Plasma

Building

Currently, the complete game client can only be built for Windows (using Visual Studio) and macOS (using Xcode). Several tools can be built for Linux, but not a complete game client.

By default these steps will compile a client targeting your machine architecture. It is possible to build a 64-bit game client, but only the 32-bit (x86) Windows client is officially supported.

Library Dependencies

Plasma requires a number of third-party libraries as dependencies. All required libraries are available through the vcpkg package manager and can be downloaded as part of the build process, or can be built using their individual build instructions.

Building on Windows

Compiling on Windows requires Visual Studio. We recommend Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition, which is available as a free download. Install the “Desktop development with C++” workload.

1. Launch Visual Studio, and pick Clone a repository on the startup screen.

2. Enter the following URL as the repository location:
   https://github.com/H-uru/Plasma.git

   Specify the folder path on your machine where you'd like the code to be cloned, and then click Clone.

   Note: Some dependencies may fail to build if the path to the code contains spaces.

3. When Visual Studio finishes cloning the repository, double click on Folder View in the Solution Explorer panel.

4. Compile the project by using Build > Install Plasma. All required dependencies will automatically be downloaded from vcpkg as part of the build process.

   Building a 32-bit client on a 64-bit system

   1. Wait for Visual Studio to finish preparing the workspace.
      Look for a line that says “CMake generation finished” in the Output window.

   2. Open the CMake Settings (Project > CMake Settings for Plasma).

   3. Click the green + button to add a new configuration.

   4. Select “x86-Release” from the popup window.

   5. Save the CMake settings, using Ctrl+S or the Save button in the toolbar.

   6. In the dropdown menu in the toolbar, select the new “x86-Release” configuration.

   7. Compile the project by using Build > Install Plasma.

5. The client will be built and installed into a subfolder of where you cloned the repo.

   32-bit Debug:

   out\install\x86-Debug\client

   32-bit Release:

   out\install\x86-Release\client

   64-bit Debug:

   out\install\x64-Debug\client

   64-bit Release:

   out\install\x64-Release\client

   The client output folder will be referred to as your “MOUL-OS” folder in the instructions on Running Plasma.

Building on macOS

Compiling on macOS requires a minimum of macOS 11 and the Xcode build system. Xcode is available as a free download from the App Store.

We strongly encourage using vcpkg to automatically build dependencies; however, this requires some tools be manually installed in advance. The required tools are CMake, nasm, and pkg-config. They can be installed using common package managers such as Homebrew or MacPorts.

For Homebrew users who wish to manage all dependencies, a Homebrew bundle file is included in the repository, which can be installed by running brew bundle after cloning the project.

1. Clone the repository from GitHub, including all submodules, using a git client. On the command line, this can be done by executing the following:
   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/H-uru/Plasma.git

2. In the folder where you cloned the repository, run CMake to create a build folder:
   cmake -G Xcode -DUSE_VCPKG=ON -B build -S .

   This assumes you wish to use vcpkg to build dependencies. Remove -DUSE_VCPKG=ON to manage dependencies yourself.

3. Compile the project with the following command:
   cmake --build build --config RelWithDebInfo

4. Install the resulting tools with the following command:
   cmake --build build --target install --config RelWithDebInfo

5. The client will be built and installed into the build/install/client subfolder of where you cloned the repo.

   The client output folder will be referred to as your “MOUL-OS” folder in the instructions on Running Plasma.

You can also open the project in the Xcode IDE by opening the build/Plasma.xcodeproj file.

Building on Linux

Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems are not officially supported targets, and the game client does not compile. However, several of the tools can be built and run.

You will need to ensure all the required dependencies are available. You can also use vcpkg on these platforms for automatically managing dependencies.

1. Clone the repository from GitHub, including all submodules, using a git client. On the command line, this can be done by executing the following:
   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/H-uru/Plasma.git

2. In the folder where you cloned the repository, run CMake to create a build folder:
   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -B build -S .

   If you want to use vcpkg to automatically build dependencies, enable the USE_VCPKG option:
   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DUSE_VCPKG=ON -B build -S .

3. Compile the project with the following command:
   cmake --build build

4. Install the resulting tools with the following command:
   cmake --build build --target install

5. The tools will be built and installed into the build/install/tools subfolder of where you cloned the repo.