Compiling for Universal Windows Platform

See also

This page describes how to compile UWP export template binaries from source. If you're looking to export your project to UWP instead, read Exporting for Universal Windows Platform.

Requirements

  • SCons 3.0+ (see Compiling for Windows for more details).

  • Visual Studio 2017 or later. See Compiling for Windows about the caveats of installing it and the various prompts.

  • Windows 10 SDK (can be selected in Visual Studio installation).

  • ANGLE source. Use the ms_master (default) branch. Keep it in a path without spaces to avoid problems.

Note

The ANGLE repo by Microsoft has been discontinued and the ms_master branch has been cleared out.

As a temporary workaround however, it is still possible to download an older state of the source code via commit c61d048.

This page will eventually be updated in the future to reflect the new build instructions.

See also

To get the Redot source code for compiling, see Getting the source.

For a general overview of SCons usage for Redot, see Introduction to the buildsystem.

Compiling

You need to open a proper Visual Studio prompt for the target architecture you want to build. Check Compiling for Windows to see how these prompts work.

There are three target architectures for UWP: x86 (32-bits), x64 (64-bits) and ARM (32-bits). For the latter, you can run vcvarsall.bat with x86_arm or amd64_arm as argument to set the environment.

Set the ANGLE_SRC_PATH to the directory where you downloaded the ANGLE source code. The build process will also build ANGLE to produce the required DLLs for the selected architecture.

Once you're set, run the SCons command similarly to the other platforms:

C:\godot>scons platform=uwp

Creating UWP export templates

To export using the editor you need to properly build package the templates. You need all three architectures with debug and release templates to be able to export.

Open the command prompt for one architecture and run SCons twice (once for each target):

C:\godot>scons platform=uwp target=release_debug
C:\godot>scons platform=uwp target=release

Repeat for the other architectures.

In the end your bin folder will have the .exe binaries with a name like godot.uwp.opt.debug.32.x86.exe (with variations for each target/arch).

Copy one of these to misc/dist/uwp_template inside the Redot source folder and rename the binary to godot.uwp.exe. From the ANGLE source, under winrt/10/src/Release_%arch% (where %arch% can be Win32, x64 or ARM), get the libEGL.dll and the libGLESv2.dll, putting them along with the executable.

Add the files in the uwp_template folder to a ZIP. Rename the resulting Zip according to the target/architecture of the template:

uwp_x86_debug.zip
uwp_x86_release.zip
uwp_x64_debug.zip
uwp_x64_release.zip
uwp_arm_debug.zip
uwp_arm_release.zip

Move those templates to the [versionstring]\templates folder in Redot settings path, where versionstring is the version of Redot you have compiled the export templates for - e.g. 3.0.alpha for the alpha version of Redot 3. If you don't want to replace the templates, you can set the "Custom Package" property in the export window.

Running UWP apps with Visual Studio

If you want to debug the UWP port or simply run your apps without packaging and signing, you can deploy and launch them using Visual Studio. It might be the easiest way if you are testing on a device such as a Windows Phone or an Xbox One.

Within the ANGLE source folder, open templates and double-click the install.bat script file. This will install the Visual Studio project templates for ANGLE apps.

If you have not built Redot yet, open the winrt/10/src/angle.sln solution from the ANGLE source and build it to Release/Win32 target. You may also need to build it for ARM if you plan to run on a device. You can also use MSBuild if you're comfortable with the command line.

Create a new Windows App project using the "App for OpenGL ES (Windows Universal)" project template, which can be found under the Visual C++/Windows/Universal category.

This is a base project with the ANGLE dependencies already set up. However, by default it picks the debug version of the DLLs which usually have poor performance. So in the "Binaries" filter, click in each of the DLLs there and in the "Properties" window and change the relative path from Debug_Win32 to Release_Win32 (or Release_ARM for devices).

In the same "Binaries" filter, select "Add > Existing Item" and point to the Redot executable for UWP you have. In the "Properties" window, set "Content" to True so it's included in the project.

Right-click the Package.appxmanifest file and select "Open With... > XML (Text) Editor". In the Package/Applications/Application element, replace the Executable attribute from $targetnametoken$.exe to godot.uwp.exe (or whatever your Redot executable is called). Also change the EntryPoint attribute to GodotUWP.App. This will ensure that the Redot executable is correctly called when the app starts.

Create a folder (not a filter) called game in your Visual Studio project folder and there you can put either a data.pck file or your Redot project files. After that, make sure to include it all with the "Add > Existing Item" command and set their "Content" property to True so they're copied to the app.

To ease the workflow, you can open the "Solution Properties" and in the "Configuration" section untick the "Build" option for the app. You still have to build it at least once to generate some needed files, you can do so by right-clicking the project (not the solution) in the "Solution Explorer" and selecting "Build".

Now you can just run the project and your app should open. You can also use the "Start Without Debugging" option from the "Debug" menu (or press Ctrl + F5) to make it launch faster.