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Creating a New Visual Studio Project to Use the DGL

These instructions will cover creating a Visual Studio 2022 project using C and setting it up to use the DGL files. It uses the DGL folder with the header and library files, which can be found on the Releases page.

This is, of course, not the only way to organize a project: if you want to organize your files in a different way, simply change the relevant settings that are listing specific files and folders.

Contents:

Creating the Visual Studio Project

  1. Open Visual Studio 2022, and in the launcher screen select the Create a new project option.

  2. Scroll down until you find the Windows Desktop Application option, select it, and then click the "Next" button. This will create the project with some settings that are needed for a desktop application.

  3. Change the project name to whatever you want, and choose the location where you want to save the project.

    • A folder will be created for the project, with the project name, so you don't need to create a new folder for it.
    • Keep the Place solution and project in the same directory option un-checked. This will create a sub-folder for the project files, which we want to do.
    • Click on the Create button to create the new project.

  4. When you look at the folder that was created for your project, you should see a .sln file with the name of the project, and a folder with the same name.

    Inside the sub-folder you should see a list of files like this (with your project name instead of "Awesome Game").

  5. Put the DGL folder into the base folder of your project. This will make the library files accessible to your project, while keeping them contained in their own folder.

Changing the Project Settings

Now that we have our project, we need to change some settings.

  1. Double-click on the .sln file to open the solution, then right-click on the project name to open the project property settings.

  2. Make sure that the "Configuration" setting is set to "All Configurations" and the "Platform" setting is set to "All Platforms".

Include Directory

  1. The first thing we will do is add the directories needed to find the DGL files. We'll start with the directory to look in for includes.

    • Click on the VC++ Directories section.
    • For the Include Directories option, click on the drop-down arrow on the right end of the field, and open the edit window.
    • Use the New Line button or double-click on the text field to add a new entry.
    • Enter the following text: $(SolutionDir)DGL\inc. Press Enter to save the text after you type it.
      • You can see what this macro expands to in the Evaluated value section just below the text window.
    • This tells the project to look for include files in the DGL\inc folder inside the same directory as the solution file. This is where the DGL.h file is stored.
    • Make sure that the box at the bottom of the edit window labeled Inherit from parent or project defaults is checked.
    • Click on OK to save the text and return to the properties window.
    • When you look at the Include Directories setting in the properties window it should now say $(SolutionDir)DGL\inc;$(IncludePath).

Library Directory

  1. Next we need to set the directory to look in for library files.

    • Edit the Library Directories option and add the following text: $(SolutionDir)DGL\lib\$(Platform)
    • Again, make sure that the box at the bottom of the edit window labeled Inherit from parent or project defaults is checked.
    • This tells the project to look for library files in the DGL\lib\x64 or DGL\lib\Win32 folder in the same directory as the solution file, depending on which platform is being built.
    • When you look at the Library Directories setting in the properties window it should now say $(SolutionDir)DGL\lib\$(Platform);$(LibraryPath).

Linker Input

  1. Expand the Linker list and click on the Input section.

    • Click on the drop-down arrow in the Additional Dependencies option to open the edit window.
    • Enter DGL_d.lib. This tells the project that, when building in Debug mode, it will need the DGL_d.lib file. It will look for this file in the directory that we set up previously.
    • Make sure that the box at the bottom of the edit window labeled Inherit from parent or project defaults is checked.
    • Click on the OK button to go back to the properties window, then click on the Apply button to save the changes.
    • The Additional Dependencies option should now show DGL_d.lib;%(AdditionalDependencies).

  2. Change the Configuration setting to Release, then edit the Additional Dependencies field again.

    • This time enter DGL.lib. This is the Release version of the library file.
    • Again, make sure that the box at the bottom of the edit window labeled Inherit from parent or project defaults is checked.
    • Click on the OK button to go back to the properties window, then click on the Apply button to save the changes.
    • The Additional Dependencies option should now show DGL.lib;%(AdditionalDependencies).

Post-Build Events

  1. Change the Configuration setting back to Debug. Expand the Build Events list and click on the Post-Build Event section.

    • Edit the Command Line field and enter the following text: xcopy "$(SolutionDir)DGL\lib\$(Platform)\DGL_d.dll" "$(OutDir)" /s /r /y /q
    • This will copy the DGL_d.dll file from the DGL/lib/x64 or DGL/lib/Win32 folder in the solution directory into the output directory of the project when building in Debug mode.
    • You will probably also want to add a line here to automatically copy your assets into the Debug or Release folder also. If you have an Assets folder in the same folder as your game project (where the .vcxproj file is), you would use this: xcopy "$(ProjectDir)Assets\*" "$(OutDir)Assets\" /s /r /y /q
      • Putting the assets in the same folder as the game project lets the relative path work when you run your program from inside Visual Studio. Copying the assets into the output directory is useful for when you want to run the executable directly.
    • Click on the Apply button to save the setting.

  2. Change the Configuration setting back to Release and edit the Command Line field again.

    • Enter the following text: xcopy "$(SolutionDir)DGL\lib\$(Platform)\DGL.dll" "$(OutDir)" /s /r /y /q
    • This will copy the DGL.dll file when building in Release mode.
    • Click on the Apply button to save the setting.

Character Set

  1. Change the Configuration setting to All Configurations and click on the Advanced section. Change the Character Set setting to Use Multi-Byte Character Set.

Warnings as Errors

  1. Click on the C/C++ list, and change Treat Warnings as Errors to Yes.

  2. Click on the OK button to save and close the property settings window.

Changing the Default Files

Visual Studio creates some files for us by default, and we need to edit some of them.

  1. When you expand the Source Files filter in the Solution Explorer you should see a .cpp file with the name of your project.

  2. We need to rename this file. Right-click on the file, choose the Rename option, and rename the file to main.c. (If you were creating a C++ project, you would not need to change the extension.)

  3. Visual Studio also creates a header for this file, but we won't need it. Expand the Header Files filter, right-click on the .h file with the project name, and choose the Remove option. Click on the Delete button on the pop-up window to delete the file from the folder.

  4. We also should remove the framework.h file, since we don't need that one either.

    • Follow the same process to remove framework.h from the project.
    • Your file structure should now look like this:

  5. Open the main.c file. We will be deleting most of the text in the file.

    • Keep the WinMain function, but remove all the code from it.

    • Keep the WndProc function, but remove everything except the return statement from the switch statement.

    • Remove the existing include statements, and add includes for Resource.h and DGL.h.

    • Remove all other code from the file.

    • It's helpful to move the callback function up above main before we initialize DGL. If you do that, you should end up with a file that looks like this:

      #include "Resource.h"
#include "DGL.h"

LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc(HWND hWnd, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)
{
    return DefWindowProc(hWnd, message, wParam, lParam);
}

int APIENTRY wWinMain(_In_ HINSTANCE hInstance,
                    _In_opt_ HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                    _In_ LPWSTR    lpCmdLine,
                    _In_ int       nCmdShow)
{
    // This prevents warnings about unused parameters
    hInstance;
    hPrevInstance;
    lpCmdLine;
    nCmdShow;
}

Check that your project compiles. If it does, you're ready to move on to working with the DGL.