[Solved] Irrlicht samples crash in release mode

[tasulife]

CEGUI 0.8.3, Codeblocks-MINGW, Irrlicht 1.8.1, Windows 7

I want to run the cegui sample executable using the irrlicht engine. I'm able to do this when I build CEGUI in debug mode, but when I build in release, the samples executable will crash.

Full disclosure: I was able to get debug mode to work, but had to edit some of the images in the datasets folder. SpaceBackground.jpg was edited down to be powers of 2, and the aliasing.jpg was reduced to 2048x2048. I'm on a laptop with a "nvidia graphics" chip , so this is what was needed to get this to work in debug mode. I did this again in this release version. I started all this from absolute scratch, IE, i'm not using old folder locations to do this stuff (release mode). I moved my crashing relese mode binaries to a real desktop with a modern graphics card, and it still crashes there.

[SOLUTION]

When the user downloads a copy of "CodeBlocks v13.12 + MinGW" from the codeblocks page, that version of MinGW has problems building CEGui in release mode. Codeblocks uses the "TDM" version of MinGW. By manually installing the updated version of TDM-MinGW, the updated compiler can build release. Here is a link to the TDM MinGW installer:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/tdm-gcc ... e/download

I like to install that into C:/Program Files (x86)/CodeBlocks/MinGW, after backing up the existingfolder manually. Once you do that, you have to point codeblocks to the new compiler. THe optino to do that is in Settings > Compiler dialog. In this dialog, opten the "toolchain executables" tab. You have to update the c-compiler, C++ compiler, and "Linker For dynamiic Libs" to have the "x86_64-w64-" prefix, since the exe names are different (check out the bin folder in the MINGW installation you just made)

Once you've done this, you've upgraded you version of MINGW, and can compile in release and debug modes with only a few problems.
To get over the other issues, you gotta check out KnightForge's fixes here.

http://knightforged.com/cegui/

So in conclusion... To build CEGUI with CodeBlocks MinGW, and Irrlicht you have to:
1. Upgrade your CodeBlocks TDM MinGW version manually to 4.8.1 (which also adds std::thread support!!!)
2. Build Irrlicht
3. Build the Dependencies and when you run into trouble, use KightForge's fixes
4. Build Cegui and if you run into trouble use KinightForge's fixes
5. If you have a turd laptop graphics card, like my Samsung QX410 laptop, go into C:\cegui-0.8.3\datafiles\imagesets, and lower the sizes of Aliasing.jpg and SpaceBackground.jpg
6. Rejoice

BIg thank you to Ident for doing forum support. Cheers, man.

[Ident]

If you have a graphics card that doesnt support high resolution textures then the samples wont work, that is correct. We can't help it. But you can always remove that specific demo or like you did: downscale it.

If debug works, release should work too. Without callstack we cant help you. You could try RelWithDebugSymbols

[tasulife]

Hi, I'm able to build and run with Debug, and "release with debug symbols": both of those work. Release mode only doesn't work. One thing I can try is explicitly setting the build type to "Release", rather than leaving it blank. I'll give that a shot. Thanks for the help.

It's also definately just the releasemode of the CEGUIBase-0.dll: I can take a wholly built release mode build, swap in a "release with debug symbols" ceguibase-0.dll, and then the release mode works. weird.

[Ident]

That sounds rather odd

[tasulife]

issue is fixed, top post updated.

[Ident]

Thanks for resolving your issue and reporting the solution!