How To Install Virpets (for Developers)

This document describes how to install all the necessary software to let you compile (and, hopefully, improve!) the VIRpet software.

System Requirements

For the computer running theStage (the display server):

  • 500 MHz Pentium 3 or higher processor
  • 128 MB RAM
  • 3D-accelerated video card (nVidia GeForce/ATI Radeon or newer)
  • DirectX 8.1 or later

For computers running PuppetMaster (the puppeteering software):

  • USB Joystick (and appropriate drivers, if necessary)
  • Peavey MIDI slider console
  • MIDI interface

For development systems:

  • All of the above.
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 with at least Service Pack 5 installed -- download SP5 here
  • DirectX SDK version 8.1 or later -- download DX8 SDK here
  • LithTech SDK version 3.1
  • a CVS client, such as WinCVS (a reasonably friendly GUI client) -- download WinCVS here. All CVS clients are different, and describing their use is beyond the scope of this document. A good WinCVS tutorial can be found here. Read it, and familiarize yourself with the general philosophy of CVS.

Installation Instructions

  1. Install Visual C++, the DirectX SDK, WinCVS, and the LithTech SDK. Make sure you install the DirectX SDK after Visual C++, in order to automatically add the appropriate directories to the library and header search paths.
  2. Ask Jon Parise to give you an account on micheaux (aka cvs.etc.cmu.edu), if you don't have one already.
  3. In the directory where you installed the LithTech SDK, create a new directory LTDS_bin_pc31/samples/virpets/. This is where the Virpets code will live.
  4. Using your CVS client, log in to the repository :pserver:yourid@cvs.etc.cmu.edu:/source/cvs. Check out the PuppetMaster and theStage modules into the virpets directory you created in step 3.
  5. Copy PuppetMaster/libxml2-2.4.3/lib/so/libxml2.dll into your Windows system directory (C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 for Win9x/WinME/WinXP, C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 for WinNT/Win2000).
  6. Open up PuppetMaster/PuppetMaster.dsw to build PuppetMaster executable. Open up theStage/propmodel.dsw to build theStage's DLLs. NOTE: PuppetMaster should not be built in Debug Mode -- it's significantly less stable, and probably won't even compile.
  7. Ta-da!