What is "allegro"

Allegro is a game creation library and other multimedia applications created in the early 90’s by Shawn Hargreaves for development in Atari ST. After the decline in the success of the Atari ST, Shawn decided to reimplement his work on compilers Borland C++ and DJGPP in 1995. Allegro started operating only in the systems OF. However, in 1998, Allegro split into several versions that could be used on several systems, and, after many variations were created, the library finally unified again with the creation of Allegro 4, which worked on several platforms.

Currently, the library is in its 5th version, Allegro 5, which has redefined its API and its internal implementation. The project is now faster, using Opengl and Directx when necessary to improve your performance. This new version also brought together many peripheral libraries of Allegro 4, known as Addons, and transformed them into part of its standard.

The library is implemented in C, but currently has bindings for several programming languages, the most famous being: Python, Moon, D, Scheme and Go. To documentation of the library is rich and full of examples of use. Its use is free and its code is open.

Although few known projects use Allegro, some interesting examples of programs that used Allegro are:

• Kigb: A Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Super Gameboy emulator that emulates advanced platform functions such as cable communication between Gameboys.
• Fakenes: A NES emulator.
• Alex the Allegator 4: Part of a series of games known in the Allegro community, it demonstrates many of the library’s capabilities in an exceptional way. Has open source.
• Blocks 3: Another known series in the Allegro community consists of a series of puzzles.