<!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="" xml:lang=""> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <meta name="generator" content="pandoc" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" /> <title>Allegro - Introduction</title> <style> code{white-space: pre-wrap;} span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;} div.columns{display: flex; gap: min(4vw, 1.5em);} div.column{flex: auto; overflow-x: auto;} div.hanging-indent{margin-left: 1.5em; text-indent: -1.5em;} ul.task-list{list-style: none;} ul.task-list li input[type="checkbox"] { width: 0.8em; margin: 0 0.8em 0.2em -1.6em; vertical-align: middle; } .display.math{display: block; text-align: center; margin: 0.5rem auto;} </style> <link rel="stylesheet" href="web_style.css" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href="feed_atom.xml" title="Allegro news" /> <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/html5shiv/3.7.3/html5shiv-printshiv.min.js"></script> <![endif]--> </head> <body> <div id="main_header"> <div id="header_container"> <img id="logo" src="images/logo.png" alt="Allegro" height="58" width="186" /> <div id="title"> A game programming library </div> </div> </div> <div id="left"> <div id="sidebar"> <ul> <li><strong>Allegro</strong> <ul> <li><a href="index.html">About</a></li> <li><a href="git.html">Git repository</a></li> <li><a href="license.html">License</a></li> <li><a href="examples_demos.html">Examples</a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/liballeg/allegro5/issues">Bug tracker</a></li> <li><a href="bindings.html">Language bindings</a></li> </ul></li> <li><strong>Downloads</strong> <ul> <li><strong><a href="download.html">Latest version</a></strong></li> <li><a href="old.html">Older versions</a></li> <li><a href="addons.html">Extra addons</a></li> </ul></li> <li><strong>Documentation</strong> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://liballeg.org/a5docs/trunk/">Latest version</a></strong></li> <li><a href="api.html">All versions</a></li> <li><a href="docs.html">Tutorials</a></li> <li><a href="books.html">Books</a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/liballeg/allegro_wiki/wiki">Wiki</a></li> </ul></li> <li><strong>Community</strong> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.allegro.cc/forums/">Forums</a></li> <li><a href="https://discord.gg/f3Cd4TZzpp">Discord</a></li> <li><a href="irc.html">IRC</a></li> <li><a href="game_jams.html">Game Jams</a></li> <li><a href="maillist.html">Mailing lists</a></li> </ul></li> <li><strong>Misc</strong> <ul> <li><a href="readme.html">History</a></li> <li><a href="oldnews.html">Older news</a></li> <li><a href="logos.html">Logos</a></li> <li><a href="digmid.html">DIGMID</a></li> <li><a href="links.html">Links</a></li> <li><a href="mirrors.html">Mirrors</a></li> <li><a href="webmasters.html">Webmasters</a></li> <li><a href="humor.html">Humor</a></li> </ul></li> </ul> <!-- keep blank line for correct HTML --> </div> <!-- sidebar --> <div id="hosting"> <p><a href="https://github.com/liballeg">GitHub project</a> <br/> <br/> <a href="https://projects.tuxfamily.org/?do=group;name=allegro">TuxFamily project</a></p> </div> <!-- hosting --> </div> <!-- left --> <div id="content"> <header id="title-block-header"> <h1 class="title">Allegro - Introduction</h1> </header> <h1 id="history">History</h1> <p>According to the Oxford Companion to Music, Allegro is the Italian for «quick, lively, bright». It is also a recursive acronym which stands for «Allegro Low LEvel Game ROutines». Allegro was started by Shawn Hargreaves in the mid-90’s but has since received contributions from hundreds of people over the net.</p> <h1 id="allegro-5">Allegro 5</h1> <p>Allegro 5 is the latest major revision of the library, designed to take advantage of modern hardware (e.g. hardware acceleration using 3D cards) and operating systems. Although it is not backwards compatible with earlier versions, it still occupies the same niche and retains a familiar style.</p> <p>Allegro 5.0 supports the following platforms:</p> <ul> <li>Unix/Linux</li> <li>Windows (MSVC, MinGW)</li> <li>MacOS X</li> <li>iPhone</li> </ul> <p>Allegro 5.1 also adds support for:</p> <ul> <li>Android</li> </ul> <p>You can see the functionality Allegro provides by browsing the online <a href="api.html">reference manual</a>.</p> <p>Allegro only supports 2D graphics primitives natively, but it is perfectly reasonable to use Allegro alongside a 3D API (e.g. OpenGL, Direct3D, and higher level libraries), while Allegro handles the other tasks. Allegro is also designed to be modular; e.g. if you prefer, you can substitute another audio library.</p> <h1 id="allegro-4">Allegro 4</h1> <p>Allegro 4 is the classic library, whose API is backwards compatible all the way back to Allegro 2.0 for DOS/DJGPP (1996). It is no longer <em>actively</em> developed, but we still apply patches sent to us by contributors, mainly to fix minor bugs. Every so often we will make new releases.</p> <p>Allegro 4.4 supports the following platforms:</p> <ul> <li>Unix/Linux</li> <li>Windows (MSVC, MinGW, Cygwin)</li> <li>MacOS X</li> <li>Haiku/BeOS</li> <li>PSP (currently in git repository only)</li> </ul> <p>The older Allegro 4.2 branch additionally supports:</p> <ul> <li>Windows (Borland)</li> <li>QNX</li> <li>DOS (DJGPP, Watcom)</li> </ul> <p>You can see the functionality Allegro provides by browsing the online <a href="api.html">reference manual</a>.</p> </div> <!-- content --> <div id="footer"> <div id="contact"> <p><a href="webmasters.html">Contact the webmasters</a></p> </div> <!-- contact --> <p><a href="http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en"> <img src="images/nopatents.png" border="0" alt="No ePatents" height="33" width="88" vspace="1" hspace="1" /> </a> <a href="http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/"> <img src="images/anyb.png" border="0" alt="Viewable with any browser" height="31" width="88" vspace="1" hspace="1" /> </a></p> </div> <!-- footer --> </body> </html>