Those who use SDL or similar other C/C++ library will find allegro easy to use like SDL but much more feature rich than SDL. Allegro API is improved a lot and now because of that you can do both low and high level functions using this library. It also supports 3D and there are some demos available for you to view 3D capability of this library. Just like SDL it also handles threads,timers,sound,networking,player input, etc,in addition to all that, Allegro also has GUI support just like Irrlicht does. Don’t expect this library to be like irrlicht though as it is more suitable for 2D than 3D games.

Allegro Games in BeOS

Allegro has flexible license for developers and there are no strict restrictions for using it. License can be classified into “giftware” category, so that allows you to even distribute the games under commercial license.

You can get more information about it from Allegro website.

W3C released < canvas > tag with which we can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images. Simply put canvas is an area where you can use javascript to draw the graphics of your choice.

Canvas Tag is Supported on Following Browsers

Example Canvas ?

Code below will create simple canvas that will draw invisible canvas on the page.

< canvas width= "550" height= "400" >

To get started with things you can add border to your canvas, fill it with background and can do many other things.

What can i do with it ?

You can draw-

What about 3D ?

HTML5 canvas tag doesn’t come up with 3D context. There is no vendor independent API for 3D context so as of now there is no 3D.

Where to go from here ?

If you are mozilla or opera user then you check the following resource.

Is there any book ?

Yes. You can buy Book from Amazon “HTML 5 Up & Running”.

1. Zbuffer blog
2. Benjamin’s XNA blog
3. XNA Creator’s Blog
4. Ziggyware blog

# Lost Garden
# Blobs in Games
# Wolfire Games Blog
# Yuan Works Development
# Elder Game
# The Chronicles of Doryen

More Blogs:

1. Christer Ericson’s blog
2. AI Game Dev
3. Wolfgang Engel’s blog
4. Molly Rocket Blog
5. Gaffer on Games blog
6. Humus (Graphics Blog) ( )
7. Realtime Rendering blog

1. Basilisk
2. GameFrame for Java
3. Golden T game engine
4. Pulpcore
5. Genuine Advantage Game engine
6. Gentus Easyway
7. Slick2D
8. JGame
9. Game Gardens

Physics Engine

1. Tokamak ( Open source physics api)
2. APE (Actionscript Physics Engine)
3. Flade ( Flash Dynamics Engine)
4. Fisix Engine (Another flash actionscript engine)
5. Simple Physics Engine
6. Newton game dynamics
7. Novodex
8. ODE

Sound Libraries

1. FMod
2. OpenAL

Quantum Engine is an cross-language 32bit native code compiler with an advanced 2D game engine for PC’s running Microsoft Windows® and uses Direct3D® for hardware accelerated rendering. It’s robust, designed for easy of use and suitable for making all types of 2D games and other graphic simulations. Your code can compile to a stand-alone EXE and/or to dynamic loadable compiled units (runtime packages). The core game engine consists of a high-level object oriented game application framework with a plethora of classes and routines to allow you to rapidly and efficiently develop your graphics simulations. There is support for surfaces, textures, sprites, audio, streams, archives, configuration files, render targets, swap chains, databases and much more.

Quantum engine is free of charge for freeware projects but if you plan to sell them then you need to buy license for the game.

Makers of unreal tournament released the development kit for free.They offer this SDK free and for almost any type of game development usage be it commercial or presentation or for education,personal,collaborative project.

System requirements are higher so if you’re with limited system resource then this SDK is not for you.

Minimum:

* Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
* 2.0+ GHz processor
* 2 GB system RAM
* SM3-compatible video card
* 3 GB Free hard drive space

Recommended for Content Development:

* Windows Vista 64 SP2
* 2.0+ GHz multi-core processor
* 8 GB System RAM
* NVIDIA 8000 series or higher graphics card
* Plenty of HDD space

Check the UDK site here.

It also has two sub-projects for specific media support. First project is FFMPEG-Java and second is Theora-Java.

What is FMJ ?

FMJ is an open-source project with the goal of providing an alternative to Java Media Framework (JMF), while remaining API-compatible with JMF. It aims to produce a single API/Framework which can be used to capture, playback, process, and stream media across multiple platforms.

From where to get it ?

You can get more information about FMJ and download it from here.

What is Nuclex ?

The Nuclex Framework is a collection of well-designed building blocks for XNA games and other demanding applications written in .NET. These building blocks are not interconnected — you can pick what you need, mix and match with other class libraries and architect your game the way you want it.

What are the features ?

* Better Collections (Deque, PriorityQueue)
* 3D Text Rendering
* LZMA Content Compression (that’s 7-Zip’s compression)
* Arbitrary Primitive Batching (think 3D SpriteBatch)
* Rectangle Packing
* Multi-threaded Particle System
* Themeable Graphical User Interfaces
* Game State Management
* Spatial Partitioning (R-Tree, QuadTree)
* Debugging Overlays
* Collision Detection
* Automatic Vertex Declarations

From where to get it ?
You can download the Nuclex from the Codeplex site .

Free or Paid ?

It is paid application. It costs €9.95 bucks for the product.

What are the features ?

- Editor with example scripts
- More than 55 affectors, emitters, observers, handlers and renderers
- PhysX support
- Particle System LOD
- Soft particles
- Atlas texture support and atlas tool
- Manual, tutorial and API description
- And more …

New version of particle universe is just released. That is version 1.1, so if you want to check it you can do so at FXpression site.