Like a real video game in the store, or an online game (LaTale, Maplestory, Runescape, etc.) Are real games made with Allegro?

Your question is a bit general. You mean:

1) Can commercial games be done with a library like Allegro? or,
2) Are there any commercial games that are done with Allegro?

I'll take your post as a dumb... Do you know where I can find a better poster?

Runescape is very likely using OpenGL and homespun routines.

Peitz' old games were written with Allegro.

The question is a bit silly though.

If you can make a commercial game with library <insert name here>, you can do it in Allegro.
And if you can't do it in Allegro, what makes you think you will succeed with <insert name here>?

Don't blame the tools if you can't handle them.

I wrote this in Allegro (also ported to SDL)

Allegro is a library with functions useful for game development (graphics, sound, input etc). So yes.

There are no genre-specific functions in allegro.

Mark, which is Beary's Bash resolution? For some reason, any game that tries to start a 320x200 fullscreen mode will lock up the computer in a black screen mode, and I have no other choice than to reset. So I fear double clicking the .exe.

EDIT: Meh, don't worry. I was brave, double clicked, and the program said that it couldn't set the video mode.

I know a couple of games that are sold over the counter that are made with allegro. Nothing top selling or chart busting, though.
It has also been used to prototype some bigger titles, IIRC.

Allegro was really big in DOS days, then it slowed down, and right now it's a good but rather obscure choice.

The library has a nice interface which makes it easy to learn and allows you to code simple games (think iPhone complexity) very easily. On the other hand, getting it to work under windows is a PITA, so potential new users get alienated even before they use the lib.

The previous versions of allegro had some small quirks that made it hard to get production level quality games easily. The ones I recall to be show stoppers where the mouse behavior (sluggish mouse and not behaving like in the native OS) and close button handling and problems when switching to/from the app.

Also, most commercial games these days are either single platform ( PC ) or include platforms allegro is not available for. So allegro's big plus (multi-platform) isn't really a factor. Esp. since the Mac port wasn't that well supported (the last time I checked, this might have changed by now).

Just my 2c.

Neat! I also saw something about an iPhone port in the change log... guess I'll have to start spending some time with allegro again

Thanks

The game itself won't be written using the OSX apis. Basically Apple has added a nice loophole for themselves should any shoddy apps get put up using some cross platform toolkits (like Air or Silverlight, or what have you). They can just point to the rule and say "hey, you knew this could happen" when they reject or remove those apps.

The whole concept of controlling quality via regulating third party libraries is absurd, so I wouldn't bother trying to use logic.

The reality is that certain libraries and tools will be put on the secret black list and if a binary check reveals that you are using one of them, it will be rejected. Thus it really won't matter how you embed Allegro... if they don't want you to use it, they will scan for some signature that is common to all Allegro games.

The goal is platform-lock. They don't want you to create an application that works on all devices because it cheapens the value of the iPhone.

(Their official position is that they don't want people developing to a subset of the iPhone's functionality, but that is obviously not true, as they don't demand that every application uses every function of the iPhone. And furthermore, it's not like the iPhone really is all that different from any other super-phone. )