Hi,
[Don't mean to hijack this thread]
On 8/6/07, Roshan d_rosh2001@yahoo.co.in wrote:
List,
I have created a How-to for using the Svgalib with C. Svgalib is a graphic library (low-level) that offers basic functions for graphics programming.
In the past, I was trying to find out an alternative to writing C programs for graphics under any distribution.
Roshan dude, this feels like deja-vu or something to me. Many years ago, I was searching for a lib that could do "1024x800" or atleast "800x600" since I could never get TC++ graphics.lib/drivers to work at higher than 640x480. And I wanted to create some GUI foo for some trivial civil engineering software that I had written so that 2nd year CE students didnot have to do some thousand calculations :P. First version was using gotoxy, next one using BGI. But then 640x480 really sucked after a point.
I started searching for svga and what not. I used to be running Win98 those days btw. So I bumped into two libraries - Zephyr and Allegro ( * ). Both could do what I wanted - nice gfx routines in svga. Allegro is a Game Programming Lib. Allegro was more community based and had GUI routines even. I fell in love with it. It was/is a "giftware" started as a hobby project by a dude called Shawn Hargreaves (typo?). He was the Linus for us Allegro fanboys. SDL was BSD for us, we loved to make fun of it :P.
( * ) I also found another library around this time - called as Qt - I thought it was foobar because it used C++ :O and I chucked it.
Anyways, I stuck with Allegro for a long long time. I learnt a lot while using it. I learnt that TC++ was the not the only compiler in the world, since Allegro needed something called DJGPP which apparently was a DOS port of some random compiler called gcc :O. Also learnt that there was something called MingW - Windows port of gcc. My Civil Engg. software was re-done using Allegro.
The best part about Allegro was its community. There is this forum site, www.allegro.cc. Loads of helpful people there. For a long time, I was the only Indian there, iirc, then there were few more here and there. I suggest, you join Allegro.cc if you are interested in Game Development. I have long stopped doing anything in Allegro since 3-4 years now, around the same time since I started using that library that I had chucked few years back :)
Try and play with Allegro to learn a lot of gfx routines, I suggest.
Cheers!
Pradeepto