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[Martin 2BAM]

It's a quick and really easy tutorial.

Doesn't have much to do with games really, it's just that I hate the default "white square" exe icon. So, if you make a C++ game for Windows using MSVC, there is NO excuse.

http://blog.tbam.com.ar/2009/07/how-to-add-icon-to-your-windows.html

Hope you like it.

BTW: Please tell me about any typos or engrish.

[brog]

Thanks, I've been meaning to find out how to do this for a while.  And now it's done!

(plus I now know how to add other resources too - awesome!)

[Glaiel-Gamer]

is there a way to package resources into the .exe like how mac apps have the .app folder type?

[David Pittman]

Manually creating the .rc file seems sort of hacky. Just right-click on your project in the Solution Explorer, Add -> Resource... and let VS generate the .rc file and assign IDs for whatever resources you embed.

Edit: My bad, Express edition removes this functionality.

[Alevice]

Yiou could use reshacker too, I guess.

[Martin 2BAM]

brog:
You're welcome!

Glaiel-Gamer:
I never made anything for the Mac, so I don't really know what you're talking about.
In Windows you can embed resources inside the executable, generally GUI stuff like bitmaps, cursors, menues, icons, etc...
I think you can also put raw binary stuff, but I'm not sure how.
But you can't access them as files, you need to extract them with some Windows specific functions. On the other hand, you can use them almost directly for GUI stuff like setting cursors, a bitmap background, etc.

David-Pittman
I don't think it's hacky. It's just knowing the Resource Compiler language (Which is absolutely straight forward)

Resources can't be added like that in Express editions. Express editions specifically come without a resource editor just to piss you off (I don't see other reason, not even commercially)

Abraham Jones:
Using reshacker each time you change a bitmap is a bit of a drag. You have a point because you're not going to change icons a whole lot, but I just find it easier to write one line in notepad.

I tried ResEdit, that's supposed to work for MSVC++ 2008, but it just didn't work out of the box for me.

[Cthulhu32]

Quick note: this is how it is done in almost every Dev application I've used. I tend to gravitate toward Code::Blocks cause its free and not Microsoft for my indie projects, and creating icons for exes is EXACTLY the same. I usually flesh them out and bring them to live in GIMP, then use IcoFX to create the icon.

[Martin 2BAM]

Great!

I just posted a mini-tutorial because it took me a while to figure it out, to avoid the hassle to others.

Regards
-Martín

[mcc]

Also if it's useful to anyone here are similar instructions for MinGW.

[AlexRamallo]

thanks this is awesome! that white square makes games look unprofessional, maybe now more people will play my games

[Impossible]

[quote author=nitram_cero link=topic=7491.msg238439#msg238439 date=1248831540
I tried ResEdit, that's supposed to work for MSVC++ 2008, but it just didn't work out of the box for me.
[/quote]

I've had success with ResEdit.  I don't remember it being that tricky.

[Martin 2BAM]

It didn't work for me, the generated .rc made an inclusion of resource.h that in turn defined my identifiers as numbers.

As the RC compiler uses the C-precompiler (#define, etc...), then the "names" of the resources ended up being numbers. And that doesn't work with FindResource or wxWidgets Icon/Bitmap constructors

But your mileage may vary!

I remember sending a mail to the author pointing this out but never got a reply.

Regards
-Martín

[Gold Cray]

Hmm, it's a lot easier in MonoDevelop. Just right click on the project then choose general build options and there's a file browser to choose it.

I just checked this out with Dev-Cpp, and it's about the same: Project->Project Options->browse.

[Martin 2BAM]

I don't mean to be rude, but... the title specifically says "using MSVC++"

You can probably do it a thousand ways, I just wanted to contribute my way for Visual Studio Express, as it took me some time to figure it out.

Regards
-Martín