A reader asked me how to setup SDL2 for Windows given recent changes in SDL2. Specifically the files and libsdl projects have been moved from the libsdl.org website to GitHub. You can easily find SDL2 Image, Mixer, TTF etc.

However it can still be quite daunting setting up Visual Studio for SDL2. You have to download the specific files, then configure the project properties to specify the include paths for header files and then the lib files, both the path to them and identify the ones you want to use.

As I’m on my new PC, I bit the bullet and went through the process of setting it up. It took just over an hour to configure it.  I’ve put it into a PDF that’s a couple of pages long.

So the game works but only after I disabled the sound code; it was failing in the call to Mix_OpenAudio(). I think recent work on the SDL Mixer needs some work on my part. I need to sit down and look at the SDL Mixer page and figure out what’s failing. Once that’s done, I’ll update the files.