By the end of this tutorial you will know how to create a windowed application in the Eclipse Engine.

Due to the nature of the Eclipse Engine being modular, applications do not have a window by default and you must add it as an engine module. In this tutorial we will go through on how to do just that and go through how to customize the window to your liking.

Note: This tutorial requires that the project be properly linked to the engine. See the previous tutorial to find out how to do that!

Windowing in the Eclipse Engine uses the library GLFW to handle all windowing functionality, you can read more about the library here.

So, now that you have been briefed, lets begin!

For this tutorial you will need to link to the following modules & libraries.

Name Link Code Description
Eclipse Engine EclipseEngine This is the core engineyou will need to link to thisto use any engine features.
Eclipse Debugging EclipseDebugging This is optional, but adds fancycolors to console
GLFW glfw GLFW handles all the windowing functionality
GLAD glad GLAD handles all the communication between the engine & OpenGL

your premake5.lua file under ./Projects/[YOUR_PROJECT_NAME] shoud look something like this.

CreateProject(
"YOUR_PROJECT_NAME",
-- Dependencies
{
    "EclipseEngine",
    "EclipseDebugging",
    "glfw",
    "glad",
},
"%{wks.location}../Projects/YOUR_PROJECT_NAME"
)

Once you linked your project to the engine, you will need to regenerate your premake5 workspace. Refer to the previous tutorial for information on linking.

Alright, now that our project is ready, we can begin developing!

Now to create a window in the Eclipse Engine. It is rather simple, actually its just 2 line of code. Open your ApplicationDriver.cpp and you should see the following code.

// Core Engine
#include <EclipseEngine/include/Application.h>
#include "ApplicationDemo.h"
	
int main()
{
	Eclipse::Engine::Application::Create<ApplicationDemo>({});
	Eclipse::Engine::Application::Initialize</*INSERT MODULES HERE*/>(Eclipse::Engine::Application::Instance);
	Eclipse::Engine::Application::Run();
}

Next you want to include the WindowModule.h file under /EclipseEngine/include/WindowModule.h

#include <EclipseEngine/include/WindowModule.h>

Finally you want to modify the Initialize<> template arguments to include the window module. This can be done like so.

Eclipse::Engine::Application::Initialize<Eclipse::Engine::WindowModule>(Eclipse::Engine::Application::Instance);

and… that it! surprising right? If you now compile your project and run your application, a console & window should now appear! but the fun doesn’t stop there, why don’t we customize our window a little bit?

At the moment you can only change the current settings of the window.

Setting Default Description
windowTitle “Application” This is the title string of the window
windowWidth 1280px This is the width of the window
windowHeight 720px This is the height of the window
minWindowWidth 100px This is the minimum window width
minWindowHeight 100px This is the minimum window height
refreshColor BLACK This is the refresh/clear color of the frame

Alright, lets get customizing. I want my window to be 1,000px wide and 1,000px long and have the Title “Tutorial_3 - Hello There… Window” For me to do this I can simply pass the arguments into the structure under the Create<>({}) function like so.

Eclipse::Engine::Application::Create<ApplicationDemo>({"Tutorial_3 - Hello There... Window", 1000,1000,100,100});

And its that simple! You now have a fully functional window, but whats a window without graphics? Next Tutorial: Graphics