Compiling patches to CD

[reddragon105]

There are 2 options that I can think of:

1) Backup the original files from the game disk to hard drive. Install the game, updated it to the latest version and find every file that has been updated by the patch. Replace all of the original files from the game disk (in your backup folder) with the updated files and burn the files to a new disk.
This would be incredibly simple if it worked. However I can't imagine that this would work for very many games. To start with, most game files come compressed in .cab archives so you would need to extract them, update the files, then recompress them and make sure that the game still installs them - because in most cases it won't recognise the new versions of files. You will encounter further problems with patches that add significantly different or even completely new files - the installer just won't know what to do with them... which leads me on to option 2:

2) Install the game, install the latest update, compress the files into a new installer that you make yourself.
This will work quite well, but you'll have to get hold of InstallShield or a similar (freeware if you have no money) program and learn how to use it.

Perhaps the best way is just to do what I do - if I ever burn a backup copy of a game I download the latest patches (and any mods or extras that I want) and add them to a separate folder on the disk. Much less work!
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