1) Completely free to use for commercial games, this is done using the zlib/png license and avoidance of dependencies on commercial libraries.
2) Easy to use, this is done by keeping all of its features under one unified API
3) Cross Platform, this is done by only using cross platform libraries to build Arc upon. The libraries I use are…
- OpenGL – Standard API for quality cross platform graphics
- OpenAL – Free high quality audio system
- SDL – Cross platform toolkit for Window/Input access
- SDL_image – Cross platform image loading
- FreeType – Cross platform True Type font rendering
4) Full featured
- FreeType Font Rendering
- Scenegraph implementation
- 2D Physics Engine
- Drawing primitives
- Easy access to input
- Easy control of window + screenshots
- GUI system (full fledged support/implementation planned for version 0.3)
- Common 2D math routines
- Serialization system
- Grab bag of useful templates (array, linked list, red black tree, freelist)
- Time codes
- XML access
- Support for loading png/jpg/tga/bmp/gif/pcx/lbm/xpm/pnm graphics files
- Built in but hidden from user resource management system
- Sprite class
- Playing .wav and .ogg files with the OpenAL sound system