Building For Windows#

Warning

This page assumes you have basic understanding of C++ and CMake

Getting The Source#

To get Sowa Engine source code, you can download source code on GitHub or clone it via git version control system

To clone it, if you are using git CLI, enter the following command in terminal

bash
git clone https://github.com/sowaengine/sowa.git --recurse-submodules

Attention

--recurse-submodules is important because the engine uses submodules. If you forgot to add that parameter, you can run the following command after cloning

bash
git submodule update --init --recursive --remote

Generating Resources#

Built-in resources in Sowa Engine are generated using nmres tool You can install latest version of it here

After downloading nmres, run the following command in engine root directory

bash
/path/to/nmres.exe --recursive --cwd Sowa --namespace Sowa::Res \
    --suffix .res.hpp --rules res_rules.txt

this will generate necessary resources in project


Building The Engine#

Requirements#

Setting Up CMake#

Sowa Engine uses CMake for generating project files. You can generate a MinGW project using the following command:

bash
cmake -S . -B build/ -G "MinGW Makefiles"
-S

Source directory will be passed to this parameter.

-B

Build directory will be passed to this parameter.

-G
Build system to generate project files.
"MinGW Makefiles" is preferred
You can see possible generator options here
[-D …]

Used to pass options or parameter to cmake project. Here is some useful options

-DEditor -> On or Off (Default: On)
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE -> Release or Debug (Default: Debug)

Attention

Editor option is On by default. Setting it to Off will generate export templates. (non-editor builds that will be used for exported projects)

Compiling Generated Project#

After generating project via cmake, you can execute following command to start compiling the engine

bash
cmake --build build/

To run multiple instances, you can execute the following command with ‘n’ being count of instances to run

bash
cmake --build build/ --parallel n

Installing The Engine#

After compilation, build folder can look unorganized. To start using the engine, you can copy executable sowa.editor.exe, all content in ProjectManager/ to a folder, and Editor/ content in ProjectManager/ folder

Directory structure should look like this:

Sowa
├─Editor/
│ ├─sowa.editor.lua
│ └─sowa.editor.exe
├─sowa.engine.exe
├─project.ease (ProjectManager)
└─project-manager-files