I have spent the last 7 hours trying to get the SDL library to work for my Visual Studio. And I have seriously tried everything and I feel so hopeless. I've looked on youtube. I've looked at websites and I have no idea why it does not work. Can anybody please please help me?
When you download SDL there should be an include folder and a lib folder. You have to add these in your project settings and then link against the sdl2.lib.
Go to Project->Properties then Configuration Properties->VC++ Directories. Add the SDL\include under Include Directories and SDL\lib\x86 or SDL\lib\x64 under Library Directories.
Still in project properties go to Configuration Properties->Linker->Command Line and type "sdl2.lib" in the box. OR put this line somewhere in your code:
#pragma comment(lib, "sdl2.lib")
You have to do this for both debug and release builds.
Also you should probably copy the SDL dll to your project folder.
If you look at the top of the VS window there should be a dropdown box that says "Debug" by default. It means you're doing a debug build which adds a lot of information to aid debugging in VS. It also uses a different configuration than Release mode. So when you switch to release you have to set the properties again.