is openAL required, even under Windows? If so, that might be the problem. I am not using it as you can see above in the cmake cache. I was under the impression that it would default to DirectSound under Windows.::)

As always,
Thanks guys!8-)

I am building it. Feedback soon !