I've been working on and MDX game for a couple of months in Visual Studio 2005 express; now I'm trying to run it on other computers and it doesn't work. Of the 4 computers I've tried it on, only 1 successfully ran it. The others get a file not found exception that seems to be for a DLL, but when I put a try/catch around the application initialization (this is based on the sample framework) and found the exception, it conveniently failed to include the actual file name.
What do I have to do to run this on a system that doesn't have visual studio
Running MDX games on other computers
gogoYang
Xancholy
You have 2 options
1. Ask your end users to run the web installer http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx FamilyId=2DA43D38-DB71-4C1B-BC6A-9B6652CD92A3
2. Follow the SDK instructions, include the correct CAB files and call the DXSetup installer to ensure files are correctly installed. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp url=/library/en-us/directx9_c/Installing_DirectX_with_DirectSetup.asp.
The reason you can't run is becuase simply including the files you need is not sufficient (and is also not allowed per the SDK EULA), they need to be installed properly and in the right places.
If it still doesn't work after the web installer then you can use filemon from http://www.sysinternals.com to see which files are failing to be found. Usually this turns out to be a data file. Remember if you are using the framework there are some dta files in the media folder.
As Mykre hinted - if you are using MDX 2.0 there is currently no install path other than the SDK becuase its not something you should inflict on end users since it is in beta.
Pete dOronzio
I'm including all the references with the executable now (before I was just including the MDX DLLs). Shouldn't that make it use the right version When I was starting I looked at MDX 2 but it didn't seem stable yet so I went with version 1. I'm not trying to use any installers at this point, just have a folder with the executable and data files.
This is the stack trace I'm getting from the exception:
at DXUT.DialogResourceManager..ctor()
at DXUT.Framework.Cleanup3DEnvironment()
at DXUT.Framework.Shutdown()
at DXUT.Framework.Dispose()
at Game.Main() Void .ctor()
The exception message says "The specified module could not be found (Exception from HRESULT 0x8007007E)"
The only thing I can think of the dialog resource manager using is the UI files and fonts... the UI files are there, so could it be a missing font
James E Freedle II
Yes, the web installer will install all DirectX components including all d3dx and managed components from Summer 04 onwards.
M Landy
This is a common question that gets asked, the main problem is that with the managed directx system you need to make sure that the client computers are running the same release of the runtimes as the sdk that the application was developed in.
For example if the application was written using the Feb 2006 release of the SDK the client will more then likly have to be running the runtime release for Feb 2006. If you have a look at the Microsoft Downloads site you will see that for each of the releases there is also a runtime version that can be downloaded. This download can be packaged with your application, or you could use the web installer.
Note that if you do use the MDX 2.0 system you should not be using it in production as it is still in beta release, please have a look at the following posts regarding MDX2.
http://blogs.msdn.com/tmiller/archive/2006/04/12/575225.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/tmiller/archive/2006/03/20/556105.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/al%5Fmsft/