The FIFE team is proud to announce the release an updated version of the Win32 DevKit!
New project management
Before we get to the DevKit I would like to say some personal words first. FIFE has been recently taken over by prock, who had contributed to FIFE in the past and who will now act as new project manager. Together with vtchill and cheesesucker they’re trying to get FIFE development back on track. All the best to you lads and I’m really glad that the project now seems in good hands again. There is a release planned but there is no agreed upon release date yet. We can hopefully see an updated stable FIFE package around the end of this year / in early 2010 if everything goes as planned. Stay tuned and all the best to the brave devs who decided to revive FIFE development 
What is the Win32 DevKit?
But back to the original point of this article: What is the Win32 DevKit? It’s the new name of the tool package that was formerly known as the Win32 compile SDK. The purpose hasn’t shifted with the name change; the Win32 DevKit still tries to make building FIFE on Windows systems as easy as possible by bundling some required tools together with precompiled 3rd party libraries that FIFE utilizes.
Besides the new name, we also introduced a new version scheme for the package. Future DevKits will follow the FIFE_Win32_DevKit_[month][year] pattern.
Download
You can grab the package in two flavours: an installer and a 7zip archive. While the 7zip version is slightly smaller in size, the installer leaves the choice support for which compiler (MinGW, MSVC 2005, MSVC 2008) to install to the user.
Grab the packages here:
Changes since the 2008.1-r1 compile SDK
- Updated SDL to 1.2.14
- Updated guichan to 0.8.2; applied key.hpp utf8 workaround, built against updated SDL lib
- Updated mingw to 4.4.1-tdm-2 from http://tdragon.net/recentgcc
- Updated Python to 2.6 and got rid of debug lib versions for MSVC that were not actually used. Read: Python 2.5 will NOT work with FIFE anymore, you’ll need to install a Python 2.6 client!
- Updated SWIG to 1.3.40
Known issues
For some odd reason, Code::Blocks support broke at some point in the past. If you build FIFE with Code::Blocks right now, the build process itself won’t show any problems, but the resulting binary is borked somehow. This needs closer investigation but it’s unlikely that it’s related to the new DevKit. Therefore we can hopefully address the problem with a small fix to the Code::Blocks build template in SVN and don’t have to update the DevKit again to restore proper Code::Blocks support.
Further notes
You’ll need the new Win32 DevKit to build SVN trunk revision 3073 and newer. The old 2008.1-r1 compile SDK will not work with newer revisions anymore!
We furthermore recently changed the default location where the 3rd party dependency DLLs get copied to. They will now reside in FIFE/engine/swigwrappers/python instead of in every single FIFE client directory as it has been in the past. The reason why I changed the path is that Win32 searches for them in the FIFE/engine/swigwrappers/python directory first because that’s where the _fife.pyd binary lies. The old location of the DLLs could lead to DLL clashes as Win32 would search in PATH directories first before looking for them in the FIFE clients directories.
This lead to a problem for one user who tried to get the recent UH release working on his system. The new approach does come with drawbacks, especially as we plan to support C++ game creation with FIFE as well. A new place for the DLLs should be found in the long run but FIFE/engine/swigwrappers/python will do it for now.
The November 2009 DevKit has been a joint effort by FIFE developer Cheesesucker and former FIFE dev mvBarracuda. This said: the November 2009 DevKit will be the last release from my side. I’ve maintained the package for a couple of years and it’s time for me to move on and focus on PARPG. The project is in good hands now so I’m positive that somebody else will update the DevKit in the future when the necessity arises.
Quick and dirty copy and paste install guide from the README:
Installation / build process
===============================
1. Check out the latest engine sources from SVN or update your SVN checkout in case you have already checked out from SVN before:
Repository URL: http://fife.svn.cvsdude.com/engine/trunk
2. Get ActivePython 2.6 and install it to a location of your choice:
http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePython/windows/2.6/ActivePython-2.6.4.8-win32-x86.msi
3. In case you’ve built FIFE with an older compile SDK in the past, run [FIFE]\build\win32\delete_sdk.bat to get rid of the old SDK files
4. Extraction process
4.1 Extract the content of the compile SDK to: [FIFE]\build\win32\
4.2 Check if there is an [FIFE]\build\win32\applications folder; if it’s in place, you know that you extracted the SDK into the correct location. One possible issue is that you’ve checked out the whole engine SVN repository instead of just trunk. In this case extract the compile SDK to: [FIFE]\trunk\build\win32 (if you want to compile trunk, otherwhise it needs to be extracted into the build\win32 directory of the branch that you want to compile)
5.1 Run [FIFE]\trunk\build\win32\update_project_files.bat.
5.2 Build files for each supported IDE can be found in the sub-directories of [FIFE]\build\win32\build_environments (code_blocks, scons, visual_studio_8, visual_studio_9).
6. The final dynamic library (_fife.pyd) is automatically moved to: [FIFE]\engine
7. Depending on the IDE you have utilized for building FIFE you either need to run [FIFE]\build\win32\update_dlls_mingw.bat (in case you built FIFE with code::blocks or scons), [FIFE]\build\win32\update_dlls_msvc2005.bat (Visual Studio 2005) or [FIFE]\build\win32\update_dlls_msvc2008.bat (Visual Studio 2008).
8. You can now start your custom FIFE build by launching the python scripts that reside in the subdirectories of [FIFE]\clients
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