ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT(3alleg5)

💖 ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT 💖

okay bestie, this is the Allegro 5 API page for ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT and it's lowkey one of the most important little enums you'll ever meet. it's giving "the blueprint of every single pixel" energy. let's get into it 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <allegro5/allegro.h>

typedef enum ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so. pixel formats. each pixel format specifies the exact size and bit layout of a pixel in memory. that's it, that's the whole vibe. components are specified from high bits to low bits, so for example a fully opaque red pixel in ARGB_8888 format is 0xFFFF0000.

Note: 🫶 the pixel format is independent of endianness. that is, in the above example you can always get the red component with

(pixel & 0x00ff0000) >> 16

But you can not rely on this code:

*(pixel + 2)

It will return the red component on little endian systems, but the green component on big endian systems. so like… don't do that. 🙈

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also bestie, heads up: Allegro's naming is different from OpenGL naming here. over in GL-land, a format of GL_RGBA8 merely defines the component order and the exact layout including endianness treatment is specified separately. usually GL_RGBA8 will correspond to ALLEGRO_PIXEL_ABGR_8888 though on little endian systems, so care must be taken (note the reversal of RGBA <-> ABGR). yes it's confusing. yes it's iconic of them. 💅

The only exception to this is ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ABGR_8888_LE which will always have the components as 4 bytes corresponding to red, green, blue and alpha, in this order, independent of the endianness. slay, one format that just behaves. 👑

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🦋 the compressed bitmaps bit 🦋

Some of the pixel formats represent compressed bitmap formats. Compressed bitmaps take up less space in the GPU memory than bitmaps with regular (uncompressed) pixel formats. This smaller footprint means that you can load more resources into GPU memory, and they will be drawn somewhat faster. ✨

The compression is lossy, however, so it is not appropriate for all graphical styles: it tends to work best for images with smooth color gradations. It is possible to compress bitmaps at runtime by passing the appropriate bitmap format in al_set_new_bitmap_format and then creating, loading, cloning or converting a non-compressed bitmap. This, however, is not recommended as the compression quality differs between different GPU drivers. It is recommended to compress these bitmaps ahead of time using external tools and then load them compressed.

not me warning you twice about runtime compression. i mean it. 🙅♀️

Unlike regular pixel formats, compressed pixel formats are not laid out in memory one pixel row at a time. Instead, the bitmap is subdivided into rectangular blocks of pixels that are then laid out in block rows. This means that regular locking functions cannot use compressed pixel formats as the destination format. Instead, you can use the blocked versions of the bitmap locking functions which do support these formats.

It is not recommended to use compressed bitmaps as target bitmaps, as that operation cannot be hardware accelerated. Due to proprietary algorithms used, it is typically impossible to create compressed memory bitmaps.

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👑 the formats themselves 👑

okay here's the full roster, every single one, no skips:

• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY — Let the driver choose a format. This is the default format at program start. 🎀
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_NO_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a format without alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_WITH_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a format with alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_15_NO_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a 15 bit format without alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_16_NO_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a 16 bit format without alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_16_WITH_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a 16 bit format with alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_24_NO_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a 24 bit format without alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_32_NO_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a 32 bit format without alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ANY_32_WITH_ALPHA — Let the driver choose a 32 bit format with alpha.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ARGB_8888 — 32 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_RGBA_8888 — 32 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ARGB_4444 — 16 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_RGB_888 — 24 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_RGB_565 — 16 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_RGB_555 — 15 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_RGBA_5551 — 16 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ARGB_1555 — 16 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ABGR_8888 — 32 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_XBGR_8888 — 32 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_BGR_888 — 24 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_BGR_565 — 16 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_BGR_555 — 15 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_RGBX_8888 — 32 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_XRGB_8888 — 32 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ABGR_F32 — 128 bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_ABGR_8888_LE — Like the version without _LE, but the component order is guaranteed to be red, green, blue, alpha. This only makes a difference on big endian systems, on little endian it is just an alias.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_RGBA_4444 — 16bit
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_SINGLE_CHANNEL_8 — A single 8-bit channel. A pixel value maps onto the red channel when displayed, but it is undefined how it maps onto green, blue and alpha channels. When drawing to bitmaps of this format, only the red channel is taken into account. Allegro may have to use fallback methods to render to bitmaps of this format. This pixel format is mainly intended for storing the color indices of an indexed (paletted) image, usually in conjunction with a pixel shader that maps indices to RGBA values. Since 5.1.2.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_COMPRESSED_RGBA_DXT1 — Compressed using the DXT1 compression algorithm. Each 4x4 pixel block is encoded in 64 bytes, resulting in 6-8x compression ratio. Only a single bit of alpha per pixel is supported. Since 5.1.9.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_COMPRESSED_RGBA_DXT3 — Compressed using the DXT3 compression algorithm. Each 4x4 pixel block is encoded in 128 bytes, resulting in 4x compression ratio. This format supports sharp alpha transitions. Since 5.1.9.
• ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT_COMPRESSED_RGBA_DXT5 — Compressed using the DXT5 compression algorithm. Each 4x4 pixel block is encoded in 128 bytes, resulting in 4x compression ratio. This format supports smooth alpha transitions. Since 5.1.9.

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• al_set_new_bitmap_format(3alleg5)
• al_get_bitmap_format(3alleg5)

go read those next bestie, they're the ones that actually use all these formats 💜

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mwah 💋 this was the Allegro reference manual, ALLEGRO_PIXEL_FORMAT(3alleg5) — you've been reading the Allegro 5 API docs and honestly? ate. no crumbs. now go pick a pixel format and be the main character of your own framebuffer 🦋✨💅