Compiling the exe

[themuffinman]

I searched this topic but found nothing. I've been working on a mod for Q3, and I've got the vm's compiled but now I want to compile an exe for it too as I've done a lot of editing in qcommon among other folders. Problem is, I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I'm no pro at programming.

I'm using Visual C++ 6.0, and trying to build the project for an exe just returns 1,000's of errors, even with the stock Q3 source code. How does one compile an exe? I've also downloaded MinGW and Cygwin in a hope that they could compile it but I just stare aimlessly at their command prompts without a clue of what to do. I've looked all around for answers and can't find anything. Can anybody help me out?

[speaker]

You should use the ioquake3 source (you can download it from http://www.ioquake3.org). You will also need MinGW (a Win32 port of the GCC compiler system) and Msys (an emulator that provides a Unix-like shell environment for Windows with all the Unix commands required for building software). Both can be found at the site http://www.mingw.org. With this setup everything works correctly. Unzip the ioquake3 source archive in the 'home' directory of your Msys, then use 'cd' to enter the newly created ioq3 directory (its name depends on the revision you downloaded) and build the EXE and VM files by issuing the command 'make'.

Warning: Unix style software building using command line tools is not for novices. If you have no experience in this topic, try to find somebody in your neighborhood who knows this stuff (makefiles, scripts, etc.).

Hope this helps.

Speaker

[Kaz]

Try posting some of the first errors you encounter, generally you will only need to fix a few and the rest will be taken care of.

[themuffinman]

@Speaker: I was going to use my own version of ioquake3 ultimately anyway as soon as I figured out exe compiling. From what I can gather from your post, it sounds majorly complicated, I guess it's time for me to get learning!

@Kaz: It's mainly syntax errors that I get if I remember correctly. I can't check right now as I've reinstalled Windows and thus don't have VC++ installed right now. Bear in mind that the original Q3 code also wouldn't compile for me, although I somehow remember managing to compile a quake3.exe a few years ago when I knew even less about programming! In any case, when I get VC++ up and going again I'll see what messages I can post here.

Thanks to both of you for your replies.