Newbie's Guide to Compiling on Windows

Hello everyone, I'm a newbie. However, I've learned just enough to get started on the new Torque2D MIT engine. I finally figured out how to compile everything last night, so I thought I'd share with others who are as lost as I was.

First, you'll want the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2012 for Desktop.
Here's a link: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/visual-studio-express-for-windows-desktop
Download that, and then install and do all the updates your system might ask.

Next, you'll need to download the latest version of Torque2D MIT from GitHub.
That is located here: https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque2D
I would suggest downloading it as a zip, as that's the easiest for most people to figure out. There's a button that says Zip, that's what you'll want to download.

IMPORTANT NOTE: At the time of this writing, the 2012 Compiler is not in the main repository, it's in the development repository. If you don't see the folder engine/compilers/VisualStudio2012 in the repository then you'll want to download the development version from here: https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque2D/tree/development

Ok, now that you've got got everything you need, extract the repository (the zip file) into a folder and load up Visual Studio Express 2012 for Desktop.

Go into File, and choose Open Project. Navigate to enginecompilersVisualStudio 2012 and open Torque 2D.sln. Now at the top of your window you'll see a little green arrow that says Local Windows Debugger, and to the right a drop-down box that says Debug. Click debug can change it to Release. Finally, go to the Build menu and choose Build Solution.

When it finishes it should say ========== Build All: 4 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ========== at the bottom of the Output panel. If it lists any errors you'll need to google the error or ask for help on this forum somewhere.

Now, if you go to the Torque2D-master (or Torque2D-development) folder you should see Torque2D.exe sitting there. You can now run it and play with the toys.

If you want to use these toys to self-teach yourself, here is the suggested order to examine them, by Michael: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22166/4#comment-190419

1. SpriteToy
2. FlipToy
3. ScrollerToy
4. SceneLayerToy
5. CompositeSpriteToy
6. MoveToToy
7. RotateToToy
9. SphereStackToy
9. PyramidToy
10. ChanToy
11. AquariumToy
12. DeathBallToy
13. TruckToy