Re: Which library?

[Peter Wang <tjaden@...>]

On 15 Oct 2001, Nick Trout <nick@videosystem.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> I need a cross platform library for developing little 2d games (which will be
> wrapped in Lua). Usual features required, ie. surface/sprite rendering, sound,
> device handling.
..
> I'm looking at SDL and Allegro. There seems little between them, only really
> looked superficially.

They draw the line at different places.  Some things that SDL supports
natively, Allegro puts in addon libraries, and vice versa.  Generally
speaking, Allegro is higher level (meaning it may be more helpful, or
get in your way more).

e.g.
> Networking and thread support libraries would be a bonus. At a
> later date it might be nice to extend the system to 3d.

Networking: separate library.

Threads: officially, Allegro is not meant to be used from multiple
threads at once.  (Some things *do* work, however.)

3d support: see AllegroGL addon library.

I can't give you an objective viewport[1] but I have used Lua with
Allegro.  I also know of another high profile Allegator on this list
(and maybe another former one).  So there's already some experience in
this combination.

> If anybody has used both
> can they give a comparison. I found the discussions/flames on the Allegro
> mailing list mainly subjective and unhelpful. 

Seriously, what do you expect? ;-)


[1] I've been using Allegro for ~5 years, and am one of the
maintainers.  I've only read SDL's docs, but not used it.