How to Build Goo Engine

Goo Engine 4.1 (as of October 2024)

Shouldn't be behind a paywall (^ w ^)

UPDATE: March 2025 Goo Engine team is now working with Blender.

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Blender is complicated to build (Over 30 Years of software development). Likewise, Goo Engine, being a fork of blender, is also complicated. I hope this guide is helpful to at least one person. 

Step 1: Get the Build tools

How to build blender (According to blender).
https://developer.blender.org/docs/handbook/building_blender/
Choose the link containing instructions depending on your Operating System.

Since, I am using windows, I will be using the windows build instructions,
but the build steps should be similar for other Operating Systems.
The development tools are  tools used to build blender. 
	- Aside: Why development tools?
		From the users perspective,
		software just works! You download an installer and magic happens that spits out a program.
		From the developers perspective, unfortunately, a program needs to be built. Developer tools
		build the program. If this is confusing, here is an analogy. Let's say your car wheels need to be
		installed. The installer is the car mechanic who just adds a wheel to your car. The wheel itself
		needed to be built by the manufactuers (developers) which probably needed special tools (build tools).
	- End of Aside
Install Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition.
The installer will prompt you to install Desktop Development with C++ workload.
If you forgot to install it, don't panic, rerun the installer and click modify,
which will bring up the window with all the different modules again.
Install Git for windows. Add to PATH means search for "Edit the System environment variables."
There is a PATH for User Variables and System Variables, add to "your PATH" usually means User Variables,
while "system PATH for all users" usually means system path.
Install CMake for "all users."

Step 2: Use Build Tools to Build Blender/Goo Engine

Open a command prompt/ terminal by typing cmd or powershell in the search bar for Windows.
According to the blender doc 1. create a folder "blender-git" in the place you want the installation to go
(It can be named anything). 

	
		mkdir blender-git
		cd ./blender-git
		git clone -b goo-engine-v4.1-release https://github.com/dillongoostudios/goo-engine.git
	Wait for it to finish
		cd .\goo-engine\
		./make.bat update
		./make.bat release
	

If everything goes right, you should have no error messages 
and the build would located in the blender-git folder (cd ..) (look inside bin/Release called Blender.exe). 
If it was that simple, then I wouldn't be writing this.
	- Aside: 
		In preparation for this guide, I built the Original Blender source code 
		and the Goo Engine source code.
		Blender's code just works! 
		I ran make.bat update which downloaded all the needed library files in lib\windows-x64
		Goo Engine on the other hand did not just work :( AND the only instructions they gave
		was blenders own instructions. Plus, their Github issues, a place to post bugs, were pretty unresponsive.
		The vibe was clear: Paywalled Blender. We won't make it easy unless you pay us.
	- End of Aside
Goo Engine's default branch goo-engine-main is missing ./lib folder which causes make.bat to fail.
"git clone -b goo-engine-v4.1-release" branch does have the ./lib folder. 
Note that blender's default branch has ./lib folder so running ./make.bat update just works.


Links that helped me

Reddit Post
Specifically: 
Azukii Mochi "
	Just adding on:

	you can just drop the libraries
	https://projects.blender.org/blender/lib-windows_x64.git
	in "goo-engine/lib/windows_x64"

	or

	just clone the release

	git clone -b  
	example:
	git clone -b goo-engine-v4.1-release https://github.com/dillongoostudios/goo-engine.git

	at least on git bash
"
Some users mentioned downloading SVN like tortise, which used to be the Version Control System (VCS)
but as of May 15, 2023, Blender is no longer using SVN. I did not need to use SVN and I wouldn't recommend it.