Thanks for starting this thread.

I agree that Allegro needs more marketing. We should emphasize the strong points of the Allegro API for any 2D programing or as a base for 3D programming in OpenGL. Allegro 5 has a great API for sound, for primitives, for rotating and tinted sprites, for easy font loading, for pack file integration, .... Our main competitor requires you to get a truckload of half-baked add on libraries that don't always work too well together or have a quirky or incomplete API.

Perhaps the Allegro web site and this site need a bit of a make over to make them more "web 2.0" stylish?

But I think Allegro also still needs more quality in the form of bug fixes, unit tests, features, ports, documentation, and tutorials. I think that maybe moving main development to GitHub could be very helpful as this makes it a lot easier for everyone to contribute to improving the quality.

And I think it also needs an (even more) welcoming community around it. I saw some people badmouthing Allegro on other forums because someone made an insensitive joke to them here on this forum. That's the thing we should definitely avoid.

Also, I feel that, because we are thinly stretched as it is, we have drop Allegro 4 support completely. IMO, it's obsolete, and Allegro5 is mature enough for daily use. Moreover, we should recommend Allegro 5 wherever we can.

Just a few thoughts...

StevenVI, thanks for your questions.

In open source projects like Allegro, popularity is not a goal, but a means to improving the project. It's a way to attract more developers who in turn could help us out improve the library. As I said before, I feel like we're running short handed. I'm not a big contributer but I contributes the haptics code (which I still didn't get ported to windows nor mac osx since I'm a linux only user ).

Allegro 5 requires third party libraries, yes, bit it's API is better integrated. The API of our main competitor is incomplete and that's why you need about 4 extra not integrated add-on libraries to get all the functionality that Allegro integrates in one comprehensive API.

With Dropping allegro 4 I mean: 1) Not releasing any patches anymore. 2) Removing reference to it from all Allegro related web pages we control, and redirect or mention a "upgrading to Allegro5" or so web page. 3) Deprecating Allegro 4 in the sense that if you use it we will not give support anymore. Too many people come in the forum with Allegro 4 questions. The answer I always want to give them is "please upgrade first, then we can talk". Though I normally refrain from doing so as I don't want to sound too hostile... :p

I hope that clarifies my ideas a bit...

This is old news and an old topic but it's only fair that it gets its right amount of debate.

Allegro does not strictly need marketing of course, but all this

Seems a bit strange to me, this is not a warm community but most of the times newbies come here with a question and got the tihngs working after anybody has tried to help, and sometimes jokes are thrown in but not on the "insensitive" scale.

That's only my opinion of course.

I think that the one big problem of Allegro right now is twofold:

• on one side, the library has a not-so-off-the-shelf feeling. Sure you can be up and running with a windows precompiled binary quite fast....but I see MacOSX iOS and Android aren't quite so, or at least it's the IMPRESSION I get with the kind of posts I usually see pop seldomly.

  
  

• on the other side...time changed a lot the ecosystem of hobbist/indie game developers (the main Allegro audience since ever), go take a tour on GameDev....and low level libraries in general aren't the hot topic of the late years. At All.

Damn well at least years ago you got "newbie" game programmers that DID know the difference between an IDE and a compiler and did know WHAT does mean to "link something against another something"....today's quite different and low-level libs do not have the "magic" of the tools out there nowdays.

There ARE out there commercial projects that use(d) Allegro, but there is no buzz about them on the site (go compare...uhm, Ogre3D to name one which is not SDL?)

To attract developers you have to grow a competent userbase, which Allegro has not....the forums attract a lot of newbies but there is no significative "hi-level" interaction about the Allegro proper.

I guess thigns are bound to stay put for a good while.

Yes and no....I mean no stylish crap, but yes for a more actively maintained site...of course the more prominet rescource that is lacking for this is TIME.

Do you have links for this? I am very interested in what was said/done.

Usually allegro.cc is pretty friendly to newbies, but occasionally things are said that can be taken the wrong way.

We welcome patches!

allegro.cc is unofficial and almost no one looks at the front page any more http://www.liballeg.org is up to date.

I don't recall anything to terrible about Allegro at all.

It does what I need it to, and it doesn't get in my way. That's basically what a library should be.

Hand-holding is for people without sufficient programming experience. Debate whether or not those people are important, sure, but I don't think I've ever had a problem getting advice or information about an Allegro question quickly and thoroughly. And I've been writing "games" for over ten years now.

As for the A.CC community, I do see some pessimism regarding newbies who can't be bothered to frame their question or write legibly. But it's no where near the kinds of rebukes I've seen people say on Stack Overflow.

As for anything Allegro library lacks in support? 99% of people here have day jobs and lives. Anyone who's willing to dedicate time to work on it, I absolutely salute. But there's no reason random person A can't add a feature just as easily as the Allegro Devs. I'm hacking on the Dolphin emulator code. Nobody gave me permission, guidance, or even a design document. They're extremely hard to get ahold of compared to Allegro.CC. I literally was stuck looking a swafts of code for days. But I'm making progress, and ironically, I'm getting more help from A.CC then Dolphin devs toward my project.

And so that's not really a knock on the Dolphin devs, but more of a shout out to the Allegro ones.

The best thing to market for Allegro is to make some kickass games for it. GET ON IT!

@Kris Asick
A (better) logo is a great idea. The one we have now reeks of the '90ies. (And I can know because I started using Allegro on DOS+DJGPP). If anyone has a good idea for a new logo design, then please post it here.
Of course I agree that the Allegro API is significantly better than that of SDL, but the problem is of course, no one will use Allegro unless we can get them to know about it's existence.

@pckrel
Well, I agree that there's work to be done to make Allegro even more easy to use "off the shelf" for some platforms. But as Polybios says, the people who write games in Javascript or Löve or Unreal engine or so are not our "target audience". Our main target audience are programmers who want to develop portable and high performance games or other audiovisual applications in C, C++, or Pascal or other compiled languages that can easily interface with C.

@Aikei_c
I agree that the allegro.cc web site could use an overhaul as well, but that's Matt's domain, I presume?

@Thomas:
This is the thread where I saw this:
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/108321/

Also, about the official web page:

Look once at http://www.libsdl.org/. There is no news section on the front page, but an explanation of what the library is, and who is using it. I think that's the best idea, the intoduction page should be the main page for SEO purposes, and the very best Allegro projects should be mentioned in a hall of fame.

Also the introduction still mentions Allegro 4 as a sorta kinda viable option. I feel it isn't. It should be marked legacy and deprecated, to discourage anyone from using it to develop new games. I don't know how Peter thinks about this, but that's something I feel rather strongly about. Especially, because, as Chris Katko says, we all have day jobs and lives, and not enough time and manpower to keep patching Allegro 4 or answering to Allegro 4 questions. I know there are quite a few games and apps that still use Allegro 4. Of those, I'd respecfully ask the developers to upgrade. I know the effort is nontrivial, but something has to give. OK, I'll stop beating the Allegro 4 horse now...

I'm a web developer also, so if you agree then I'd be willing to help redesign the web page.

@Chris Katko:
Yeah, I should get cracking on improving Allegro as well... But I really need help from people who have a windows or a macosx computer. I can write the haptics code for windows "theoretically", and then hope that it will work, but someone else will then need to test it intensively, and preferrably provide bug fixes. And that person should be willing to spend +-20$ to buy a haptics enabled joystick as well.

Ah yes. BHX. I remember him. He was a bit odd. He has a habit of repeatedly coming and going, and flaming out, closing his account, then coming back later...

But yeah, I made a dumb joke. I didn't expect him to take it that way.

If you think you can do better than what we have, get a mockup going and post it in the Development forum and/or the AD mailing list.

Yes, sometimes it can be a bit hostile, I wish it weren't. Some of the members get a little snarky.

I also wanted to say when I first started frequenting allegro.cc it wasn't quite so "unfriendly", in fact I found it extremely helpful and informative, which is part of the reason I hung around so long. Things just change though, and hopefully my experience will change once more to something more fluffy, otherwise I guess I will move on as well.

Right, but still....is allegro.cc such a pace to put unnecessary weight on this

I know for a fact that I have posted somewhat tongue-in-cheek in newbie questions and got heated responses. But that's not the GENERAL cliamte in a.cc, I simply can't be convinced about that.

Ahhh Specter Phoenix (aka about 100 other names)....he was a character! And a bit of a douche.

I'd keep the forum for discussion, and the wiki for keeping track of things. That's the basic idea.