Setup For Microsoft Visual Studio

Most people use Windows, so dealing with it is an unfortunate reality of most PC development project, and especially for games. Lucky for you, I have ran the gauntlet and braved the hell that is Setting Up Visual Studio And All Necessary SDKs And Other Dependencies (TM). Microsoft Visual Studio will hereafter be referred to as MSVC and Microsoft will be referred to sardonically as Mother.

It should be noted that there is a FREE version of MSVC 2005 (version 8), called "Express Edition". It requires registering with their little developer's world thingy, but if you don't want to stray from The Pointy-Clicky Safety Of Mother, it's your best bet.

I'm also assuming you know how to get around in MSVC, and will not be going over how to use it (except for necessary instruction).

Here is your list of chores:

MSVC 2005

As of August 2006, the latest incarnation of MSVC is 2005 (version 8 of the compiler). You can get it for free (for the time being, but who knows how long Mother's Generosity will last) from:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/download/

The free version comes as a 30 day trial version which needs to be permanently activated by getting a serial number by registering through a link given at the above URL. You might try using a fake email address, because they tell you the serial number in the registration confirmation page you're brought to after registering (unless you really don't mind getting spam from Mother).

Mother's Own .NET Framework 1.1

I forget exactly what header it was that .NET Framework 1.1 provides, but it was missing from MSVC 2005. It was either windows.h or opengl.h . Either way, you should feel ripped off. Anyway, to right this wrong, install this lovely SDK:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&DisplayLang=en

If the above link dries up, go to http://msdn.microsoft.com and search for ".NET Framework 1.1". dotnetfx.exe is the filename you want.

Mother's Platform SDK

This SDK supplies the other of the missing header files (and probably other crap too). It's a web-installer, and you get a choice of what to download and install (which is good, because everything it offers is huge). Make sure you download the appropriate binary for your architecture (x86, AMD64, or Intel ia64). If you don't know what I'm talking about, just use PSDK-x86.exe.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a55b6b43-e24f-4ea3-a93e-40c0ec4f68e5&DisplayLang=en

When you're presented with installation options, make sure ONLY the following are enabled (unless you don't mind downloading and installing an assload of files):

Plus any other extra pieces of Mother's Worthless Crap you care to install.

If the above link dries up, go to http://msdn.microsoft.com and search for "PSDK-x86.exe".

Redistributable Turds

Mother seems to have a problem supplying all the files you need to properly compile and run developed applications, and the C libraries (aka the C runtime or "CRT") are no exception. If you were to compile up a classic "hello world" C program (making sure it uses the C library call printf) and link the C libraries dynamically, you will find out that no matter what seemingly appropriate DLL files you distribute with your bastard application, certain Windows machines will complain of either missing DLL files, or that the "application configuration is incorrect".

The hand-wavey explanation is that Mother has devised a brilliant new method of specifying DLL dependencies through manifest files, and you can no longer just lump the requisite DLL files in with your release executables.

Fortunately you can just lump in a directory containing said DLL files, plus a manifest file which contains certain metadata about its DLL buddies. This directory is included in the full, non-free version of MSVC 2005 (but not the free version). I've uploaded a zip file containing the necessary turds which you can just throw in with your release executables. This particular set of files is specific to MSVC 8 (hence the "VC80"). You can find the little bastards here:

http://www.thedods.com/victor/Microsoft.VC80.CRT.zip

It should be noted that these files are unnecessary if you don't release your application to the general non-MSVC-having populace.

Supposedly since these files are "redistributable components", there is no legal issue with me providing them for download outside of Mother's Domain.

Deciding Where To Dump This Crap

Before getting the game engine source and supplementary libraries, you'll need to figure out where to put them. A "projects" directory, if you will, is needed. Use/create whatever directory you find convenient (e.g. C:/projects).

SDL

SDL is an abstraction layer for computer hardware designed to make development of portable games simple. It provides low-level facilities for interaction with devices such as the framebuffer (video memory), keyboard/mouse/joystick input, sound, OpenGL, the CD-rom, etc.

http://www.libsdl.org/index.php

Look under "Download" for SDL 1.X (1.2 is the most recent as of August 2006). There will be several different packages you can choose from, but you want development library package. This is SDL-devel-1.X.X-VC6.zip (SDL-devel-1.2.11-VC6.zip is the most recent as of August 2006). Download away.

Unzip the file you downloaded into your projects directory. It should create a subdirectory matching the name and version of the library, such as SDL-1.2.11.

SDL_image

The SDL website hosts releases of many different libraries that have been written for use with SDL. One is SDL_image -- a frontend to several libraries to support reading image files (such as JPEG, PNG, etc). As of August 2006, writing images is not supported (which seems stupid, but whatever).

http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/

Similarly, you want to download the package of the form SDL_image-devel-1.X.X-VC6.zip (SDL_image-devel-1.2.5-VC6.zip is the most recent as of August 2006).

Unzip the file you downloaded into your projects directory. It should create a subdirectory matching the name and version of the library, such as SDL_image-1.2.5.

FreeType2

FreeType is a handy library which renders scalable fonts (read "makes them letters look real purty"). It supports reading from TrueType and Type 1 formats, and possibly others.

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/

You want the package of the form ftXXXX.zip (ft221.zip is the most recent as of August 2006).

Unzip the file you downloaded into your projects directory. It should create a subdirectory matching the name and version of the library, such as freetype-2.2.1. FreeType does not come precompiled, so you'll need to open it using MSVC (the solution file is located at freetype-2.2.1/builds/win32/visualc/freetype.sln) and compile a "Release" build. This should produce a file called freetype-2.2.1/objs/freetype221.lib.

If the above link ceases to be, go to http://www.freetype.org and "go ahead, snoop around!"

Subversion Client

As of August 2006, the only way to get the source for XuqRijBuh (there have been no packaged releases of the XuqRijBuh source code) is to get the latest tree from the Subversion repository on SourceForge. In order to do that, you'll need a Subversion client. An excellent one is TortoiseSVN -- actually a plugin to Windows Explorer (so you pointy-clicky types have nothing to fear).

http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

I'm sick of writing specific instructions on what to download. Just look around for downloads. You'll want to download a ".msi" file (which is some sort of installable format) and run it as if it were a regular exe file. It will probably require you to reboot Winders to take effect.

To use TortoiseSVN, just use Windows Explorer normally. It adds menu items to the context menu (the right-click menu).

XuqRijBuh Game Engine Source

In order to get this fine mess working, you'll need the game engine source. In Windows Explorer, navigate to your projects directory and right click on it. The context menu should appear, with the fresh new TortoiseSVN options. Click on "SVN Checkout". A dialog box will appear with places to enter URLs and such. Enter https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xuqrijbuh for the repository URL and ensure that the checkout directory is your projects directory. Click OK and it will chug for a while, download the full latest source tree. This will create a directory under your projects directory called xuqrijbuh which contains the game engine source.

There are three subdirectories of xuqrijbuh:

The game engine solution file is under the trunk directory and is predictably called xuqrijbuh.sln.

For general information on XuqRijBuh, go to the SourceForge homepage:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xuqrijbuh/

XuqRijBuh Resources

All the example applications (described in Which Projects Do What And Running Them) require file assets in order to function (e.g. fonts, textures, etc). As of August 2006, these are provided in a zip file:

http://www.thedods.com/victor/resources.zip

Download this and unzip it into the xuqrijbuh/trunk directory.

Environment Variables

In order to avoid having to edit the game engine project files (every single one) to each point to the correct include and library paths for each supplementary library, some environment variables must be defined.

Go to the desktop and right-click on the icon with the patronizing title of "My Computer". Select the "Advanced" tab, and then click on the "Environment Variables" button. An inappropriately small dialog will appear where you can add and edit environment variables. Assuming your projects directory is C:/projects, Add the following user variables (accounting for differences in library versions):

Hit OK and get out of that 'hole of a menu, and you're ready to compile the game engine!

Which Projects Do What And Running Them

The XuqRijBuh solution file contains several projects. As of August 2006, they are:

If you ever run an app, and it fails inexplicably, it's probably because you're a douche bag. Either that or you're missing the resources directory (though I mean to make this slightly more obvious in the future). See XuqRijBuh Resources.

In addition to requiring the resources directory, you'll need to copy several DLL files into the xuqrijbuh/trunk directory. These are (again, replacing library version numbers):

You can optionally put these files in your executable path, but then you might forget to package them up when making a release of your application.

Each project has a "Debug" and a "Release" configuration. Their object files are built in separate directories, so one can switch between configurations without clobbering files that would otherwise have to be recompiled. Each application is configured to produce its executables in the xuqrijbuh/trunk directory. Furthermore, the Debug configuration for each will produce an executable which ends in _debug.exe -- thus allowing the Debug and Release executables to peacefully coexist in the same directory.

Before you can run the applications (at least from the MSVC IDE), you must edit each of the applications' project properties (not that of libxrb though). Pick All Configurations and then go to Configuration Properties > Debugging and change "Working Directory" to . This should correctly place the working directory where the executables, DLL files and resource directory are.

Creating Releases Of Your Application

It is advisable to copy one of the example application project files when you begin the project for your own application. This is so you use known-working configuration options (e.g. linking the C library dynamically, and using the correct release/debug version, etc.). This also makes a difference what files you must distribute.

In theory, you could compile all libraries and the game engine statically, and only have to distribute the executable along with any file assets you may require. This sounds nice in principle, but it requires downloading the full sources to all aforementioned libraries (plus a few that SDL_image relies on such as libpng), installing any other necessary supplementary development files (such as DirectX headers, needed for a full compilation of SDL in Winderps) and compiling them all as static libraries (something that SDL and SDL_image do not currently support, so it would require some project file hacking). Your application's project file would then require modifications to statically link the recompiled libraries. It is certainly possible, but explaining how to do so is out of the scope of this document.

Anyway, assuming you followed the example applications' configurations, you'll need to package the following files in your release:

Hosted by SourceForge.net Logo -- Generated on Fri Aug 21 21:46:38 2009 for XuqRijBuh by doxygen 1.5.8