Thread: Making DLL for other programs(Basic question)

DLL's don't really have a main. That's only for standalone applications.

They have a DLL_Main but that has a lot of restrictions on what it can do and often it's nothing but an empty function (which is why most DLL's also provide an "Init" function in them, e.g. SDL_Init, or Allegro_Init or whatever) that you're expected to call before actually using anything else in the DLL.

In this case, you would just provide an exported function, e.g. "read_in_double" that did what you wanted. That would return whatever you felt it needed to return (in this case, a double).

Then the calling application would load your DLL (which would execute DLL_Main, which would effectively do nothing because it's a very simple DLL). Then it would call "read_in_double" directly and get a double back.

But the worrying thing for me is that you're trying to make a gamemaker DLL (which I assume is a particular program). That means that the program gamemaker will be expecting a VERY specific type of DLL, most probably, with a very strict API governing what the functions are in them, what they can return, how they interact with the main program, etc. Just a quick google found: YoYo Games | Extension Maker and Game Maker Manual - Game Maker.info which seem to describe the DLL API.

DLL's aren't a magic self-contained library of generic code that just works for everything. They are merely portions of a program pushed out to separate files. Sometimes they are interchangeable but more often than not they are very tied into what the calling program expects and does with them (i.e. you can't just replace an SDL 1.2 DLL with a 1.3 DLL, it won't work except in very specific cases). In this case, I expect gamemaker to have a very specific idea of what the DLL should do and what "Init" function it should contain, etc. and that's where your answers really lie.

There's also a very specific disclaimer at the bottom of one of those pages: "Using external DLLs is an extremely powerful mechanism. But please only use it if you know what you are doing." I would add the proviso that MAKING a DLL for it would require you even more to "know what you're doing" with DLL's already.

Thanks for your interest. I've read you carefully. Yes Gamemaker has very restricted DLL method. But I prepared a DLL which calculates a+b those variables taken from Gamemaker, and returns to gamemaker after calculating.

And My codes are very simple as a+b is. It has only for loops, if elses, and some functions. So I think, if Gamemaker support A+B.dll, it should support mine too. Am I wrong?

So as much as I understand, I will remove Main() function, and replace it with

Code:

char read_in_double(args,args...){//This function retreives a STRING

...
..
Return double a+b;
}

And I will call this function from Gamemaker. Is there anything that I am wrong with?

(Sorry for any misunderstanding or unable-to-understanding, as I'm a basic traniee on it )

If you are returning a double, why would you prototype the function as "char read_in_double"?

But otherwise, yes. Probably. You'll have to experiment with how Gamemaker works, but that's the basic gist of it. A DLL is just a "library" of functions that can be called.