title: How to build standalone SDL project with visual C++?
body: <p>I'm getting ready to enter Ludum Dare this evening, and I'm getting really frustrated because I'm unable to build my project into a standalone .exe.</p>
  
  <p>I feel like this question has been asked at least 100 times but none of the answers I'm finding are helping me out at all... I don't really understand what static linking is or how to do it, and that doesn't even seem like the solution to my problem; I don't mind if I'm shipping out a bunch of .dll files with my program, I just want the program to run on its own so I can submit it at the end of the competition.</p>
  
  <p>Basically, my visual studio (2010 express) configuration follows exactly <a href="http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/lesson01/windows/msvsnet2010e/index.php" rel="nofollow">LazyFoo's tutorial on setting it up</a>. Everything runs fine on both debug and release configurations when I start the program from visual studio, but when I navigate into the Debug or Release folders of the project and try to run the .exe, the programs break with an error about <code>abort()</code> being called, or they give me the error "X program has stopped working."</p>
  
  <p>I'm including all of my DLLs in the same folder as the executables are being placed, and the game runs perfectly fine from inside VS, but I just can't seem how to figure out how to compile it as a standalone .exe (or even including a folder full of dlls) without it falling apart.</p>
  
  <p>Can someone give me a pretty precise way to get this working? Any help would be great.</p>