SVGALib

The first version of SVGALib was based on version 1.2 of another library, VGALib by Tommy Frandsen.^[5]

Several games like Ambrosia Software's Maelstrom by Sam Lantinga, the first-person games Freaks! and Space Plumber^[6] using the QDGDF library,^[7][8] and most famously id Software's Doom (alongside an X11 version) and Quake (after the submission of a third-party patch based on leaked source code^[9]) were ported to use SVGALib from other operating systems,^[10] as was Doom porter Dave Taylor's Abuse.

Wolfenstein 3D was also ported following its source code being released in 1995,^[11] as well as the id produced Heretic, Hexen and Hexen II after 1999,^[12] and Descent and Descent II by Parallax Software after 1998.^[13] Certain source ports for Doom, Quake, and Abuse maintained support for SVGALib.^[14] The library is also supported by the MAME/MESS emulator.^[15]

First party Linux games that have supported it include Alizarin Tetris,^[16] Bdash,^[17] Fleuch,^[18] Hatman,^[19] Intelligent FRAC,^[20] Koules,^[21] LinCity,^[22][23] Linberto,^[24] Quadra,^[25] Repton,^[26] SABRE,^[27] Thrust (also supported GGI),^[28] Zarch,^[29] and Zblast,^[30] among others.^[31][32][33]

SVGALib was popular in the mid to late 1990s.^[34][35] A reference book, Linux Graphics Programming with SVGAlib, was authored by Jay Link in 2000.^[36] Around the turn of the millennium, many applications that used it migrated to X11 and SDL,^[37] which could (until SDL 2.0) make use of SVGAlib as a video driver.^[38][39] This was in part due to the risks of privilege escalation due to SVGAlib requiring applications to run from root.^[40][41][42]

• SVGAlib
  • Development versions (link on the site itself is broken)
• SVGAlib - Universal Videogames List