prog2/BUILDING.md

Building Motherload

This repository now supports both the original Visual Studio solution files and a CMake-based build.

Supported build paths

1. CMake on Windows

Recommended if you want a modern, editor-friendly build setup.

Requirements:

• Visual Studio 2022 with Desktop development with C++
• CMake 3.21+

The repository already contains the required prebuilt Windows SDL packages in Libraries/. Those bundled packages are intended for MSVC / Visual Studio, not MinGW.

Configure and build:

cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Debug

2. CMake on Linux

Requirements:

• C++ compiler
• CMake 3.21+
• SDL2 development packages
• OpenGL development package

Ubuntu / Debian example:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libgl1-mesa-dev
cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

3. Legacy Visual Studio solution

The existing .sln and .vcxproj files are still in the repo and can still be opened directly in Visual Studio.

CLion with MinGW on Windows

This is a different toolchain from MSVC. The bundled SDL packages in Libraries/ are the Visual C++ SDL package, so they should not be used with MinGW.

Use one of these options instead:

• switch CLion to a Visual Studio toolchain
• or install MinGW-compatible SDL packages and configure CMake with -DMOTHERLOAD_USE_BUNDLED_WINDOWS_SDL=OFF

Build output

The CMake build writes the executable to:

• build/bin/ for single-config generators
• the active configuration output folder for Visual Studio generators

Resource files from Resources/ are copied automatically after a successful build.

Notes about dependencies

Windows

CMake uses the bundled SDL package config files from:

• Libraries/SDLMain/.../cmake
• Libraries/SDLImage/.../cmake
• Libraries/SDLMixer/.../cmake
• Libraries/SDLTtf/.../cmake

These are only used for MSVC builds.

Linux

CMake falls back to pkg-config and expects these packages to be installed:

• sdl2
• SDL2_image
• SDL2_mixer
• SDL2_ttf

Troubleshooting

CMake fails at find_package(OpenGL REQUIRED)

Install the OpenGL development package.

Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt install libgl1-mesa-dev

CMake cannot find SDL packages on Linux

Install the SDL development packages listed above.

CLion / MinGW on Windows fails while linking SDL2main

That usually means the Visual Studio SDL package from Libraries/ is being used with MinGW.

Use one of these fixes:

• use a Visual Studio toolchain in CLion
• or configure CMake with -DMOTHERLOAD_USE_BUNDLED_WINDOWS_SDL=OFF and provide MinGW-compatible SDL libraries

The game starts but cannot find assets

Run the executable from the build output directory, not from the source directory root. The post-build step copies Resources/ next to the executable.

Why are the old MSVC #pragma comment(lib, ...) lines still in the code?

They are still there for the legacy Visual Studio project files, but the CMake build disables them explicitly so dependency management stays inside CMake.