This is taken from the "Hands on forum." I couldnt get it to work, but after reading this it did. If you want to read it directly just go to the forum... its under the "Readiness Test" topic.





Tell the IDE Where to Look

Move to Tools|Options|Directories , and you’ll see a list of locations that the IDE searches through when looking for project files. We’re not talking about our files here – they’re all in the project’s directory and therefore easy for the IDE to find. No, what the compiler is really going to have a hard time finding without our help is all of the DirectX header files that we intend to use.

So, here’s what you do. Where did you install your DirectX SDK? Mine is at C:\DXVCSDK , so I’ll use that as an example (substitute with your own). All of the DirectX header files are located in the INCLUDE subdirectory, so you’d add an entry like this to the list:

C:\DXVCSDK\INCLUDE

Now that you have it in the list, and this is very important, move the entry up until it’s the very first one. The reason for this is because MSVC comes with some older DirectX header files, and if the IDE looks in the MSVC default directories before trying yours, things will be screwed-up.

Tell the Linker Where to Look

The IDE may now know where all of the header files are (in our project directory and in the DirectX SDK include directory), but it also needs to know where the ‘real’ DirectX code libraries are. After all, the header files only contain prototypes (kind of like usage instructions) for the DirectX components – the components themselves are in DLL files on your system. What the linker needs to do is know which libraries (files with linking instructions) are needed for our project. We’ll be looking at compiling and linking in a later article, but for now here’s what I’m talking about:

Our project uses these files:

DDRAW.H

DINPUT.H

DSOUND.H


…which contains prototypes for the DirectDraw, DirectInput and DirectSound components we’re using. The actual components (the DirectX runtimes) are called:

DDRAW.DLL

DINPUT.DLL

DSOUND.DLL


…which are the files that everyone has for playing DirectX games with. Finally, we have library files that connect code using DirectX components:

DDRAW.LIB

DINPUT.LIB

DSOUND.LIB


Okay, so just read this next sentence very carefully and you’ll be fine: Our source code is compiled with instructions contained within header files, and linked with instructions contained in library files, which ultimately allow our code to use the components in the runtime (DLL) files.

So, where was I? Oh yeah… Head to Project|Settings|Link , and you’ll see an edit field called Object/library modules . You may even see some entries already here, all ending in .LIB. All we need to do is add our library files here, and they happen to be located in a directory called LIB inside our main DirectX folder. What I do is add this to the front of the library list:

C:\DXVCSDK\LIB\*.lib

If there are other libraries in this list already, leave them after yours (separated by a space). Now, there happens to be one other library that we’re using (for our sound code), so you’ll need to add WINMM.LIB to this list as well. So, to recap, let’s say that when you first showed up in this dialog, the edit box showed something like:

SOMELIB.LIB OTHERLIB.LIB YETMORE.LIB…

(Whatever their names actually are, who cares). Now it should be:

C:\DXVCSDK\LIB\*.lib WINMM.LIB SOMELIB.LIB OTHERLIB.LIB…

Got it?

If you do the above, it should work. Are you sure you included all the libraries?

Try including dxguid.lib.

You can also just include the whole folder by adding 'c:\dx6\lib\*.lib'

Edited by - Midnight Coder on August 23, 2001 10:58:51 PM

Your welcome, I''m glad you got it working.