Compiling ScummVM/Visual Studio

Compiling ScummVM with Visual Studio 2003/2005 under Windows

Compiling ScummVM under Windows is not an awfully hard task, however there are some things that don't just work out of the box

Things needed

Visual Studio 2005

There exist several versions of Visual Studio 2005. A feature comparison can be found here

You can obtain the free Express version of VS2005 here

Precompiled libraries

To ease the whole process, a package of all the needed precompiled libraries has been created. All you need to do is:

Download the precompiled libraries
Unzip the archive maintaining directory structure
Run install.bat (Visual Studio 2005 only)
You don't need to add the libraries to Visual Studio, as the installer automatically copies the necessary files in the appropriate directories of Visual Studio. Please note that this installer has only been tested with Visual Studio 2005. If you get errors with earlier versions of Visual Studio, simply copy the directories bin, lib and include inside the directory where Visual C++ is installed. If you're not sure how to do that, check the section "Adding all libraries to Visual Studio" further on
Skip to step "Ready to compile ScummVM"

Libraries needed

SDL 1.2.

You need the file SDL-devel-1.2.11-VC6.zip (1.2.11 is the latest version at this time)

NASM

libogg and libvorbis for OGG support

Note that the libraries included in the "vorbis" package won't work. You need libogg and libvorbis, not vorbis

libmad for MP3 support

libmpeg2 for MPEG-2 support

Get the latest mpeg2dec release from this page, libmpeg2 is included there

zlib. You need the latest zlib compiled DLL

If you wish to compile zlib statically in ScummVM (so that zlib1.dll is not needed), you'll also need the zlib source code. If you wish to compile ScummVM 0.8.0 or earlier with zlib support, you'll need the zlib source as well as crtdll.lib.

Building the libraries

Now, we need to compile the required libraries.

Note that you'll need to build all libraries with the same configuration settings (debug or release). If you don't need a specific library, you can remove it from your build by going to Project->Properties, Configuration Properties->C/C++->Preprocessor and remove the "USE_XXX" directive for that library from there. For example, to remove OGG support, remove the USE_VORBIS directive

A note about VS2005

If you're building the libraries with VS2005, you will get a lot of deprecation warnings. These are normal and nothing to worry about, they're just Microsoft's way of saying "This is a bad code practice. Use this instead". It's not easy to turn these off without several modifications to the code, so just ignore them.

NASM

First of all, we need nasm. So unzip the nasm archive in a directory, copy "nasmw.exe" to "nasm.exe" (because some projects call one and others call the other) and include it in the executable path of VS. To do this, go to Tools->Options->Projects and solutions->VC++ directories. Select "Executable files" from the top right and include the directory where you unzipped nasm into.

SDL

SDL is already compiled and needs no further changes, so we can skip the compilation step for it

zlib

zlib is already compiled, so we can skip the compilation step for it

If you wish to compile zlib statically into ScummVM (and thus, remove the zlib1.dll dependency), you'll also need the zlib source. Go into the projects directory in the zlib source and open the solution there. For each of the 3 projects in the solution (example, minigzip and zlib) you need to right-click it in the solution explorer and go to properties. Then, go to Configuration Properties->C/C++->Code Generation and change the Runtime library from "Multi-Threaded DLL (/MD)" to "Multi-Threaded (/MT)", otherwise you'll get a lot of unresolved externals when you try to build ScummVM and the compilation will fail. When you've changed all three projects, compile the solution using the LIB release configuration. Then, open the ScummVM solution and go to Project->Properties, Linker->Input and change the "zldll.lib" directive to "zlib.lib".

For ScummVM 0.8.0 or earlier, you'll also need zlibwapi. Go in the contrib\vstudio\vs8 directory (or vs7 if you're using VS2003), unzip crtdll.lib from the zip you downloaded earlier in the directory and compile zlibvc. This is a required library up to the stable 0.8.0 release, but it's not required anymore in the latest CVS version

libogg

Compile this first, as many other libraries need it. Go to the win32 directory and build the ogg solution in there. DON'T compile the solution in the VS2003 directory, as this produces "libogg.lib" instead of "ogg.lib". A simple rename might work, though

libvorbis

Before compiling this, include the libogg include and library paths in VS. To do this, go to Tools->Options->Projects and solutions->VC++ directories and include the include directory of libogg as well as the directory with the compiled ogg library

mpeg2dec

Open the solution and compile project "libmpeg2". After you compile it, go to its include directory, create a folder "mpeg2dec" in there and copy all files from the include folder in this subfolder. You will end up with 2 directories, "include" and "include\mpeg2dec" with the same files. This is needed, as ScummVM includes files from the "mpeg2dec" directory

libmad

Open and compile the "libmad" solution

FLAC

Not a necessary library, so you may skip this one. If you do wish to include it, open its solution and compile the libFLAC_static project.

Adding all libraries to Visual Studio

There are two ways of adding the libraries to Visual Studio. You can either copy all the header and library files inside the appropriate directories of Visual C++ or tell Visual C++ where to look for them.

First method: Copy the files inside VC++'s folders

The first method of adding the required libraries is to go to each individual compiled library and copy the header and library files.

You'll need the following:

Libraries

 libFLAC_static.lib - static build of libFLAC (from folder obj\release\lib where you unzipped libFLAC)
 libmad.lib - static build of libMAD (from folder msvc++\Release where you unzipped libmad)
 libmpeg2.lib - static build of libMPEG2 (from folder vc++\Release where you unzipped mpeg2dec)
 ogg_static.lib - static build of libOGG (from folder win32\Static_Release where you unzipped libogg)
 sdl.lib - static build of SDL (from folder lib where you unzipped SDL)
 vorbisfile_static.lib - static build of vorbisfile (from folder win32\VorbisFile_Static_Release where you unzipped libvorbis)
 vorbis_static.lib - static build of libvorbis (from folder win32\Vorbis_Static_Release where you unzipped libvorbis)
 zlib.lib - static build of zlib (from folder projects\visualc6\Win32_LIB_Release where you unzipped zlib)

Copy those inside VC's lib folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\lib)

Header files

 [TODO]

Copy those inside VC's include folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\include)

Executable files

 nasmw.exe - from the NASM zip

Copy this as nasmw.exe AND as nasm.exe inside VC's bin folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin)

Second method: Tell VC++ where to look

The second method is to tell VC++ where to look for the required libraries and header files

Go to Tools->Options->Projects and solutions->VC++ directories.

In the executable files section, make sure that the path to nasm is included and that nasmw.exe in that folder has been copied to nasm.exe. Failure to do that will give you an error in VS (a custom building step has returned an error)

In the include files section, make sure that the include folders for libogg, libvorbis, libmad, zlib, mpeg2dec and SDL are in the list. If you need FLAC, include the FLAC include folder in the list too

In the library files section, make sure that the static libraries for vorbis, vorbisfile, libogg, zlib, mpeg2dec, libmad and SDL are included. If you're building 0.8.0 final or earlier, include the release folder of zlibdll too (in the zlib source folder, contrib\vstudio\vc8\x86\zlibdllrelease). If you need FLAC, include the FLAC libraries folder too

Finally, if you need to compile ScummVM with FLAC support, go to Configuration Properties->C/C++->Preprocessor and add "USE_FLAC" in the Preprocessor Definitions field. Also, go to linker->input and add "libflac_static.lib" in the Additional Dependencies field.

Enabling the console

Since information on doing this is not that easy to find, here's how to enable the console in the resulting ScummVM executable. The default project subsystem is "Windows" instead of "Console", which means that the console will not be shown.

To show the console, right-click on the "scummvm" project and go to Properties. There, go to Configuration Properties->Linker->System and change the "Subsystem" property from "Windows (/SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS)" to "Console (/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE)". Then, go to Linker->Advanced and set the entry point to be "WinMainCRTStartup" (special thanks to Jubanka/knakos for his tip on entrypoint).

Ready to compile ScummVM

If you got all the libraries compiled, you're ready to compile the latest version of ScummVM!

Open the solution file in dists\vc8 (or vc7 if you're using VS2003), select the "Release" configuration from the configuration manager pulldown menu and then go to Build->Build solution, or just press Control-F7 to compile it.

The ScummVM executable should be in the folder dists\msvc8\scummvm_Release as "scummvm.exe".

If you haven't compiled zlib statically into ScummVM and have included zlib support, you'll need to copy "zlib1.dll" in the same directory as scummvm.exe as well. You won't be needing sdl.dll, as the SDL library has been statically built into the executable.