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Compiling TGEA with DirectX 9?

by Dave Calabrese · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 07/30/2008 (9:09 am) · 5 replies

I've installed the latest version of the DirectX SDK (March 2008). However, I'm now unable to compile TGEA. I get the following error:

fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'd3dx8.h'

Obviously, that would mean the file is missing. So I go to look for it, and find that the March 2008 SDK doesn't come with any DirectX8 files - only DirectX 9. It looks like TGEA only has DirectX 8 support, as all the files within the Engine directories are meant for DirectX 8.

Has anyone found a way to get TGEA to compile with DirectX 9 / the March 2008 SDK, or will I need to modify the engine to work with Direct X 9 or (more likely) find an older build of the SDK to 'update' to?

Thanks in advance,
-Dave Calabrese
Gaslight Studios
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Associate Dave Calabrese
Cerulean Games
#1
07/30/2008 (3:26 pm)
Ah... my bad. The newest DXSDK is actually apparently June 2008. However, this still has the same problem - TGEA won't compile with it installed.

-Dave Calabrese
Gaslight Studios

Torque Owner Brian Richardson
#2
07/30/2008 (4:42 pm)
I haven't played with 1.7 ish engines in a little while. But the vague story is this: One of the DX9 SDK's stopped shipping the DirectX 8 headers (I think it was August of 07?). So we started including the DX8 headers ourselves in engine/lib/directx8. So you should be able to find the d3dx8.h file in that directory. Maybe the includes directories for your project don't have that listed and that's why you're getting the error?

For DX9 includes, things should be configured to grab those headers/libs from your DX SDK installation.

Hope that helps.

Associate Tom Spilman
Sickhead Games
#3
07/30/2008 (8:24 pm)
We should probably make the DX8 GFX an optional module in the project generator and default to have it disabled. Really whos creating DX8 games now? ;)

Associate Dave Calabrese
Cerulean Games
#4
07/31/2008 (7:49 am)
Ah! That was it. When I linked the the DirectX8 directory supplied with TGEA, the compile proceeded past that point. While I'm not specifically developing a DirectX8 game, I'm guessing the engine needs the built-in backwards compatibility. ;)

Now to figure out why there is no aiClient.sbr file and all my errors are gone! Thanks guys!

-Dave Calabrese
Gaslight Studios

Torque Owner Brian Richardson
#5
07/31/2008 (9:37 am)
@Tom:

Word! ;) In 1.7 there are some hard references to the device types which would make that annoying in 1.7. I've fixed that in the studio branch. (Although there's a lot of device specific code in GFXInit still.. ;/) But you can compile without certain devices now.