Problems building with MSVC 8

[Jumpy]

First of all I would like to apologize for being a bit of a newb and probably asking a lot of questions people have already asked before, but I could really use some help and I haven't been able to find any specific answers on the forums. I've been programming in C++ for probably about 8 years now but everything I've done has been fairly small projects so I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to building these huge solutions (or solutions at all, really). I tried downloading and building version 1.4.0 but ran into nothing but problems. After deleting everything and starting from scratch I managed to finish with (almost) no errors, but there are still a few issues. It seems it put some stuff in the "out" folder, but many other things like executables, dlls, and linker and debug files just got dumped in the root directory. I dont know if I did something wrong along the line or if that was supposed to happen, but it seems like kind of a messy solution. Here are all the exact steps I followed:

1) Downloaded latest stable release (1.4.0) in zip format, unzipped to a directory (call it c:\Crystal Space\CS).
2) Downloaded and ran the cs-win32libs file, installed libraries in c:\Crystal Space\CrystalSpaceLibs. Selected C:\Crystal Space\CS as my crystal space directory. Selected the "VC Typical" option. Copied over DLLs.
3) Started up MSVC 2005 (with service pack 1) and opened up CS\mk\msvc8\wksptypical. I know the instructions said to open wkstypical, but wksptypical is the only solution in this folder that MSVC recognizes as the current version (wkstypical it tries to convert).
4) Started build using "Debug (with DLLs)" setting. 174 succeeded, 12 failed. All errors had to do with python.h not being found. Don't think that's a problem, I never installed it because I'm not sure I need it, I can always do this later right? Everything else seemed to be built fine.

Tried out all they example programs and they seem to work fine with the exception of a few glitches. Is this the correct procedure? Am I ready to start developing my own applications now? I saw some similar posts talking about setting environmental variables, I never saw anything like that in the manual. When I do start my own project, I just need to include the header files in the include directory and the library files in the out/debug8/lib folder, right? Again, sorry for any redundant questions but this whole thing is pretty confusing to me until I can just get to the actual coding part. Thanks in advance for the help.

[res]

4) Started build using "Debug (with DLLs)" setting. 174 succeeded, 12 failed. All errors had to do with python.h not being found. Don't think that's a problem, I never installed it because I'm not sure I need it, I can always do this later right? Everything else seemed to be built fine.

The "py" in wkspytypical means it includes Python-related projects. But yes, as long as you don't need/want these, you can ignore these errors.

Am I ready to start developing my own applications now?

Yes.

I saw some similar posts talking about setting environmental variables, I never saw anything like that in the manual.

This will be going to be relevant, as the environment variable (CRYSTAL_1_4 or CRYSTAL) tells CS where to find plugins as well as data files.

When I do start my own project, I just need to include the header files in the include directory and the library files in the out/debug8/lib folder, right? Again, sorry for any redundant questions but this whole thing is pretty confusing to me until I can just get to the actual coding part. Thanks in advance for the help.

The manual contains a step-by-step guide to set up a VC project: http://www.crystalspace3d.org/docs/online/1.4/manual/HOWTO-Creating-External-MSVC-Application.html#0

[Jumpy]

Hi res, thanks for the help. I followed the tutorial on creating your own application but I'm still having problems. Everything built just fine, but when I run the program I get an error telling me crystalspace-1.4-vc8_d.dll and libz-cs.dll cannot be found. It runs fine once I copy these dlls into the project directory but it seems like it should be able to find these on it's own. Is there something I'm just not setting correctly in my project?

[res]

The Windows DLL loader just works this way: DLLs either have to be in the local directory or in a directory listed in the PATH environment variable.