I''m attempting to build a simple launcher for various games such as Duke3d and so on. I figure it''s a good place to start. I haven''t really programmed since the 80s. Anyway, I''m having several problems and was hoping someone could point me in the direction of the source code of a launcher. I figure if I look at that, it''ll help enormously and I''ll learn better than if someone just tells me what I''m doing wrong.

The term ''Launcher'' is new to me. Explain Please.

A ''launcher'' is a small program that launches other programs. Usually made to get nice user interface to all the commandline options.

if you have vc++, look up the creatprocess win32 api calls. i''ve never tried making a launcher myself, but they might be what you are looking for.

I just bought Visual Studio6 and I''m not terribly familar with all it options and such. I''m really out of practice. I still force my way through the occasional Sam''s 21days books just to keep in practice, but those seem to be getting less and less detailed. Anyway I went into the creatprocess but I couldn''t find anything in the various help files and indexes. My main problem is how to send dos commands from within the program. I might be using the wrong commands, or I might not be including the right headers.

I don''t know what problems your having, so I can''t help you with anything specific, but it shouldn''t be too difficult to find out some basic ways of opening a window, adnd then executing game files from button clicks - you can find all this out from the VC++ 6 help, if you installed MSDN, you should go to the ''Index'' option under help and type in

Createprocess

that should give you some details on executing files from within windows - other than that there are some examples of win32 coding on this very site, under programming suprisingly enough....