GAME PROGRAMMING RESOURCES

<< BACK

USING 3IMPACT AS A DLL
VISUAL C++.NET 2005 Express STEP-BY-STEP

  • Register 3Impact game engine, download the distribution file and install it.

  • Follow these instructions to setup your installation of Visual C++ 2005 Express to be able to use the platform SDK (only need to do this part once on a machine)

  • Run Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express and select File -> New -> Project .

  • Select Win32 project type, then select the Win32 Console Application template and name the new project 3ImpactApp.



  • Make sure the Location is the folder named 3impact5. This is the main folder for the engine and it is typically installed inside the C:\Program Files folder. Click OK to continue.

  • On the next screen, select Application Setting on the left hand side and change Application Type to Windows Application then click the Finish button. 



  • Close Visual C++ and browse your hard disk to the
    C:\Program Files\3impact5\3Impact_as_a_DLL\VCPP
    folder. Select all the files in the folder and copy (Ctrl+C) them.



  • Browse to your newly created project folder
    C:\Program Files\3impact5\3ImpactApp\3ImpactApp
    and paste (Ctrl+V) the files there. Confirm that you want to overwrite the existing 3ImpactApp.cpp file.



    Run Visual C++ again, open the newly create 3ImpactApp workspace.
  • Right-click the yellow Source Files folder, select Add -> Add Existing Items.





    and then double-click the 3ImpactCode.cpp file.



  • Then right-click the yellow Header Files folder, select Add ->Add  Existing Items...



    and then double-click the dll3Impact.h file.



  • Select Project -> Properties... Set Configuration in the top left corner to Debug then under Configuration Properties select General and set Character Set to Use Multi-Byte Character Set



  • Select Debugging and type C:\PROGRAM FILES\3impact5\3ImpactWork\3ImpactApp.exe
    as Command and
    C:\PROGRAM FILES\3impact5\3ImpactWork\
    as working directory.



  • Select  Linker -> General and type
    C:\PROGRAM FILES\3impact5\3ImpactWork\3ImpactApp.exe
    as output file.


  • Select Linker -> Command Line and type  dll3impactd.lib in the Addition Options list.



  • Then switch to Release settings (see top/left of dialog box) and set executable for debug session, working directory and output file name to the same paths used for the Debug settings, but make sure you add the re-distributable dll3impact.lib library version to the  Additonal Options  list, and not the dll3impactd.lib, which is intended for developing purposes only and cannot be re-distributed.

  • The project is now ready to be compiled.

  • The 3ImpactApp.cpp file is an example implementing the main program loop. See the comments in the code for details.

  • The 3ImpactCode.cpp is the actual game. See the comments in the code for details.

    COMPILING CODE EXAMPLES
    WITH THE DLL VERSION
    OF 3IMPACT GAME ENGINE

  • A number of demos is available as commented source code in the
    C:\Program Files\3impact5\3ImpactDLL
    folder.

  • For each example, the code in the 3ImpactDLL.cpp can be used in place of the 3ImpactCode.cpp in the 3ImpactApp project created as described above.

  • So, simply copy the entire .cpp code of each example to the 3ImpactCode.cpp (replacing all existing code), remove all the #include lines at the top of the code and replace them with the following:

    #include "stdafx.h"
    #define _3IMPACT_EXTERN
    #define WIN32DLL_API __declspec(dllimport)
    #define CALLMODE_API
    #include "dll3impact.h"

  • Compile and run.