How do I compile it?

Also, due to the recent discovered stability issues with First Strike in BF2142 now that the master account server is gone, I have decided to abandon the idea of releasing First Strike as stand alone.  Having the game crash after every map restart is, IMO, a game killing bug.

I would still like to release an new version of the mod with an updated launcher.

I am also looking at releasing an updated 1.5 patch to allow players to install on newer OS, like windows 10.

They've removed all the filters so it's hard to say for sure how it's done, but I'm pretty sure they've got their own master server list which the game is reading from. I'm not sure what the state of BF2 is in terms of server lists, it's possible they are reporting to some other list (either way, they've had to change where it's being queried from) and it purely displays what's available based on hard-set filters.  Thats a separate task tho

Yes Dnamro, changing where the launcher looks for the installation directory in the registry is no problem

Great to have your help on the launcher.  Definitely want to ditch the updater.  It was useful when First Strike was an active multiplayer mod to make sure everyone had the same version.  Like you said, getting the public update to kick off was always troublesome.   

The main thing is to be able to get it work with a stand alone version of First Strike.   I was thinking that I can make the installer for the stand alone version set a path in the registry, but the launcher appears to look for the BF2142 path.   I thought about setting the BF2142 path to the stand alone version location, but this creates a conflict if BF2142 is installed or they want to install it in the future.   If the launcher could be changed to pick up the path from the registry entry that I would set with the stand alone installer to something like:

HK LM\Software\First Strike\Path

Just to be clear.  My intent is to release First Strike as a stand alone by including the game engine files needed to play.  To that end, we don't need the news ticker either, but a nice graphic would be good.  I want to set up First Strike so that it can be enjoyed as a singleplayer game for the foreseeable future.

PR also took video options out of the game and it's all done via .ini (or whatever BF used lol) edits from the launcher. FS has quite a few settings where things have to be at 100%, so that may be a sensible direction for FS as well.

If we're planning on ditching the old updater method (which we should, cause it was a pretty fragile process) then there's really not much to it other than keeping launch options stored, and you know, actually launching the game..

Anyway I'll upload it soon, but I might just try to redesign the whole thing.

Gwyn got in contact with me and I'll be happy to assist with the launcher. I'm pretty sure I found the latest sources files, I just need to make sure it compiles and isn't too messy, then I can upload it to Github.

If you could get in touch with them, it would be helpful to have a launcher that work with the stand alone version.

It would be easier if we could get the launcher updated or create a new launcher.    Having the launcher manage accounts would definitely be the way to go and absolutely necessary for multiplayer.

As far as using it for an updater, I would be fine with losing the extraction capability and use the standard method of updating the whole zip file and just overwriting the old files with the new ones.    For singleplayer, having the launcher not do updates is not a big deal.  It would be good for multiplayer to make sure everyone has the same version.  For singleplayer, all I need is a launcher that can read the install location from the registry for the stand alone version.   What I am going to have to do for now is to have the installer set up a fake BF1242 entry and point to the stand alone version, so that the launcher can set up it's config file to match.    But the updater needs to be able to be disabled, because it will be confusing to new players.  I have it set up so that it doesn't update anything, but if you don't turn updates off manually, it will check for an update every time.

If you're talking about the FS launcher Imperial made it and Nekosaur was heavily involved in the last few updates. If needed I'm sure I can get either of them to give you a poke, or have it entirely reworked by some of the BI guys. Tbh I'd say that it's probably worth a re-do anyway. The old launcher(s) worked from unzipping all the folders, merging content, and rezipping as needed.  This saved a lot of time downloading and made the updates very size-efficient, however there were loads of problems people had with this process not working and a reinstall/redownload was pretty much always required.  These days peoples connections are so much faster and the filesize for updates for this game will be minuscule compared to the storage needed for pretty much any other game, that the process could be simplified and less error-prone.

PR has went the way of having a launcher based user authentication system + I'm pretty sure they had to create and host their own Server List now that those machines got shut down.  I'm not sure how much you'll want to base off of their ideas, but I'm personally very heavily in favour of having some kind of User Authentication process so that you know the person you're playing with is the person they say they are, rather than some random sausagepilot pinching someone elses name

Regarding hosting, I'm quite happy to once again offer BlackIntels services in this matter.  This includes Master-Server hosting for populating the server list and the authentication stuff if needed. Linux or Windows is available.

In terms of testing, I'm pretty confident I can mobilise most the old BI members who have testing experience, as well as some of the other guys from back then.  Give me a shout if needed.