Help I Require Immediate Reinforcements! <Source Code Modernization>

[Pedeca]

The modernization process for Renegade and Generals' source codes is proving to be as troublesome task as I first predicted.

The first hurdle is to have a working copy of Visual Studio 6.0, and then to upgrade it to Service Pack 5 (the latest version). Although I got VS6 to run on Windows 10, it just doesn't allow me to open files without crashing the program (likely due to my security, but that's difficult prospect in itself). Installing it in a Virtual Machine has its own problems (memory limitations being one of them depending on the version of Windows), but could be ideal.

Thus, I am here to ask for some reinforcements on this issue.

The objective is clear: get Visual Studio 6.0 either installed on your own system or a virtual machine. The version does not seem to matter, so either Professional or Enterprise seems to work. Just remember, if getting the installation disks off of the Internet Archive (or physically) to remember that Professional Edition has 2 disks and Enterprise Edition has 3 disks (you can either mount them in a disk reader or unzip all parts into the same folder with PowerISO), and all disks must be of the same language.

Then you need to get the Service Pack 5 (SP5) update for VS6 and successfully install it. If correctly installed, the name of VS6 should update in the "About Visual C++" option in the "Help" section.

All that being done, you can then open the .dsw file into the program and then follow the steps on the source code repositories on how to rebuild the sources (Build > Rebuild, but also the code will either need to change, be removed, or get the OG files for the rebuild).

After that is successfully done, it can be then be opened in Visual Studio .NET 2003 and be converted to a modern VS project. That part is really easy, .NET 2003 can be installed and ran in modern Windows no problem, but the code must be rebuilt first in VS 6.0, and that's where headaches come from. And from there any modern Visual Studio will be able to open it and tell which parts need changing.

Alternatively, one could just build the VS projects from scratch using the files and basing the connections on the dsw files. But this is its own work. Either way, I'm taking a break from this endeavor, I've lost too much sleep on this already.

How it has felt attempting to get VS 6.0 to install and work correctly: