Working with a T3D Project

Before we move on and load a T3D project, you should familiarize yourself with the layout of the source code folders by taking the T3D Engine SDK Tour. When you are ready return here to continue.

When a new project is created it generates Visual Studio solution files (*.sln) for both VC++ 2005 and 2008. Solution files tell Visual Studio what files are in a project and how to build it so that it can be run. Solution files can be found in a folder similar to:

Torque 3D\My Projects\Project\buildFiles\VisualStudio 2008

Where <Project> is the name of the project that was created.

To create a new project, open the T3D Toolbox utility from your main Windows menu. You may also double click the icon that was created on your desktop when it was installed. After the utility open select New Project.

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Enter a name for your project T3D_Tutorial_Project then press the Create button.

The toolbox utility will now create a new project for you.

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When completed press the OK button, also click the Finish button on the Creation window.

Your new Project

Open your T3D folder and look for the My Projects folder. This is where your newly created project will have been created.

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The Source code

One of the strengths of Torque 3D is that the source code for the entire engine is included with your license. For programmers or projects that are outside of the traditional box, this is an important feature. The rest of this article will walk you through creating Torque projects with Visual C++ Express.

We can open the source code via two methods -- one directly via Visual C++ Express and the other with the T3D Toolbox utility. First we will look at the traditional approach.

Method 1: Traditional Open Visual C++ if it is not already open, and then from the menu select File>Open>Project/Solution.

Navigate to the location where your new project has been created, and then move down into the folder appropriate for your version of Visual C++. If you kept the defaults, they should be either:

Torque 3D\My Projects\<Project>\buildFiles\VisualStudio 2005

or

Torque 3D\My Projects\<Project>\buildFiles\VisualStudio 2008

Then open the file in that folder with the .sln file extension:

<Project>.sln

Where <Project> is the name of the project you are opening.

Torque 3D Pro 1.1\My Projects\T3D_Tutorial_Project\buildFiles\VisualStudio 2008\T3D_Tutorial_Project.sln

Method 2: The Quickest

NOTE: This method will not yet work with Visual Studio C++ 2010.

Open the Torque 3D Toolbox utility if it is not already open. From its main window with the Project tab selected, select your new project from the list, and then press the C++ Edit Source button.

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The Visual Studio Version dialog will appear. Select the version of Visual Studio that you are using from the drop down list. In this example we will use 2008.

Click OK and Visual Studio 2008 should open displaying your new project. You can press OK on the following window, if it is still open.

The Project

Your project should now be open inside Visual Studio 2008 and should look something like the following:

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Look through the project folders in the tree. Look for the folder with the same name as your project but with "DLL" on the end. In the sample screen below, that would be the folder named: T3D_Tutorial_Project DLL.

This folder contains the game-related C++ files that will directly make the game function. The other projects in the solution are required by a Torque game project and are already setup to properly link to it. You do not need to work with these files in order to create a game, except in very advanced development. This information is beyond the scope of this document.

Your First Compile

There is one last thing we must do before we can start a compile.

IMPORTANT : If you are using VS C++ Express (2005, 2008, or 2010), you will not be able to compile the IE T3D plug-in project. If this is not disabled, you will get a compiler error. Everything will compile fine on the full version of Visual Studio. This warning is only for the Express version. If you are running the full version or Visual Studio and not Express, then skip ahead to the next section, The Project Build.

Otherwise continue on to disable the plugin so that you can successfully build your game project.

How to Disable the IE Plugin: Look for the folder with "Plugin" at the end of its name. In this example called: IE T3D_Tutorial_Project Plugin.

Right mouse click on the folder name and from the menu select Unload Project. This will prevent Visual Studio from including this code when the project is compiled.

The folder should now be grayed out.

The Project Build

The process of compiling and linking a project, also known as building the project, creates the executable file for your game from the C++ source code.

To build the project, select either Release or Debug from the Solutions Configuration drop down list on the toolbar.

A Release type build is a much lighter package as it requires none of the extra debugging information included in a debug build. As a general rule, Release builds will run faster. For more information on this subject, please refer to your compilers help documentation.

To build the solution, from the menu select Build>Build Solution or press F7.

This will start compiling the project which may take a few minutes depending on the capabilities of your computer. You can see the progress from the output window on the output tab which we opened earlier.

During compilation if any errors or warnings occur, you can see these from the output windows Error List Tab which we also opened earlier.

When the compiler has completed the build and has done all the linking, the output window should show something similar to the following with no errors or warnings. This is typical of a successful clean build.

If you opted to build for a Release you can try rebuilding the project as a Debug type.

Run your project

Now that the project has been built, you can locate the executable file inside the project folder. Again, if you used the project creation defaults it will be located in:

Torque 3D\My Projects\<Project>\game.exe