Building Principia for Windows XP
5 hours ago
- #Windows XP
- #Game Development
- #Open Source
- Principia originally supported Windows XP in 2014, but modern toolchains and dependencies like UCRT have since moved on.
- Principia is a lightweight game with few dependencies, using SDL for cross-platform support and requiring only OpenGL 2.0.
- Building a custom toolchain for Windows XP involved compiling GCC, binutils, and mingw-w64, with adjustments for compatibility.
- Dependencies like curl, Freetype, and SDL were built with the custom toolchain, though GTK3 was replaced with Dear Imgui for dialogs.
- Compiling Principia revealed an issue with calling conventions in TMS code, resolved by updating typedefs to match GLAD definitions.
- Testing on a Windows XP VM and real hardware (an old desktop) confirmed the build runs, despite font corruption from OpenGL driver issues.
- Improvements included using mbedTLS for TLS support on XP and creating an installer with NSIS for easier distribution.
- All build scripts are available on GitHub, with a release provided for testing, though it is not officially maintained.