2.0 Help

Building For Windows

This page breaks down the steps for building for Windows.

Prerequisites

Visual Studio

Visual Studio is the standard IDE for Windows development. Whilst its not the only option it is the most tested and supported for the engine.

Currently there are the supported versions of Visual Studio:

  • Visual Studio 2022 64-bit

  • Visual Studio 2026 64-bit

These workloads have to be installed:

  • Desktop Development with C++

  • Game Development with C++

  • .Net Desktop Development

Generating the Project Files

Build Scripts

in the root of the repository you will find some .bat files, such as:

  • GenerateWin64vs2022.bat

  • GenerateWin64vs2026.bat

Run one of them to generate a Visual Studio solution for your preferred compiler. Afterwards, there will be a Workspace folder in the root folder, where you find a PlasmaEngine2_***.sln file in the respective folder for the Visual Studio version that you chose.

If the script fails, you most likely don't have all the prerequisites installed. They also sometimes fail, if Visual Studio recently installed an update and you haven't rebooted your PC since. Usually when this script fails it is due to common issues with CMake or the MSVC installation. Read the full error messages carefully and search the internet, you'll usually find a solution quickly.

Manually via CMake

This path requires you to install CMake yourself. CMake allows you to enable optional features that are not enabled by default.

Run the CMake GUI and configure the build options.

Last modified: 24 January 2026