SFML's load functions are relative to the working directory of the program (when you don't give it an absolute path like "C:\\")
When you run a program from explorer, the working directory is set to where the exe file is.
Running a program from inside Visual Studio uses the working directory set in the project properties. Annoyingly, VS defaults all projects to having a working directory of where the vcxproj file is, instead of where the exe file is.
There's two ways to fix this:
1 - Go into project properties, Configuration Properties / Debugging / Working Directory and change it from $(ProjectDir) to $(TargetDir)
(TargetDir is the directory with the exe file, ProjectDir is the directory with the vcxproj file)
2 - Use Win32 to ask for the directory of where the program (the exe) is and change the working directory to that.
This is the code I use for the second option (since otherwise I always forget to change the project properties):
char buf[MAX_PATH];
GetModuleFileName(NULL,buf,MAX_PATH);
std::string filename(buf);
size_t backslash = filename.find_last_of('\\');
if (backslash != std::string::npos)
{
filename = filename.substr(0, backslash);
}
SetCurrentDirectory(filename.c_str());
Sometimes you might want the ability to set different working directories externally, the second method will cancel out that and might therefore be unwanted.
