Quackulous

Quackulous is being brought forward from a legacy GNU Make / Visual Studio 2005 workflow to a Windows-first Visual Studio 2022 + MSVC workflow that is easier to automate, debug, and evolve with AI agents.

Current supported path

The supported first-class path is:

• Windows
• Visual Studio 2022
• MSVC x64
• CMake
• SDL2 provided by vcpkg

The legacy Makefile and misc/msvc/tremulous.vcproj remain in the tree for reference, but they are no longer the recommended entrypoint.

Bootstrap

Use the repo bootstrap script on a machine that has Git and Visual Studio 2022 installed. Visual Studio must include the native C++ toolchain:

• Desktop development with C++
• MSVC v143 build tools for x64/x86
• C++ CMake tools for Windows

Then run:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\bootstrap-windows.ps1 -Configuration Debug

That script will:

1. Find cmake.
2. Clone and bootstrap vcpkg into .tools/vcpkg if needed.
3. Install sdl2:x64-windows.
4. Configure the Visual Studio 2022 x64 build.
5. Build the requested configuration.

The canonical CMake output directory is build/windows-msvc, and the runnable staged layout is build/windows-msvc/stage/<Config>.

If you previously configured with a broken toolchain argument and see CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$toolchain, rerun the bootstrap script. It now removes that stale CMake cache automatically before reconfiguring.

Runtime layout

The staged runtime layout is intentionally predictable:

• stage/<Config>/tremulous.x86_64.exe
• stage/<Config>/tremded.x86_64.exe
• stage/<Config>/renderer_opengl1_x86_64.dll
• stage/<Config>/base/cgamex86_64.dll
• stage/<Config>/base/gamex86_64.dll
• stage/<Config>/base/uix86_64.dll
• stage/<Config>/base/... copied from assets/

The build copies loose assets into base/ so the executable can use its own binary directory as fs_basepath.

Direct CMake usage

If VCPKG_ROOT is already set:

cmake --preset windows-msvc-debug
cmake --build --preset windows-msvc-debug
ctest --preset windows-msvc-debug-smoke

Scope of this modernization phase

This phase is intentionally conservative:

• get a native Windows build path in place,
• preserve the legacy runtime architecture,
• make the staged output debuggable and scriptable,
• add CI and smoke validation,
• write down the follow-on backlog before larger refactors or rewrites.

Project tracking files

• BACKLOG.md: long-term queue and future work.
• PROGRESS.md: current execution state, blockers, and next actions.
• LEARNINGS.md: durable technical findings and decisions.

Deeper migration work, browser research, and Rust/C# exploration are tracked in BACKLOG.md, while active status and discovered constraints should be captured in the adjacent tracking files.