Files
BT411/game
CydandClaude Opus 5 8408165d92 Find content\ ourselves: a bare exe launch no longer scatters config and dies
Field report: `.\btl4.exe -fit` from build\Release opens the mission console,
then the mission crashes on Launch.

ROOT CAUSE (pre-existing landmine, newly reachable).  The engine resolves
BTL4.RES, VIDEO\, BTDPL.INI, the eggs AND both player config files
(bindings.txt, environ.ini) RELATIVE TO CWD.  Every launcher .bat does
`cd content` first, so this never showed.  A bare launch of the exe therefore
found no resources ("Resource file btl4.res v1.0.0.0 is obsolete!"), wrote a
stray bindings.txt / environ.ini / btl4.log NEXT TO THE EXE -- so the player's
real ones in content\ looked like they had never been created -- and killed the
mission generation the menu launched (the child inherits the parent's cwd).

Recent work made that path inviting rather than obscure: glass is the desktop
default, a zero-arg launch opens the menu, and -fit is documented as something
you pass on the command line.

FIX: BTEnsureContentDirectory() runs before anything resolves a relative path
(the log file included, so a bare launch logs where the launchers log).  If cwd
has no BTL4.RES, probe from the exe's own directory -- ..\..\content for the
shipped layout, plus the flattened and in-content cases -- and
SetCurrentDirectory there.  Says so in the boot line when it had to go looking.
Belt and braces: the environ.ini writer refuses to write unless BTL4.RES is
beside it, so a failed probe cannot scatter a settings file either.

ALSO: -fit was silently dropped when the menu relaunched into a mission.  The
front end rebuilds the child's command line from scratch, and the flag was
parsed at window creation -- code the menu process exits long before reaching.
Parsed early into gBTFitDisplay now, and appended to the relaunch.

Verified: bare `btl4.exe -fit` from build\Release leaves ZERO files next to the
exe, writes environ.ini + btl4.log into content\, and the mission child's exact
command line (-net 1501 -platform glass) from that same wrong cwd now logs
"cwd: found the content directory from the exe path", loads resources and
enters RunMissions instead of dying.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-26 02:41:46 -05:00
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