Due to familiarity I came back to Allegro when I started getting the itch to work on video game development. I found out that Allegro had undergone a major version change and that I had some learning to do. I found a great set of tutorial videos that covered Allegro 5.0 at FixByProximity. My plan was to go through the tutorial videos and then to rewrite my Final Project from my Game Programming Class to prove I had learned enough of the new version to move on to new projects.

The tutorials cover sprites, animation, sound, collision detection, and other things. They really are a comprehensive, though basic, rundown of what you need to start game development with Allegro 5. You are expected to know a little bit of C++ and have a Windows computer due to the use of Visual Studio 2010 as the IDE (Integrated Development Environment). The excellent manual pages for Allegro 5 and the Wiki are available for the details of the library’s functionalities and other tutorials.

I finished the videos and was updating my old Final Project under the name of ReFinal but I was interrupted by a conversation with a co-worker. I was talking about what I was doing in my spare time and the co-worker (that is also interested in making video games) had some concern about the logic for a simple mechanic like jumping and a little collision detection. I stated I would show them and with just a little bit of time had a working program with a little black pixel that could jump, collide with a single other object (a floating block), fall off the object, and be affected by gravity (so that the jump ends). This was the beginning of my FleaGame.

The FleaGame may never become a legitimate game but it will get tinkered with over a long time span and it serves as a platform for trying out things. I did finish updating my old Final Project, but I did just enough to call it updated and then spent more time on the FleaGame. The details can be found at the FleaGame Project Page and includes links to videos on YouTube.

This article pretty much sums up my current game development efforts and the next article should be about learning something new!