From: Elliott Oti Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Which is faster? Allegro or Sandmann's LFB Date: Wed, 25 Dec 1996 15:11:18 -0800 Organization: Academic Computer Centre Utrecht, (ACCU) Lines: 33 Message-ID: <32C1B496.3DCE@stud.warande.ruu.nl> References: <59s2q3$84l AT nuscc DOT nus DOT sg> NNTP-Posting-Host: warande1078.warande.ruu.nl Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp [Uzi] wrote: > I was wondering .. which is faster for graphics programming which requires > a high frame rate and uses double buffering in RAM for page-flipping? I > havn't tried Allegro yet, but I managed to write some routines based on > Charles Sandmann's (thanks!) VBE.ZIP, using a linear frame buffer under > VBE 2.0. > > I was hoping to avoid having to use univbe to invoke VBE 2.0, and am > thinking of switching to Allegro's graphics library. Allegro contains some test programs so you can download the stuff and try it for yourself. Basically, though, Allegro supports a few chipsets (Trident, S3 ..) and the VESA implementations 1.2 and 2.0 for 8 bpp models. The routines are pleasingly fast; sure you can get more speed by coding your own custom library and it can be enjoyable enough, but Allegro's speed has never been a disappointing factor for its growing crowd of users. It doesn't completely free you from Univbe, however; not all cards support VBE 2.0 in BIOS, and many have flaky implementations at best, so I guess for solid apps you'd still need Univbe shipping along. The big plus about Allegro ( shit, here I am plugging another guy's product :) is that its user base is growing enough to give the thing some real momentum. Shawn Hargreaves (busy becoming a minor legend in his own right) keeps on developing it, and the masses scream for more, so new features like 15/16/24 bpp modes etc will probably arrive faster than you could code your own version. Plus the legion of Allegro users makes one mighty beta-testing army; I know *my* software suffers from the Works-Fine-On-My-Machine syndrome. At the very least there's loads of working source code in Allegro you could lift :-) Go for it. Elliott