Testing a game written in Visual Studio 2015 and SDL

SDL Development
1

Hi all,
If I were to build a game using Visual Studio 2015 and SDL2, I think I’m right in assuming that in order for that game to run, the user’s target windows version needs to have Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 installed, which according to this page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48145) is compatible on all these targets: Windows 10 , Windows 7 Service Pack 1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Vista Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3

My question is: Is it standard practice to just auto install the required runtime when the game is installed and hope it works, or do you install and test your game on a real installation of all the various Windows versions? Either virtual machines or maybe a multi - boot?

Of course I could use VS2010, with the assumption that the redistributable for VS2010 would be installed in most modern machines. And the chances of it working correctly up to and including windows 10 would be very good. But I think there is still no guarantee unless you test the game on the actual windows versions you intend to target.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

2

Hi Faluk,
Thanks for the feedback. I guess that if the game were distributed from my website then the demo / trial version could be used to test the game against their system first. And if the game was distributed through steam, I’d imagine that the steam client for windows would make sure all the redistributables were installed for all visual studio versions.