Addon libraries

This document contains general information about addon libraries that are distributed with Allegro. For more detailed info on API, usage and updates, refer to the documentation and web site of the specific addon library.


Contents


Building addons

All available addons are built automatically if all the required dependencies are found. To disable building of the specific addon, set the appropriate CMake variables to off. You can use ccmake to browse the list of options.


Available addons

Since Allegro 4.4, several addon libraries are bundled in the Allegro package. These are some of the most commonly used addons because they contain some handy features that Allegro lacks. Hopefully, with these addons you will need less additional libraries for your game.

One advantage of bundled addons is that their build system is integrated with Allegro's build system. Addons are automatically configured, built, installed and uninstalled with Allegro. However, you can perform these operations separately for each addon, if that will better suit your needs.

Finally, if you think that some addons, in your opinion, should be included, feel free to contact Allegro developers and we will consider your proposal.


AllegroGL

AllegroGL is an Allegro add-on that allows you to use OpenGL alongside Allegro -- you use OpenGL for your rendering to the screen, and Allegro for miscellaneous tasks like gathering input, doing timers, getting cross-platform portability, loading data, and drawing your textures. So this library fills the same hole that things like GLUT do.

AllegroGL also automatically exposes most, if not all, OpenGL extensions available to user programs. This means you no longer have to manually load them; extension management is already done for you.

License: dual-licensed under GPL and zlib.

More info:


loadpng

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a cool raster image file format. libpng is the reference library for working with PNG files. loadpng is some glue that makes it easy to use libpng to load and save bitmaps from Allegro programs.

loadpng depends on zlib and libpng libraries. Instructions for getting and installing these can be found on loadpng webiste.

License: public domain

More info:


logg

LOGG is an Allegro add-on library for playing OGG/Vorbis audio files. It can load OGG/Vorbis files as Allegro SAMPLE's, or it can stream them from disk to save memory. It depends on libogg and libvorbis, available from vorbis.com.

License: MIT License. See addons/logg/LICENSE.TXT

More info:


jpgalleg

This addon library lets you load baseline and progressive encoded JPG images, and to save baseline JPGs. It is standalone (no dependencies except for Allegro), compact (compiled lib weights 40K!) fast and standard compliant (it'll load almost any JPG you'll throw at it!). Ships with sources, documentation, examples and a Grabber plugin, and supports any platform supported by Allegro.

License: zlib/libpng. See addons/jpgalleg/license.txt.

More info: