| Tutorial 1.HelloWorld
This Tutorial shows how to set up the IDE for using the Irrlicht Engine and how to write a simple HelloWorld program with it. The program will show how to use the basics of the VideoDriver, the GUIEnvironment and the SceneManager. The result of this example will look like this:

Setting up the IDE
Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 is used as example IDE, but you will also be able to understand everything if you are using a different one. To use the engine, we will have to include the header file <Irrlicht.h>, which can be found in the Irrlicht Engine SDK directory \include. To let the compiler find this header file, the directory where it is located should be specified somewhere. This is different for every IDE and compiler you use. I explain shortly how to do this in Microsift Visual C++ 6.0. Select the Menu Extras -> Options. Select the directories tab, and select the 'Include' Item in the combo box. Add the \include directory to the list of directories. Now the compiler will find the Irrlicht.h header file. We also need the irrlicht.lib to be found, so stay in that dialog, select 'Libraries' in the combo box and add the \lib\VisualStudio directory. That's it, with your IDE set up like this, you will now be able to develop applications with the Irrlicht Engine.

Lets start!
After we have set up the IDE that the compiler will find the Irrlicht Engine header files, we can include it now into our code.
    #include <irrlicht.h>
In the Irrlicht Engine, everything can be found in the namespace 'irr'. So if you want to use a class of the engine, you have to write an irr:: before the name of the class. For example to use the IrrlichtDevice write: irr::IrrlichtDevice. To get rid of the irr:: in front of the name of every class, we tell the compiler that we use that namespace from now on, and we will not have to write that 'irr::'.
    using namespace irr;
There are 5 sub namespaces in the Irrlicht Engine. Take a look at them, you can read a detailed description of them in the documentation by clicking on the top menu item 'Namespace List' or using this link. Like the irr Namespace, we do not want these 5 sub namespaces now, to keep this example simple. Hence we tell the compiler again that we do not want always to write their names:
    using namespace core;
    using namespace scene;
    using namespace video;
    using namespace io;
    using namespace gui;
To be able to use the Irrlicht.DLL file, we need to link with the Irrlicht.lib. We could set this option in the project settings, but to make it easy, we use a pragma comment lib:
    #pragma comment(lib, "Irrlicht.lib")
Now the main method. We can use void main() on every platform. On Windows platforms, we could also use the WinMain method if we would want to get rid of the console window, which pops up when starting a program with main(), but to keep this example simple, we use main().
    int main()
    {
The most important function of the engine is the 'createDevice' function. The Irrlicht Device can be created with it, which is the root object for doing everything with the engine. createDevice() has 6 parameters: deviceType: Type of the device. This can currently be the Null-device, the Software device, DirectX8, DirectX9, or OpenGL. In this example we use EDT_SOFTWARE, but to try out, you might want to change it to EDT_NULL, EDT_DIRECTX8 or EDT_OPENGL. windowSize: Size of the Window or FullscreenMode to be created. In this example we use 512x384. bits: Amount of bits per pixel when in fullscreen mode. This should be 16 or 32. This parameter is ignored when running in windowed mode. fullscreen: Specifies if we want the device to run in fullscreen mode or not. stencilbuffer: Specifies if we want to use the stencil buffer for drawing shadows. eventReceiver: An object to receive events. We do not want to use this parameter here, and set it to 0.
    IrrlichtDevice *device =
    		createDevice(EDT_SOFTWARE, dimension2d<s32>(512, 384), 16, false, false, 0);
Now we set the caption of the window to some nice text. Note that there is a 'L' in front of the string. The Irrlicht Engine uses wide character strings when displaying text.
    device->setWindowCaption(L"Hello World! - Irrlicht Engine Demo");
Now we store a pointer to the video driver, the SceneManager and the graphical user interface environment, so that we do not always have to write device->getVideoDriver(), device->getSceneManager() and device->getGUIEnvironment().
    IVideoDriver* driver = device->getVideoDriver();
    ISceneManager* smgr = device->getSceneManager();
    IGUIEnvironment* guienv = device->getGUIEnvironment();
We add a hello world label to the window, using the GUI environment. The text is placed at the position (10,10) as top left corner and (200,30) as lower right corner.
    guienv->addStaticText(L"Hello World! This is the Irrlicht Software engine!",
    	 rect<int>(10,10,200,30), true);
To display something interesting, we load a Quake 2 model and display it. We only have to get the Mesh from the Scene Manager (getMesh()) and add a SceneNode to display the mesh (addAnimatedMeshSceneNode()). Instead of writing the filename sydney.md2, it would also be possible to load a Maya object file (.obj), a complete Quake3 map (.bsp) or a Milshape file (.ms3d). By the way, that cool Quake 2 model called sydney was modelled by Brian Collins.
    IAnimatedMesh* mesh = smgr->getMesh("../../media/sydney.md2");
    IAnimatedMeshSceneNode* node = smgr->addAnimatedMeshSceneNode( mesh );
To let the mesh look a little bit nicer, we change its material a little bit: We disable lighting because we do not have a dynamic light in here, and the mesh would be totally black. Then we set the frame loop, so that the animation is looped between the frames 0 and 310. And at last, we apply a texture to the mesh. Without it the mesh would be drawn using only a color.
    if (node)
    {
    	node->setMaterialFlag(EMF_LIGHTING, false);
    	node->setFrameLoop(0, 310);
    	node->setMaterialTexture( 0, driver->getTexture("../../media/sydney.bmp") );
    }
To look at the mesh, we place a camera into 3d space at the position (0, 10, -40). The camera looks from there to (0,0,0).
    smgr->addCameraSceneNode(0, vector3df(0,10,-40), vector3df(0,0,0));
Ok, now we have set up the scene, lets draw everything: We run the device in a while() loop, until the device does not want to run any more. This would be when the user closed the window or pressed ALT+F4 in windows.
    while(device->run())
    {
Anything can be drawn between a beginScene() and an endScene() call. The beginScene clears the screen with a color and also the depth buffer if wanted. Then we let the Scene Manager and the GUI Environment draw their content. With the endScene() call everything is presented on the screen.
    	driver->beginScene(true, true, SColor(0,100,100,100));

    	smgr->drawAll();
    	guienv->drawAll();
    	driver->endScene();
    }
After we are finished, we have to delete the Irrlicht Device created before with createDevice(). In the Irrlicht Engine, you will have to delete all objects you created with a method or function which starts with 'create'. The object is simply deleted by calling ->drop(). See the documentation for more information.
    	device->drop();
     return 0;
    }
That's it. Compile and run.