Installation

This page builds the engine itself. Once it is running you will create a game project from inside the editor, covered in Your First Project.

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/MrDrElliot/LuminaEngine
   cd LuminaEngine

2. Run setup

   From the repository root, run:

   Setup.bat

   This is a one-shot setup for a fresh clone. It:

   • Downloads premake5.exe into Tools/ if it is missing.
   • Downloads and extracts all external dependencies (External.zip).
   • Persists the LUMINA_DIR environment variable to your user profile.
   • Configures the git hooks.
   • Generates Lumina.sln.

   Tip

   No Python is required. Setup uses the curl.exe and tar.exe that ship with Windows 10 1803 and newer.

   Caution

   If the dependency download fails, grab External.zip manually, extract it into the LuminaEngine/ folder, then run GenerateProjectFiles.bat.

3. Open the solution

   Open Lumina.sln in Visual Studio 2022.

4. Set the startup project

   In the Solution Explorer, right-click Lumina and choose Set as Startup Project.

5. Choose a configuration and platform

   Pick a configuration:

   • Development, for day-to-day work. Fast, with Tracy and logging enabled.
   • Debug, for full debugger support. Significantly slower to compile and run.
   • Shipping, for packaging. Strips profiling, verbose logging, and the editor.

   Then pick a platform: Editor (the default) includes all editor tooling, and Game is a runtime-only build with no editor.

   Start with Development | Editor.

6. Build and run

   Press F5. Visual Studio builds every module and launches the editor.

   On first launch the editor has no project loaded, so it opens its project browser. Continue to Your First Project.

After pulling

After pulling or merging, regenerate the solution so new and removed source files are picked up:

GenerateProjectFiles.bat

If you still see unexpected errors, delete Binaries/ and Intermediates/, then run GenerateProjectFiles.bat again.

Build features

Optional engine features (the Tracy profiler, Vulkan validation, NVIDIA Aftermath, verbose logging) are configured in BuildScripts/BuildConfig.lua and baked in when you regenerate the solution. You can override any of them for a single regeneration from the command line, for example:

GenerateProjectFiles.bat --tracy=off --validation=on --verbose-logging=off

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
Missing v143 toolset	Visual Studio Installer, Individual Components, MSVC v143 Build Tools
”Cannot find .generated.h”	Build again. Visual Studio sometimes needs a second pass to pick up generated files.
C1076 compiler limit	Retry the build. This is an intermittent issue with a font file.
”Application control policy blocked this file”	Disable Windows 11 Smart App Control.

Still stuck? Open an issue or ask on Discord.