Win-build-improvements

[Alexbeav]

Hey Alariq,

We haven't discussed using AI-assisted coding so I'm not sure if you're cool with me submitting changes that I've worked on with claude's help. If not just reject this PR and let me know in the comment.

I'm opening this PR to implement additional documentation & automation in getting this set up for windows contributors. With this someone is able to immediately get up and running by running the 2 batch files that extract the 3rdparty.zip and configure cmakelists properly.

The result is 2 clicks and anyone is able to immediately work on and contribute from windows.

More details:

• Clarify that 3rdparty/ is temporary and extracted from 3rdparty.zip
• Update build steps to show extraction process
• Add note about not committing 3rdparty folder to git
• Ensure clean repository state while maintaining build convenience

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Co-Authored-By: Claude noreply@anthropic.com

Cheers!

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds automation and documentation to streamline setting up and building the project on Windows.

• Introduces setup_build_environment.bat to extract dependencies and validate the environment.
• Adds build_windows.bat to configure and build the main application and resource DLL.
• Provides CLAUDE.md with step-by-step Windows build instructions.
• Cleans up formatting in code/mainmenu.cpp.

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

File	Description
setup_build_environment.bat	New script to extract 3rdparty.zip, verify folder structure, and check for required tools
build_windows.bat	New script to configure and build the project and resources on Windows
CLAUDE.md	Detailed Windows build documentation and repository overview
code/mainmenu.cpp	Formatting cleanup—blank-line removals and struct brace style

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

CLAUDE.md:29

• [nitpick] These commands are Windows PowerShell or batch commands; consider using a more appropriate code fence label like powershell or bat to match the script syntax.

```bash

[Copilot]

There's a stray standalone semicolon here resulting in a no-op statement. You can remove this extra semicolon to clean up the code.

Suggested change

	bool MainMenu::bDrawMechlopedia = false;
	;
	bool MainMenu::bDrawMechlopedia = false;

[Copilot]

[nitpick] The 'pause' at the end requires user input and can block automated build pipelines. Consider removing it or making it conditional for interactive use.

Suggested change

	pause
	REM Conditionally pause if running interactively
	if not defined CI (
	pause
	)

[Copilot]

Enclose both source and destination paths in quotes to handle directories with spaces (e.g., copy "%MC2_ROOT%\...\strings.res.cpp" "%CD%").

Suggested change

	copy "%MC2_ROOT%\test_scripts\res_conv\strings.res.cpp" .
	)
	if not exist "strings.res.h" (
	echo Copying strings.res.h...
	copy "%MC2_ROOT%\test_scripts\res_conv\strings.res.h" .
	copy "%MC2_ROOT%\test_scripts\res_conv\strings.res.cpp" "."
	)
	if not exist "strings.res.h" (
	echo Copying strings.res.h...
	copy "%MC2_ROOT%\test_scripts\res_conv\strings.res.h" "."

[Copilot]

[nitpick] To allow running the script from any directory, consider using %~dp0 to reference the script's location (e.g., if not exist "%~dp0CMakeLists.txt") rather than relying on the current working directory.

Suggested change

	if not exist "CMakeLists.txt" (
	echo ERROR: CMakeLists.txt not found. Please run this script from the mc2 root directory.
	exit /b 1
	)
	REM Check if 3rdparty.zip exists
	if not exist "3rdparty.zip" (
	echo ERROR: 3rdparty.zip not found in the current directory.
	echo Please ensure 3rdparty.zip is present in the mc2 root directory.
	exit /b 1
	)
	REM Extract 3rdparty.zip if 3rdparty folder doesn't exist
	if not exist "3rdparty" (
	echo Extracting 3rdparty dependencies...
	powershell -Command "Expand-Archive -Path '3rdparty.zip' -DestinationPath '.' -Force"
	if not exist "%~dp0CMakeLists.txt" (
	echo ERROR: CMakeLists.txt not found. Please ensure this script is located in the mc2 root directory.
	exit /b 1
	)
	REM Check if 3rdparty.zip exists
	if not exist "%~dp03rdparty.zip" (
	echo ERROR: 3rdparty.zip not found in the script's directory.
	echo Please ensure 3rdparty.zip is present in the mc2 root directory.
	exit /b 1
	)
	REM Extract 3rdparty.zip if 3rdparty folder doesn't exist
	if not exist "%~dp03rdparty" (
	echo Extracting 3rdparty dependencies...
	powershell -Command "Expand-Archive -Path '%~dp03rdparty.zip' -DestinationPath '%~dp0' -Force"