How to Get Started with the PopCap Game Development Framework

If your ready to try your hand at making a video game for the PC and make your fortune in the Casual Games market, the PopCap Games Framework is a great place to start.

It's a proven, mature and well tested framework which you can base your new game on. Getting your development environment set up is the first step.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Visual Studio C++ Express, 2003 or 2005
• PopCaps game development framework
• DirectX SDK
• An idea for a game

1. Download and extract PopCap's game development framework from http://developer.popcap.com

2. 

   Create a new empty Win32 project

3. 

   Add the PopCap Framework project to your solution.
   
   Do this by going to File -> Add... -> Existing Project...
   
   Navigate to your PopCap Framework directory and load the project under: source/sexyappframework/SexyAppBase.vcproj

4. 

   Add dependency libraries: winmm.lib and wsock32.lib
   
   - Right-click your project and select Properties.
   - Change the Configuration to "All Configurations"
   - Under Linker -> Input -> Additional Dependencies add:
   winmm.lib wsock32.lib
   - Don't close the dialog. You'll use it in the next step.

5. 

   Add the PopCap's SexyAppFramework source directory to your include path.
   
   - Under C++ -> General -> Additional Include Directories add the path to your PopCap Framework source directory.

6. 

   Add the DirectX include and lib directories to your development environment. The framework needs to be able to find this.
   
   - Select Tools -> Options...
   - Go to Projects and Solutions -> VC++ Directories
   - Add the path to your DirectX include directory in the Include files section
   - Add the path to your DirectX lib directory in the

7. 

   And now some code. Add a Main.cpp file to your project. Include the SexyAppBase.h header and create a standard WinMain function. Everything should build. Your ready to start coding!

Tips & Warnings

• Be sure to look over the demo projects the PopCap has included with the framework. They are well commented and should get you going with how the framework is used.
• If you get linker errors that mention LIBCMTD.lib then in your project properties dialog, go to C/C++ -> Code Generation and change the Runtime Library to Multi-threaded Debug from Multi-threaded Debug DLL
• Be sure your executable can find Bass.dll (included from PopCap). Put it in the same directory as your executable or in your Windows directory.

[Tricky]

on 11/22/2006 @mutantemc - I checked out your screenshot. The Visual Studio linker cannot find SexyAppFramework.lib to link it into your executable.

You can either 1) Add the SexyAppFramework project to your solution. (check out Step 3) or 2) Add the path to the location of SexyAppFramework.lib to your project's Linker -> General -> Additional Library Directories path.

[mutantemc]

on 11/14/2006 Thanks Chris for the article, I follow all your steps but when I run the project I get many of this:
[b]error LNK2019: unresolved external symbol[/b]

To solve it:
* Right click on the solution -> Property -> Common Properties -> Project Dependencies.
* On the project combobox I choose the project with errors.
* I select the checkbok of "SexyAppBase"

Screenshot:
http://www.webdriver.com.ar/shared/popcap/VSNET.JPG

Mike

[tommyboy2k]

on 9/29/2006 This is a great overview. PopCap makes some of the best casual games out there so leveraging their framework and years of game development expereince seems like a great starting point.