Game framework

Game Development

Allegro Game Framework - cross-platform Castle Game Engine - 2D and 3D cross-platform Pascal game engine Choosing a Game Engine Games Game Engines Game Frameworks Graphics libraries Lazarus- Game Developers Edition Proposal nxPascal - lightweight 3D game engine Peg Solitaire - a Lazarus game tutorial Projects using Lazarus - Games ZenGL - Pascal cross-platform game development library

A game framework is a library designed to help game development. It usually defines APIs to deal with graphics, sound, user input, data files, etc. In most cases it defines a high-level API that allows cross-platform development.

Main difference between game frameworks and game engines is that the latter also implements the game loop, as well as complex data structures (maps, actors...), data containers and tools.

Game frameworks

Name	Site	Usage	License	Notes
Allegro	liballeg.org	Bindings Allegro-pas	Allegro 1-4: Beerware, Allegro 5: zlib	Allegro is a cross-platform library mainly aimed at video game and multimedia programming. It handles common, low-level tasks such as creating windows, accepting user input, loading data, drawing images, playing sounds, etc. and generally abstracting away the underlying platform.
Phoenix	code.google.com	FPC/Delphi		A set of Delphi 7+ and Freepascal components and classes to help in creating hardware accelerated 2D and 3D games.
GLScene	sourceforge.net	FPC/Delphi	Mozilla Public License	GLScene is a free OpenGL-based library for the Delphi programming language, C++ and Free Pascal. It provides visual components and objects allowing description and rendering of 3D scenes.
SFML	https://www.sfml-dev.org	FPC/Lazarus SFML headers PasSFML(OOP)		SFML is a simple, fast, cross-platform and object-oriented multimedia API. It provides access to windowing, graphics, audio and network.
SDL	www.libsdl.org	SDL2 bindings for FPC Laz2SDL SDL2 Headers		Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D
ZenGL	www.zengl.org	FPC/Delphi	Zlib	Cross-platform game development library written in Pascal, designed to provide necessary functionality for rendering 2D-graphics, handling input, sound output, etc.

Other libraries for games

Libraries that aren't to create games but are usefult.

Name	Site	Usage	License	Notes
Steam Wrapper	https://github.com/thecocce/steamwrapper	FPC/Delphi		Cross-platform game development wrapper written in Pascal, designed to provide necessary functionality for rendering 2D-graphics, handling input, sound output, etc.

Using LCL for game development

(From forum user furious programming.)

I suggest not to waste your time on LCL to build games, because it is not suitable for creating games for many reasons, including the most important:

• no Direct3D and OpenGL support
• unable to use GPU for rendering textures
• no exclusive video mode support and available screen resolutions
• absolutely no support for sound mixer and playing multiple sounds at the same time
• lack of support for game controllers and their full functionality
• lack o V-Sync support

What I mentioned above are the basics, without which creating even a simple game will be inconvenient, the game itself will be very limited, and its performance will be very low (software rendering is horribly slow in compare to GPU rendering). As you can see, it doesn't make much sense.

Whether you want to make a tiny game or a bigger one, use the library dedicated to their creation. It does not have to be SDL, but it is important that it has all the functionality to create full-fledged video games. However, if you are interested in creating a 2D game, I strongly advise you not to use 3D engines for this purpose, because it will significantly complicate the implementation, and you will get discouraged very quickly.

Use something small, light, functional and, above all, supported at all times. I suggest SDL because it meets all the requirements and is great, but it can also be Allegro, because it's the same shelf.

See also

• Graphics libraries
• Game engine