Re: What? No game libs?
- Posted by Ray Smith <smithr at IX.NET.AU> Jan 11, 2001
- 449 views
>What bugs me in Euphoria is that there are no good >game libraries for it. Sure there is euAllegro for >windows, wich is incomplete and restricted to win32 euAllegro should be able to be ported to Linux with very little effort (if I knew Linux better and could get my monitor fixed on my Linux Box I'd have a better chance!!) I should also note the currrent version of Allegro is a Work in progress 3.933 and the 4.0 release is expected in the near future. It is very stable as it is though. It in theory it might be possible to use the translator to create DOS executables but I can't promise it, or how much effort is required. So in theory ... euAllegro could (with work) be able to support the 3 platforms. Yes it is incomplete and needs more doco and that will come with time as well. When I say incomplete it still has around 200 functions documented and mostly tested plus another 100 or so functions available that I haven't documented. Right now and it has the power to produce top quality games (or graphics apps). It still is incomplete because Allegro (the C original) is huge. There are functions in their for doing tasks that possibly will never ever be required by Euphoria programmers. One of the reasons I did release euAllegro when I did (apart from the fact I was burning out) was to get user reaction. if noone was going to use it, I wasn't going to spend the next 3-6 months of life creating something for little reason. I must note that Allegro (and euAllegro with Mappy, JGMOD and PPCol) in my opinion gives the programmer everything required to write any NON 3D game. Yes 3D games are all the go now, and probably will continue to be so ... so Allegro .. and euAllegro isn't for everyone but for any non 3D game euAllegro is definately a good option. There actually are 3D routines in Allegro but as far as I understand Allegro doesn't support any 3D cards and uses software rendering which will always be slow. It only has low level 3D routines ... no routines you'd expect in a 3D engine. euAllegro has some benefits over C Allegro ... firstly the added libraries .. JGMOD, Mappy and PPCol. yes these are all available but you have to obtain them seperately and compile link etc each library. The doco eventually will be completely integrated and will be in the one place for each library. Again it is all in seperate readme and .txt files for each library ... but probably the biggest benifit is that euAllegro uses Euphoria and is easier to create your logic in Euphoria rather than C. >We should write a multiplatform games library for >Euphoria, something like Allegro for C. euAllegro will be when complete. DOS Euphoria will always be difficult to support since there is no way of linking it to external libraries ... except the Translator hack which no one has tested ... AFAIK I asked Rob the question once was it possible ... but never got a responce ... probably because I asked the question at the bottom an email on the mailing list .. and he probably didn't see it. Anyway ... I have been giving you all the benefits ... I have to say I'm currently not working on euAllegro ... and probably won't have another major release until someone asks for more routines to be wrapped ... I sort have been informed informally that the GUI routines would be nice. So they will be first on the list I guess cya Ray.