VisualC++, Roguelikes, and Me...

Okay... am I retarded?  i want to make a roguelike, right?  lots of CS students used to do that anyway...  But I've downoaded all kinds of Roguelike's source codes, and tried to compile them, only to be missing all sorts of shit.  am I wrong to think this stuff would be in the source files?  or should they not tell me extra things i should DL, b/c they don't.  hell, IVAN even had its own VisualC++ 6 project which i loaded and it STILL didn't work.  I have little experience using VisualC++ (8, right now) so i don't know if I'm stupid, or these people just submit their source code when it doesn't compile...

Most RL's sources look like fucking shit, even if you do compile it it won't be that useful. The average rougelike writer codes for !!OMG COMPILER INDEPENDENT and ZOMG HARDCORE C but their source was made from 10000 hacks and quick-fixes so it looks awful.

If you still want to get it to work, follow README, usually they want you to compile using gcc in a linux environment (visual c++ rarely "just works" on anything, even when they say it does)