I'm making a game with the C api that runs fine in the Mac and Linux simulators but won't load in the Windows simulator.
The problem
The error that the windows sim spits out is:
$ echo $PATH
/mingw64/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerSh0/:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl
$ ./PlaydateSimulator.exe
# [output removed; everything runs fine, the game can be loaded]
# remove mingw build tools from the PATH to simulate a regular user's environment
$ export PATH=/c/Windows/System32:/c/Windows:/c/Windows/System32/Wbem:/c/Windows/System32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/:/usr/bin/site_perlin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl
# try again. This time, loading the game fails
$ ./PlaydateSimulator.exe
11:27:42: SDK: C:\Users\ninov\Documents\PlaydateSDK
11:27:42: Release: 2.5.0
11:27:42: Loading: C:\Users\ninov\codeProjects\wheelsprung\wheelsprung.pdx\
Loading C API game: C:/Users/ninov/codeProjects/wheelsprung/wheelsprung.pdx/pdex.dll
LoadLibraryA() failed: (126): C:/Users/ninov/codeProjects/wheelsprung/wheelsprung.pdx/pdex.dll
11:27:42: Loading: OK
Update error: Could not load the Library.
11:27:42: Update failed, simulator paused.
Conclusion: pdex.dll seems to dynamically link to some dll in the mingw distribution.
From a discussion in the Playdate Squad Discord it seems to specifically be libgcc_s_seh-1.dll and libwinpthread-1.dll from the mingw distribution that seems required.
My game is open source and can be found here: GitHub - ninovanhooff/wheelsprung
Note the libs/windows/libchipmunk.a which I suspect is the problem.
How I built the libchipmunk.a library
Repo available here: GitHub - ninovanhooff/chipmunk-2d: A fast and lightweight 2D game physics library with added Playdate support.
- Install Msys2 Mingw64 Environments - MSYS2
- install cmake, ninja and make
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-make pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja - create makefiles and build
ninoLocal@NINO-WIN10 MINGW64 /c/Users/ninov/codeProjects/playdate-chipmunk-2d-master/build $ cmake --fresh -D BUILD_STATIC=ON -D BUILD_SHARED=OFF -D BUILD_DEMOS=OFF -D INSTALL_STATIC=OFF -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -D PLAYDATE=ON .. -- Building for: Ninja -- The C compiler identification is GNU 13.2.0 -- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 13.2.0 -- Detecting C compiler ABI info -- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done -- Check for working C compiler: C:/msys64/mingw64/bin/cc.exe - skipped -- Detecting C compile features -- Detecting C compile features - done -- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info -- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done -- Check for working CXX compiler: C:/msys64/mingw64/bin/c++.exe - skipped -- Detecting CXX compile features -- Detecting CXX compile features - done Configuring Chipmunk2D version 7.0.3 -- SDK Path: C:\Users\ninov\Documents\PlaydateSDK\ -- Configuring done (3.6s) -- Generating done (0.0s) -- Build files have been written to: C:/Users/ninov/codeProjects/playdate-chipmunk-2d-master/build $ ninja [.. no issues ..] [34/34] Linking C static library src\libchipmunk.a - Add libchipmunk.a to my Nim game and create a pdx
- Find issue described above
What I tried
It has been suggested that -static should be passed to CFLAGS so that all dependencies will be included. I tried this in several ways:
export CFLAGS=-staticand rerun cmake + ninja- add the following to CMakeLists.txt:
add_compile_options("-static") link_libraries("-static") - instead of ninja, use
-G "MinGW Makefiles"for cmake andmingw32-maketo make. I was told even for 64 bit the command should be mingw32-make.
These approaches seemed to result in rougly the same file, all with the same size of 843KB.
To be honest, I doubt, whether adding this flag was successful.
What I'm hoping to achieve
I would like to produce a pdx file that "just works" on windows 64 bit. I do not care too much about file size. If all mingw dlls would be included, that would be acceptable.
Any tips?