I am trying to write hobby games for Windows / PC. When I used Visual Studio Express 2010, I am frustrated with restrictions placed on being able to add IDE customizations. For example, the code snippets tool doesn't natively support C++ unless I upgrade to Pro. For the same reason I can't add 3rd party extensions, like Snip2Code, unless I shell out some cash. From what I've read, and I certainly can be wrong, is that if I wanted Visual Studio with C++11 my best route is to install either Windows 7 or Windows 8 ($100-$200). But would I need to get Pro and shell out another $500? Does anyone have opinions and experience here? Like I said, I'm currently only a hobbyist. Spending $100 for a new OS is non-ideal but doable, but spending another $500 for a license on software that might be replaced a year later is asking too much. If I upgrade to a new tool is there typically a savings involved? Are add-ons difficult to code up? Are 3rd party applications typically expensive?

I do enjoy the features of the IDE, especially the Intellisense and pre-compilation error detection. However, I do not enjoy hunting through GUI menus to add libraries, include paths, etc. Maybe my experience would be a little better if I could control all of these build options from a text file and command prompt instead. I feel I'm giving up some control by just letting the IDE handle the build flow. I see CMake is touted in these forums so I may head that way. Is Powershell a worthwhile way of running on the command line?

In exploring alternatives I ran across Cygwin. Since I program on Linux for my day job this discovery was serendipitous. I've download the environment, copied source code from one of my Windows projects, created a Makefile, and after a bit of tinkering I got a natively compiled Windows program working without using any Cygwin DLLs. I use Xemacs / Emacs and I also uncovered CEDET: http://cedet.sourceforge.net/. Maybe I can have the best of both worlds?

Is using Cygwin a dangerous path to travel for programming Windows applications? Is there anything to be wary of? I'm looking for other user experiences.

Thanks!

Either you use the crippled demoversion, pay or you find some other IDE. But you seem to know that already.

So I would say try out some free noncrippled IDE's first and then decide if thats good enough?

For example you can look at http://www.codeblocks.org/ or google a bit and you find like a dozen others.

I'm very much a fan of Visual Studio. Because I'm a student I can make use of the Ultimate release for free. I'm not sure what your exact predicament is but if you don't release your games for money and you're also a student I'd recommend attempting to get a copy. The extra tools like static analysis and profiling are certainly very, very educational.

MSBuild is also a nice tool once you start to learn it.

Failing that you could just install GCC and use CMake to automate building. You're then free to use whatever text editor you like. Sublime (http://www.sublimetext.com/) is pretty cool.

Thanks all for your suggestions.

I'll post more to this thread with my experiences. Perhaps I'll sign-up for Gdnet+ and create a journal/blog. In the end I've decided against Cygwin. I ran into too many setup issues. The housekeeping would be too much work.

The Windows version of Emacs includes the full CEDET environment so I'm reviewing that environment.

For now I'll stick with the IDE and deal with some of its annoyances (for me, that is). The integrated debugger is certainly a strong case for using the environment. Getting rid of bugs using that tool can be an almost enjoyable experience, as far as getting rid of bugs goes.

I do realize that the IDE generates all the build scripts where the appropriate compile commands are issued. So if I want to tinker with build flows at least that option is available. With the third party add-ons I probably can write some of my own tools. AFAIK I won't be able to directly integrate them into the IDE but I'm sure I can find some hooks, whether it be as simple as the clipboard, or writing files into the project directories, etc.

Thanks again.

Apart from what others have said in this topic, Visual Studio is no longer as expensive as what it once was:

http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-online-professional-vs

Visual Studio 2013 has went to a subscription based model much like Adobe Creative Suite has in recent times. Additionally, newer versions of Visual Studio come with Addons that can be added to enhance the IDE and development experience, most do not cost anything.

Can you create a makefile based project with the MSVC Express edition?