Building

The engine can be built in either of these 2 configurations:

• Editor/Host mode (required): Builds the host tools and editor along with the engine run-time. This is the main focus of the engine right now.
• Standalone mode (ignore): Builds only the engine runtime, but requires access to the built host tools. No need to build this at this time.

Currently, the engine compiles and works on both Windows and Linux (Ubuntu). However, Windows is the only primary focus of the enigne.

Although, the engine can be compiled on macOS too, it is unusable with lots of issues.

Prerequisites

The following is required to be installed to your computer along with environment variables set up.

• Git for windows: This is required for using the bash shell that comes with it. Make sure the folder containing sh.exe C:\Program Files\Git\bin is added to the PATH environment variables.
• Vulkan SDK: Recommended version is 1.4.309. And you need to install the debug shader libraries too. Older versions won't work because they come with old DxCompiler binaries.
• Vulkan SDK Modules: 64-bit shader debug symbols and VMA headers!
• Make sure that VULKAN_SDK environment variable is set to the vulkan SDK directory!
• CMake 3.25 or higher: Use the one that comes with Visual Studio.
• Visual Studio 2022 on Windows. Make sure C++ ATL module is installed!
• Xcode on mac is NOT recommended, as it has caused me some weird crashes while debugging. Use CLion or VS Code on mac with Ninja build system.
• Visual Studio Code (optional).

Linux specific requirements

Clang and Clang++ are required. GCC is not supported by the engine! Install clang using:

sudo apt install clang

Cloning

Clone the repo recursively:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/neelmewada/CrystalEngine.git
git submodule update --init --recursive

Building Editor (required)

Run the following cmake command to make host build from the project's root directory. You can either run the helper script to generate the project, or use cmake manually.

# Helper script to generate project. For Windows and Mac: 
sh Scripts/CMakeEditor.sh

# For Linux:
bash Scripts/CMakeEditor.sh

OR, custom cmake commands:

# Windows
cmake -B Build/Windows -S . -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -Wno-dev

#Linux (GCC is not supported)
cmake -B Build/Linux -S . -G "Ninja Multi-Config" -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ -Wno-dev

Now, you can build the editor using the following command:

# Replace the --build folder to what you have used.
cmake --build Build/Windows --config Debug --target EditorLauncher -Wno-dev

Important Note

The EditorLauncher executable launches the Project Browser by default. If you've already created a project and want to launch the project by default on launch, or if the Project Browser fails to launch the project in editor (happens on Linux), then pass the path to your .cproject file in the command line arguments when running it through Visual Studio or any other IDE like this:

# Or you can open the editor launcher manually once you have created the project through Project Manager.
EditorLauncher "/path/to/MyProjectName.cproject"

Building standalone (optional, ignore for now)

The standalone build has the GameEngine_Test application, which you can run to play-test the engine in standalone mode.

cmake -B Build/Windows-Standalone -S . -DCE_STANDALONE=ON -DCE_HOST_BUILD_DIR="<Path To host tools binary dir>" -DCMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME=Windows -Wno-Dev

The path to host tools binary directory in our situation is: C:/CrystalEngine/Build/Windows/Debug. Build/Windows is the host tools solution directory, and the binary files will be produced in the Debug folder, if you have chosen to build Debug target for host tools.

Note: For now, there is no real use of standalone builds, and they are incomplete yet. You can run the GameEngine_Test target in standalone build to do a basic play test of the standalone engine.