This is a guide to get you started on coding for The Powder Toy. If you have any questions, just ask in the Development assistance section on The Powder Toy forums. If you want to use the old tpt compiling tutorial, not the tpt++ one, find it here

It would help if you have programmed before, but it is fine if you never have.

This takes a while to setup, so be patient and follow the instructions CAREFULLY. If you get any errors, 90% of the time that means you missed a step or did something incorrectly.

Its not recommended to begin coding elements until you are able to compile a clean source.

Good luck!

Get the Source

• Go to http://github.com/FacialTurd/The-Powder-Toy/
• There should be a button that says "zip" with a cloud on it. This is a direct link to a .zip of the source. Download it and extract it to a location you will compile it from.

Visual Studio (Windows)

• Download Visual C++ 2010 Express for windows desktop because of it's great debugging and auto-code tools. It is completely free, if it asks for a license see the next list item.

Note however that you probably can not use VS C++ 2012 Express, because it lacks the "Project from Existing Code" option we need. VS C++ 2012 Ultimate however will work.

• Open Visual Studio. You should register it (you don't have to pay anything; it's free) if you plan on using it for more than 30 days. You need a Microsoft account to do this
• If you wish, (this should already be on by default), turn on line numbers by going to Tools > Options > Text Editor > C/C++, and turn on "Line numbers" in the Display subsection.

• Download this: Required Libraries, and extract it right into your source code folder.

• You now need python installed to run generator.py. Get python here, download version 2.7.4, probably this one. After you have it installed, just double click the generator.py and it should show a console window for a second and then close. This means it worked. You need to run generator.py again every time a new element is added, if you get an error relating to an element after updating the source try running it.

• Delete the tptlibrary folder, it just causes errors and isn't used. If you forgot this step, you will have to remove file.c from the solution later, because it causes compiling errors, it wasn't meant to be compiled.

• Open Visual Studio and press Press File > New > New Project from Existing Code.

• Choose the folder that contains the source code, not src/, but the folder that contains src/, build/, includes/, and a few others. Name the project whatever you want. Click Next

• Choose Windows application project if it isn't selected already and leave everything unchecked. Click Next.

• Under Preprocessor definitions, type "WIN, X86, X86_SSE2, USE_SDL, STABLE, GRAVFFT, LUACONSOLE, IGNORE_UPDATES" without the quotes.

• Click Finish. The project will be created

• Under Build > Configuration Manager, open the drop-down box under "Active Solution Configuration:" and change it to "Release". (unless you have a good reason to keep it as Debug, which runs slower than Release). Compiling with DEBUG is sometimes glitchy in tpt++, and may cause crashes.

• Go to Project > (Name of your project) Properties.

• On the very top, where it says Configuration: Active(Release), open the dropdown and change it to All Configurations. This will make it easier if you want to switch to debug mode. If you don't ever want to, this step is optional

• Under Configuration Properties > General:
• Change Output Directory from

$(SolutionDir)$(Configuration)\

to

$(SolutionDir)Build\

(notice that there is no backslash between "$(SolutionDir)" and "Build\").

• Change Target Name to whatever name you want the compiled file to have, minus the ".exe" extension. (or just leave it be to have the file named as the project name)

• Under Configuration Properties > VC++ Directories:
• Open the drop down menu for Include Directories (if you don't see the arrow that opens the drop-down menu, try clicking on the line), click "<Edit...>", and add

$(ProjectDir)includes
$(ProjectDir)includes/SDL
$(ProjectDir)includes/lua5.1
$(ProjectDir)data
$(ProjectDir)src
$(ProjectDir)generated

(type that exactly -- also note that there is no backslash between "$(ProjectDir)" and "Includes", and that they are all on separate lines)

• Open the drop down menu for Library Directories, click "<Edit...>", and add

$(ProjectDir)Libraries

(note that there is no backslash between "$(ProjectDir)" and "Libraries")

• Go to Configuration Properties > C/C++.

• Under "General", open the drop-down menu for "Warning Level" and choose the option to turn off all warnings. (This will make it easier if you get any errors during compiling, as you won't have to dig through a bunch of unimportant warnings to get to the errors.)

• Under "Code Generation", open up the drop-down menu for "Floating Point Model" and set it to Fast. (this will get you a noticeable speed improvement). Also, right above it, change "Enable Enhanced Instruction Set" to SSE2.

• Go to Configuration Properties > Linker > Input.

• Open the drop down menu for "Additional Dependencies," click "<Edit...>", and enter the following text

shell32.lib
ws2_32.lib
SDL.lib
SDLmain.lib
libbz2.lib
pthreadVC2.lib
lua5.1.lib
libfftw3f-3.lib
regex.lib
zlib.lib

• Press OK until you close the project properties.

• Hit the F7 key on your keyboard, or click Build > Build Solution. You can also click the green "Start Debugging" arrow.
• If something goes wrong (i.e. you get an error of some sort), ask on The Powder Toy forums.
• One common error people seem to get with Visual Studio 2010 while having .NET 4.5 installed is the error "1>LINK : fatal error LNK1123: failure during conversion to COFF: file invalid or corrupt". If you get this, either uninstall .NET 4.5 and get 4.0 instead, or download Visual Studio 2012 and use that instead. This is not a problem with tpt.

• The resulting executable and its required DLLs can be found in the "Build" folder in your source code directory.

Optional: Statically Compile tpt:

When statically compiling tpt, you do not need to have the dlls to run it. The official tpt does it this way. It takes longer to compile though, so you might only want to do this for release versions.

NOTE: you actually will need to include msvcr100.dll with the exe for people without visual studio / the visual studio libraries. It is in the /build folder

• Under Build > Configuration Manager, go under Active Solution Configuration and hit new. Name it Static (or whatever you want to call it), and select to Copy the settings from Release.

• Under Configuration Properties > VC++ Directories, open the drop down menu for Library Directories, click "<Edit...>", and change it from $(ProjectDir)Libraries to:

$(ProjectDir)Staticlibs

• Go to Configuration Properties > Linker > Input, open the drop down menu for "Additional Dependencies," and click "<Edit...>", and add these to the list:

winmm.lib
dxguid.lib

• Go to Configuration Properties > C/C++. Under Preprocessor, open the drop down menu for Preprocessor definitions, click "<Edit...>", and add this to the list:

PTW32_STATIC_LIB
REGEX_STATIC

You will now be able to easily change between compiling in "Release" mode, for quick, normal testing, and "Static" mode, for when you want to release an exe for people to use.

Optional: Set Up Git

If you use github, you can easily keep up to date with the current changes. This way, your mod won't be out of date, and you won't have to copy everything over just to update to a newer version. You can find the tutorial with this link.

Done