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allegroGL vs (SDL + openGL)
Karanveer Singh
Member #10,941
May 2009

hey, i know people have been asking a lot about which of these 2 APIs to begin with, but i have a different sort of a problem. Initially when i started with 2d game programming, i heard about allegro, and started with it, and have been using it for about 6 months. i know quiet a lot about it and have made a decent 2d game with it.

now, i plan to learn opengl. i know tht opengl is basically just graphics, and integrating it with sdl instead of something like glut would be the best thing. also, i;ve heard of a thing called allegrogl through which you can integrate allegro with opengl.

i;ve also heard that allegro is mainly used by hobbyists and sdl is more industry oriented.

my question is, considering the fact that im very much comfortable with programming in allegro right now, which would be a better option : sdl+allegro or allegrogl?

LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
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Wel, you could also start working with the Allegro 5 WIP branch, which also has support for OpenGL. It is quite different from Allegro 4 though.

i;ve also heard that allegro is mainly used by hobbyists and sdl is more industry oriented.

No big name games have been made with SDL, so that's not entirely important (Wikipedia claims that Neverwinter Nights uses SDL, but I really doubt that, as no other BioWare game does).

Kibiz0r
Member #6,203
September 2005
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If you want something truly industry-oriented, use a prefab engine or maybe XNA. The industry does not generally trifle in low-level 2D libraries.

Karanveer Singh
Member #10,941
May 2009

ok, what about the battle for wesnoth? i think its a pretty famous game. isnt it written in sdl?

Timorg
Member #2,028
March 2002

Or you can go with the concept that games are only played on the windows platform, and program directly in the Win32 API or DirectX. Once you have attempted that, you will be able to see the advantage of AllegroGL and the other systems that simplify input and timing.

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Kibiz0r
Member #6,203
September 2005
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ok, what about the battle for wesnoth? i think its a pretty famous game. isnt it written in sdl?

The Battle for Wesnoth is hardly a cross-section of the mainstream gaming industry... And "famous" is a weasel word. It is notable for its achievements as a successful open source, cross-platform title, but aside from those novelties, there's nothing "big name" about it.

Thomas Harte
Member #33
April 2000
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SDL comes from the industry originally and specifically from Linux ports, and has a more 'professional' API (in the sense that it's minimalist and consistently named), which I think explains its strong footing amongst the free software world and may have a reputation for being more industry oriented.

Conversely, Allegro was explicitly by a hobbyist for hobbyists from day one and has grown in a largely unplanned manner, originally with no formal criteria as to what should be included or excluded, so it tends to sprawl a bit and not be particularly uniform. But it does do a great deal more for you if you're willing to play along.

That all being said, I think the correct advice from here would be to check out Allegro 4.9. It's a new branch of Allegro that is building towards a 5.0 release (albeit with no guarantees that the API won't change during the building process), which has dumped

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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That all being said, I think the correct advice from here would be to check out Allegro 4.9. It's a new branch of Allegro that is building towards a 5.0 release (albeit with no guarantees that the API won't change during the building process), which has dumped

I take it you're not finished writing that thought?

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Paul whoknows
Member #5,081
September 2004
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I can't talk about SDL because I have never used it, but I have been using AllegroGL for a while and I am using it now in my projects and is really nice and it works pretty well and it allows you to write pure OpenGL code.

AllegroGL is really cool if you want to keep yourself working at a relative low level, now if you prefer to work at higher levels you could try the new branch of Allegro, or the almost forgotten OpenLayer, or XNA.

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Thomas Harte
Member #33
April 2000
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I take it you're not finished writing that thought?

I've obviously made a copy and paste error in my efforts not to lose yet another post to Allegro.cc's auto timeouts and my continuing decision not to leave myself forever logged in.

... which has dumped the cruft and incorporated support for OpenGL and other similar APIs as the default option, promoting performance-oriented drawing from separately maintained libraries to a core design feature.

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