Hello,
I've built Orx 1.4 (and the tutorials) from sources using Visual Studio 2010 Express. The compilation went fine, everything built fast and there was not even a single warning.
But for some reason, the engine doesn't work. The plugin sample that comes with the source package (Bounce) starts up, but after the console window comes up, it crashes.
The tutorials are starting up, they show the console window with the instructions, but apart from this, they do nothing, there's no render window.
These things happen regardless of the build type (I've built and tried everything, static/dynamic, debug/release, and profiler).
My machine has an AMD Phenom II CPU, an ATI Radeon HD4200 GPU, and runs Windows 7 64-bit. The prebuilt tutorials from SourceForge work fine. What should I do now?
Comments
Did you build the embedded versions of orx or the regular ones?
Only the embedded will work correctly at the moment as GLFW used for most plugins can't work with hotloaded plugins, due to its current architecture.
The non-embedded version of orx is currently only used when one doesn't need either inputs nor display window (like the orxFontGen and orxCrypt tools).
If you are already compiling the embedded version, are you compiling in 32bit or 64bit?
The external dependencies on windows are only currently compiled in 32bit (whereas linux and mac os x also have 64bit versions ready). This is because I do not have access to a 64bit compiler on windows at the moment.
Lastly, if all above fails, can you attach the debug log file that is created when you start the debug version of orx/bounce to your post?
I also recommend using the latest version of orx from the mercurial repository. Even if 1.4 is fairly recent, the new module orxResource has been added since. Here's a quick tutorial I'm writing about it: https://bitbucket.org/iarwain/resource
For some reason, I thought the embedded version means that it uses OpenGL ES, so I indeed built the non-enbedded version. Now I built the embedded version, and everything works fine so far!
I've read about the new resource loader yesterday, and I'll definitely try it, but unfortunately, I don't have much time right now.
This engine seems quite lovely, by the way. It's especially valuable since as far as I know, this is the only complete 2D engine that was designed to be used from C/C++, and doesn't want force me to write my whole game in a high-level scripting language (don't get me wrong, scripting some parts is a great and helpful thing, but writing the entire game logic in a scripting language is just not a good thing, in my opinion).
Now one last question (since I don't want to spam the forum with a new topic for each one, and it's semi-related anyway): is there a reason why the precompiled external libraries (especially Box2D) are quite old? Can I just replace them with their recent versions, or are they customized in some way?
Feel free to flood the forum with questions
There can be topical scripting now using timelines and commands, but it's definitely not meant to fully script a whole game.
As jim pointed out, the config system is one of the central parts of orx and turned out to be an invaluable asset.
Some other systems, such as the localization one, are as supple as they are thanks to it.
Unfortunately, even if I'm not the only developer on orx (for example the whole Android version has been written and maintained by lydesik with some help from faistoiplaisir), I'm still the only one developing most of the core features. Thus I'm the bottleneck when it comes to upgrading external dependencies.
As jim mentioned, some of the external dependencies have been customized for orx. Box2D is one of them.
I want to upgrade to a newer version of Box2D in the coming weeks, but I can't commit to any deadline, sorry.
I also know that lydesik is working on a Bullet-based plugins, but I don't think he had much time to progress on it lately.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate, there'll always be someone around to answer them in a reasonably short delay.