Getting Started
Installation
Follow these instructions to get started with the C4 Engine under 64-bit Windows 10.
To install, first create a directory somewhere on your hard drive in which you'll store all of the C4 Engine files. Put the source code in this directory and extract the C4-Data-xxx.zip file into the same directory. Your C4 Engine directory should look like the following:
- Data
- EngineCode
- GameCode
- Import
- PluginCode
- SimpleCode
- SlugCode
- TerathonCode
- VisualStudio-win
Building
The C4 Engine can be built with Visual Studio 2022. This can be downloaded from the following location:
Microsoft Visual Studio Download
If you haven't already done so, you will need to install the DirectX SDK in order to build the C4 Engine. It can be downloaded here:
The project files for Visual Studio are located at the following place inside the C4 Engine folder.
VisualStudio/C4/C4.sln
After opening the solution file in Visual Studio, select "Build Solution" from the Build menu to build the engine. This will cause several binaries to be built: C4.exe, The31st.dll, and a bunch of DLLs that get stored in the Plugins directory.
Running
To run the C4 Engine, double-click on the C4Engine.exe application. You can also run from inside Visual Studio.
Tip: When running from the Visual Studio debugger, Windows automatically enables memory heap debugging features that are used by the entire process being debugged, including external libraries such as the graphics drivers. This can cause significant delays that do not appear when not running in the debugger. To disable these debugging features, set the Environment property in the Debugging page to _NO_DEBUG_HEAP=1.