Windows with Visual Studio

A Note

A note a the beginning: Currently, the visual studio project files generated by CMake don't yet work properly. If I can find the time, I shall try to make it work, but it's going to be ugly.
The alternative is to use the manually maintained files by Reto for VS 2005 in the visual_studio folder of your source checkout. This however has a certain disadvantage: The project settings are quite complicated to be set (once you get the hang of it, it's easier than the normal way). It is however not necessary to change these settings to develop orxonox with Visual Studio. So if you want to know more please contact me? first.

Preparations

Bear in mind that we only support Visual Studio 2005 SP1. Once the CMake generators work, it should be possible to use several versions.

DirectX SDK

(The following instructions for DirectX are copied from the OGRE wiki)

Download the latest DirectX 9.0 SDK from ​http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx.

The DirectX SDK install should automatically update the Visual Studio include and library paths with the locations of the DX SDK includes and lib paths. If not, you will need to enter the DirectX include and library directories into MSVC so you can compile against the SDK. It would look something like this:

• Select Tools|Options|Projects|VC++ Directories

Note: Path to the folder must be ON TOP of the list or you will get errors during compilation (Example: error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol _IID_IDirect3DBaseTexture9)

• Under library files, set the appropriate library directory for the SDK. E.g.,

C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2007)\Lib\x86

• Under include files, set the appropriate include directory for the SDK. E.g.,

C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2007)\Include

Getting everything set and done

1. Checkout the HEAD revision of the trunk or of any branch you like. Also checkout the Media repository and put it on the same directory level as your source checkout. More information can be found in the SVN? section.
   
   
2. The next thing is getting the external dependencies. We supply these as precompiled ​archives (take the newest ones) with the lib, dll, debug symbols and include files all at once. Once you got the archive, put it in the directory of your source checkout folder and extract it right there (not in a new folder). This will create a folder named "dependencies" that includes everything necessary.
   
   
3. Run visual_studio/vc8/orxonox_vc8.sln now. When started, you can see all projects of the solution in the left window (otherwise get that window with View, Solution Explorer). Now right click on orxonox and choose Set as StartUp Project.
   
   

You should have a directory structure like this:

media (repository checkout, you choose the name..)
 ...
trunk (repository checkout, you choose the name..)
 bin
 cmake
 dependencies
  boost-1.35.0
  ogre-1.4.9
  ...
 src
  audio
  ...
 visual_studio
  vc8

4. Select Build Solution and the Build menu or simply hit F7 and wait… Default build configuration was Debug. You can also choose Release in the little bar underneath the menu. Release is a lot faster, but debugging isn't recommended at all. Also consider that you need to build everything twice.
   
   
5. F5 or Debug, Start Debugging will start orxonox in the corresponding configuration. Note that all necessary external binary files got copied to bin/orxonox_vc8/(debug|release) so can also start Orxonox without Visual Studio.