Allegro is an open source, C++ based game framework handling low level tasks such as window creation, input, data loading, drawing images, playing sound and other common 2D game tasks (much like SDL or SFML). It runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android devices. Allegro is a library that has been around for years, in fact it started life on the Atari ST computers. Allegro actually stands for Atari Low Level Game Routines. It’s an accessible and easy to use framework and one that has a special place in my heart. The developers at Allegro just released a new version, 5.2.2.
Details of the new release:
Core:
Don’t accumulate time in the timer while it is stopped.
Use dynamic OpenGL ES checks, so binaries produced on newer platforms don’t crash on older ones.
Destabilize the OpenGL extensions API (BREAKING CHANGE!).
Raspberry Pi port:
Add various optimizations.
Fix
al_set_mouse_xy
under X.Android port:
Fix buffer overrun and memory leak in the clipboard support.
Add WANT_GLES3 to disable some of the newer features on platforms where they aren’t supported.
Fix build in Android versions below 3.1.
Fix a crash when activity is destroyed/paused.
Allow building for android mips, arm64 and mips64.
Add
al_android_get_jni_env
andal_android_get_activity
utility functions.Update manifest files for newer Android versions.
Windows port:
- Handle keyboard input properly when Ctrl is pressed (Tobias Scheuer).
Hurd port:
- Define a fallback PATH_MAX (Andreas Rönnquist).
OSX port:
Clear window to black when going in/out of fullscreen.
Fix window centering when going out of FULLSCREEN_WINDOW mode.
Fix OSX 10.12 build.
Allow 32 bit builds on OSX (MarcusCalhoun-Lopez).
Build system:
Fix issues with building on GCC6 on Windows.
Fix source directory littering while configuring the Android build.
Python binding:
- Add support Python 3 (Gabriel Queiroz).
Documentation:
Document the behavior of
al_set_target_bitmap
with respect to transformations (Edgar Reynaldo).Fix typo in
al_use_transform
docs (Ryan Roden-Corrent).Examples:
Add kerning to the
al_get_glyph
example in ex_ttf.Various fixes in ex_camera (Erich Erstu).