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<TITLE>PLIB: A Portable Games Library.</TITLE>
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<H1>
<FONT SIZE=9>S</FONT><FONT SIZE=5>TEVE'S</FONT>
<FONT SIZE=9>P</FONT><FONT SIZE=5>ORTABLE</FONT>
<FONT SIZE=9>G</FONT><FONT SIZE=5>AME</FONT>
<FONT SIZE=9>L</FONT><FONT SIZE=5>IBRARY.</FONT>
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And Lo, the Lion and the Sheep shall lie down together - but the Sheep won't
get much Sleep.
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-- Woody Allen
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<H1>PLIB: A Suite of Portable Game Libraries.</H1>
I (and an ever increasing band of helpers) have been spending
time to build a set of OpenSource (LGPL) libraries that will
permit programmers to write games and other realtime interactive
applications that are 100% portable across a wide range of hardware and
operating systems.
<p>
PLIB includes sound effects, music, a complete 3D engine, font
rendering, a simple Windowing library, a game scripting language,
a GUI, networking, 3D math library and a
collection of handy utility functions. All are 100% portable
across nearly all modern computing platforms. What's more, it's
all available on line - and completely free. Each library component
is fairly independent of the others - so if you want to use SDL,
GTK, GLUT, or FLTK instead of PLIB's 'PW' windowing library, you can.
<p>
The latest stable version of PLIB is 1.8.4 - go to the
<A HREF="download.html">DOWNLOAD</A> section to get a
copy - go to the <A HREF="whats_inside.html">WHAT'S INSIDE</A>
section for documentation and a more detailed description of
what PLIB contains.
<p>
If you are looking at other games libraries (and there are a LOT
to choose from) - ask yourself how many games have been written
for that library by people outside the group that wrote it. That
is the acid test of usability and PLIB passes with flying colours.
<p>
PLIB is used by many projects (not all games - and not all
OpenSourced), here are some of the more prominent ones - there
are at least a hundred others:
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<TD><center><A HREF="http://tuxaqfh.sf.net">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="tux_aqfh.png" ALT="Tux_AQFH Logo" width=99 height=77></A><br>
<A HREF="http://tuxaqfh.sf.net">Tux the Penguin -
<br>A Quest for herring.</A></center></TD>
<TD><center><A HREF="http://tuxkart.sf.net">TuxKart</A><br>
<A HREF="http://tuxkart.sf.net">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="tuxkart_logo.png" ALT="TuxKart Logo" width=101 height=78></A></center></TD>
<TD><center><A HREF="http://www.flightgear.org">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="fgfs.png" ALT="FlightGear Logo" width=111 height=58></A><br>
<A HREF="http://www.flightgear.org">FlightGear</A></center></TD>
<TD><center><A HREF="http://www.majik3d.org">Majik3D</A><br>
<A HREF="http://www.majik3d.org">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="majik3d.png" ALT="Majik3D Logo" width=83 height=80></A></center></TD>
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<TD><center><A HREF="http://prettypoly.sf.net">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="ppe_logo_1.png" ALT="PrettyPoly Logo" width=98 height=54></A><br>
<A HREF="http://prettypoly.sf.net">
PrettyPoly Editor</A></center></TD>
<TD><center><A HREF="http://tuxfleet.sf.net">TuxFleet</A><br>
<A HREF="http://tuxfleet.sf.net">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="tuxfleet_logo.png" ALT="TuxFleet Logo" width=92 height=72></A></center></TD>
<TD><center><A HREF="http://www.torcs.org">TORCS</A><br>
<A HREF="http://www.torcs.org">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="torcs_logo.png" ALT="TORCS Logo" width=100 height=84></A></center></TD>
<TD><center><A HREF="http://www.minigolfmaniacs.com">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="MinigolfManiacs.png" ALT="Minigolf Maniacs Logo" width=120 height=47></A><br>
<A HREF="http://www.minigolfmaniacs.com">
Minigolf Maniacs</A></center></TD>
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<TD><center><A HREF="http://www.flight-dynamic-simulator.de">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="FDS_logo.png" ALT="FDS Logo" width=110 height=90></A><br>
<A HREF="http://www.flight-dynamic-simulator.de">
Flight Dynamics Simulator</A></center></TD>
<TD><center><A HREF="http://mote-project.org">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="mote.png" ALT="MOTE Logo" width=123 height=33></A><br>
<A HREF="http://mote-project.org">
MOTE</A></center></TD>
<TD><center>
<A HREF="http://www.spacething.org">
<IMG BORDER=0 SRC="spacething-small.png" ALT="Spacething Logo" width=200 height=33></A><br>
<A HREF="http://www.spacething.org">Spacething</A></center></TD>
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<p>
Unlike the many similar libraries, PLIB is easy to learn and
use - and has an object-oriented C++ interface. It's built
as a set of component libraries that you can pick and choose
between if (for example) you don't want to use PLIB's GUI but
you do want to use it's scene graph API.
<p>
If you are reading this document from the source distribution on
your local disk, you can find the most up to date version of PLIB
here:
<ul>
<A HREF="http://plib.sf.net">
http://plib.sf.net</A>
</ul>
PLIB's web presence is currently hosted on SourceForge (with thanks to
VA Linux Inc for providing this free service), and the
project summary page is here:
<ul>
<A HREF="http://sf.net/projects/plib">
http://sf.net/projects/plib</A>
</ul>
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<ADDRESS>
<A HREF="http://www.sjbaker.org">
Steve J. Baker.</A>
&lt;<A HREF="mailto:sjbaker1@airmail.net">sjbaker1@airmail.net</A>&gt;
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