Hi all!
I have like a year that i have stopped allegro programming for 2 big reasons:

1) Because i had to start web development for personal reasons
2) There was no book! If there was a book, i would have been using allegro.

Why do i need a book? Because if there is no book, there is no real guide.
When it comes to programming, you have to learn theory by the book and practice by videos and practice. I know that is the manual, but i only managed to add an icon to my game. The manual is not simple, really. It is like it was written by a robot. He will not understand what you want to. Does the manual tell me how can i make 2 doors that teleport the player?
I know it sounds stupid, but really, i see great potential in allegro and a book is ruining a lot of its brightness. Not to talk about 2 guide videos (mike geig and coding made easy)
Why only some people got the right information? Why i cant create the game i want only because i cant have a book? (and the book is only where it starts)
I hope you understand

Edit: beaten

I dont know but your replies seem just for justification.
My question is: allegro 5 book. Any? NO! Epic fail.
Videos? Only 2 guys! I hope you find them!
Wiki is like a manual. I hate wiki. The manual is better.
This is why i wrote the sentence:
"I know that is the manual"
I learned to make great websites for a year whereas with allegro just a game with a ship.
Really, nothing else. There is a big problem. This is a great game engine. It got potential.
No books, 2 videos. Really, a year has passed, nothing changed.

The teleportation is an example, which you based all your reply on that.
I mean that is there a book to make a very very very very simple game?

My question is:
A book for Allegro 5?

[sidenote: I wrote things just to explain that i dont want to hear other things, except the book, as i have already have read a lot of other forums questions like this one]

I personally don't think the wiki is like the manual. There's a lot more information there.

But yeah, there isn't a book. As amarillion said, someone would have to write one.

I understand. Thank you for the replies.
I could even write the book myself as an online pdf for free, but i would need great help from the forum, or someone else who is friends with others in this forum can make the book. I dont know but the community has to make the book, it is like an emblem. After all, who makes it can make great money. I will surely buy it.
So i mean that it is a real loss not to make the book.
Please anyone make it!

@trent
BTW i have already made a game man, i mean with a book you create more great games or learn the basics at least.

Complaining that "we" haven't written a book is as silly as complaining to your next door neighbor that he hasn't built a rocketship for you to fly around in. Just because "we" wrote a library on our on time for our own purposes doesn't mean we are obligated to provide any support to anybody in the form of a manual, a wiki, or a 1-800 number.

A book would be great, but what's the benefit to the person writing it? He already knows how to use the library. Sure he might make some money selling a few copies, but most people would probably just pirate the PDF and complain about how it doesn't cover the topics they want.

It's much easier for individuals to write wiki articles on topics that interest them. Sure it's not as coherent as a book written by a single expert author, but beggars cannot be choosers, eh?

Wha? You could write each of those chapters in 1 page.

Go write the book then!

The developers do their job. Writing a book in this kind of free project is not part of it. Suppose that I can't find a function in Allegro that I need, I can take 3 options;

1. Make the function and submit it to the Allegro developers

2. Make the function but already customized to your project, so no submitting

3. Find another library if it's something that should be there...

Personally as a game developer I have no intention to write any addon or something I don't need and submit it to Allegro. And even if I need it I would find another library and just use that along with Allegro.

I'm concentrated in making games, and that takes a lot of time. Others are concentrated in making games but also support the library and other just support the library. Each of these takes time. And writing a book is not compatible with supporting + writing a book or making a game + writing a book. Maybe some tutorials, yhea it wold be good, but a book? What will be the next a movie?

If I manage to finish my game, and I see that it works I could try to make a library compatible with Allegro using enet and protobuf. But that's because I want to. That's how these projects works.

There are other libraries that give you a lot of info. A lot more than Allegro it's true. But never, will teach you how to make videogames, that's something that you'll need to learn by your own, not even a book.

Web development is a joke, compared to videogame development.

Ok, i understood. Actually i understand the manual.
I even created an icon to my game, on both the game icon and on the task bar on windows. They both worked for all. But there was no guide for me to that logic, i had to logic it myself. You know that the icon is a stupid thing, but what if i dont understand it even from the manual? (as it firstly happened to me)

Web development is a joke compared to game programming, but what could happen if you put a game on your website? There is no jokes on programming. It would seem easy, but the more you work on a project the harder it gets. It is just your brain who lies to you and makes you think that web is easier. If it is easier why you choose the harder route?

@math
You mean after writting the chapters to post them here or just the titles so others can help?

My response will be simple:
Can your game run google?

I call a game programmer someone who has created Tomb Raider, "at least"
I call a web developer someone who has created a social network, "at least"

Basically, i have made the math and it turns out you need 2-3 years to make the social network and 5-10 years to create a Tomb Raider game. (talking on 8 hours each day learning basis)
I have made 3D terrains with XNA and i am not happy with it. Same with allegro.
The game i have made is total crap. At least for me. As for web development, i have already made the social network and this is why i am turning my back to web.
And btw, i saw your game...

I think that a book would be a big waste of time and money. I have always found the manual to be lacking though. It's more or less just a reference manual, which isn't a very practical guide to getting started fast, in particular for a beginner that doesn't know what they're doing yet. Nobody wants to read over a reference manual from cover to cover before they even really know what can be done. Hell, often you never read over the reference manual fully because often you're only interested in half of a piece of software's functionality anyway. Imagine having to figure out how to use Vim with only a reference manual. Besides, it can be hard to wrap your head around something new before you see it actually happening, so if you have to read the reference manual over to figure out how to use Allegro then you'll probably have to read it a second or third time to make full sense of things. In particular, the library is full of dependencies. You can't call X until you've called Y and created a Z by calling al_create_Z, etc. It can be easy to find yourself in a seemingly bottomless read. It's the same thing that makes people end up spending hours on Wikipedia or find themselves in the creepy parts of YouTube. Except those things are usually entertaining, at least. Reading reference documentation is usually pretty dry with a few exceptions; particularly when it isn't making sense or has you jumping all over the place with dependencies.

I think that adding a beginner's guide to the manual might be a good thing. I don't think we should go into detail about making games (e.g., the whole door teleporter thing). That's outside of the scope of the Allegro manual. However, giving a simple tutorial/walkthrough on the basics of the library, and where to go from there, and perhaps even working your way through a pong clone as an example might be a good way to get beginners using Allegro (and with fewer threads asking the very basic questions). It might also be a good place to document good and bad practices. I'm not opposed to working on such a thing myself, but I'm also not promising time or motivation to do it... The wiki is a good place to document intricacies or subjective topics, but I don't think people should depend on a community driven wiki to learn how to do basic things. I think that as a goal we should work to incorporate the most useful parts of the wiki into an organized guide for the manual. Something sequential that beginners can follow through and understand without having to jump all over the place.

1. Introduction.

2. Beginners Tutorial

3. Dos and Donts?

4. Reference Manual

Those are my 2 cents.

Summary:

1. A book is a big waste of time.

2. The Allegro reference manual is bad.

3. The Allegro reference manual should be a book.