Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
From: Elliott Oti <oti AT fys DOT ruu DOT nl>
Subject: Re: Graphics Libraries -- Which is fastest?
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Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 11:23:31 GMT
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On Sun, 8 Mar 1998, D. Huizenga wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have been using Allegro for graphics programming in the game that
> I am currently working on.  While it does get around 200 FPS (It
> actually updates the video ram faster than the monitor scans the
> screen), I wonder if Allegro is the fastest.  The reason I wonder
> is that I want my game to run well on slow computers as well, such
> as a 486/33, or a 486/66 (DX2).  Does anybody have speed comparisons?
> Thanks.

The Allegro sprite and blitting functions are reasonably fast -- you are
unlikely to squeeze out more than 5%-10% by using a custom blitter, in
most cases.
The Allegro putpixel/getpixel functions are very, very slow -- in the case
of linear bitmaps you can get a 5x-10x speedup by writing directly to the
line[] substructure instead.
The Allegro polygon functions are also very slow because of their extreme
generality; Switching to a third party 3d library compatible with Allegro
such as jaw3d, lib3d, tpolygon II etc can provide speedups in the order of
3x to 5x.

The advantage of Allegro lies in the integration of sound code, graphics
code, input-devices code, bitmap loaders, timers, and a strong user base.

I know of no other library for djgpp with the generality and flexibility
of Allegro; there are a number of *graphics* libraries that might be
faster ( especially 3d ); but the other alternatives ( betatron, jlib )
while having their own strong points, are not particularly faster than
Allegro.


  Elliott Oti
  kamer 104, tel (030-253) 2516 (RvG)    
  http://www.fys.ruu.nl/~oti