Compiling under VS2010

Visual Studio 2010 is the best choice for Source. You can use the free C++ Express edition.

Alien Swarm conversion

Converting the Alien Swarm server project to VS2010 will lead to an "invalid characters in path" error. To fix it, open game\server\swarm_sdk_server.vcproj with a text editor and delete "' $File" from line 2232.

Debugging

1. Follow the instructions for fixing debug compiles in VS2008, which apply here as well.
2. Right click on the client and server projects in VS and go to Properties > Configuration Properties > General. Change Target Name to client and server respectively.

Fixing File Copying

There is a bug in VS 2010 which will sometimes prevent your newly-compiled DLLs from being copied to your mod directory, so if your changes aren't taking effect, this may be the cause. To fix it, right-click on the client and server projects in VS and select Properties. Change the Configuration drop-down menu at the top to All Configurations. Then, go to Configuration Properties > Custom Build Step and in the Additional Dependencies field, type in $(TargetPath).

Fixing Warnings

If you want to remove the "precompiled header" warnings seen during a full compile, open these files in your client project and move #include "cbase.h" up to the first line:

1. hud_locator.cpp
2. hud_credits.cpp
3. hud_flashlight.cpp

Fixing Other Compiling Errors

Fixes:

1. Cannot locate "gl/glaux.h" - this library is not even used anywhere, why a reference to it still exists is beyond me. It also seems to be obsolete. To get around this error simply comment out the line "#include <gl/glaux.h>" inside glview.cpp under the Glview project. Secondly right-click on the project Glview and go to Properties, then find Configuration Properties->Linker->Input and under Additional Dependencies remove the text "glaux.lib;"
2. "error LNK2005: ... already defined in memoverride.obj" - this one is simple to deal with, and will probably occur in one or two projects. For each affected project simply right-click on it, go to Properties, then find Configuration Properties->Linker->Command Line and in the "Additional Options" text box add the following: "/FORCE:MULTIPLE"
3. Linker Errors relating to LIBC, LIBCMT, LIBCD, LIBCMTD, - Go to the client project properties -> Linker -> Ignore Specific Default Libraries -> and enter "libc;libcmtd;libcd;" without the quotation marks. Navigate to the same place in the server project properties and enter "libcd;libcmtd", again without the quotations.

Compiling Under Linux

VS 2010 introduces a new project file format (.vcxproj) which is not compatible with the SDK's VprojToMake tool. A third-party update adding support is available.

See also

• Visual Studio 2010
• Launching from Visual Studio