as some of you reported after the release of 4.8.6.0 patch, the launcher would crash instantly in some cases.
To give you more insight about what is wrong, I decided to make this post.
Launcher is written by me in C#, which is a programming language, that needs .NET framework to work.
.NET framework is installed with your windows, or can be installed separatedly.
There are several versions:
1.0, 1.1 - currently not used, too old
2.0 / 3.0 - installed by default with Windows Vista
3.5 - installed by default with Windows 7
4.0 / 4.5 - installed by default with Windows 8
For curious members, you can check which versions you have by running this program: http://files.bkmod.net/NET_Detector.exe
Now, when you are making some program, you "target" it to some framework, so it works on certain framework and you need to have it installed. Versions 2.0-3.5 are kind of compatible and 4.0-4.5 too.
Before Blitzkrieg 4.8.6.0, we had 2 launcher executables - one, default, targetted to 3.5, so it worked for everybody on windows 7, who didn't fucked up their framework somehow and on windows 8 it basically said to user "hey, you need .net framework 3.5 to run this". So that was kind of okay. But additionally, we had second file, called like launcher_nfw4, which was targetted to 4.0, so for windows 8 users who, for unknown reason, would rather not install previous frameworks (you CAN have multiple of them), there was second launcher.
Now, in Blitzkrieg 4.8.6.0, I decided that two launchers are not needed and from some documentation I found out, that I can make one executable run on 3.5 and 4.0+. So I did that, but I targetted it for 4.0. In that case, when run by somebody with only 3.5, the launcher would crash (not tell you that you need 4.0 or anything like that). So that was probably the problem, causing some players being unable to run it. It was fixed by targetting it for 3.5, which then works on 4.0 even without installing 3.5... hope thats clear.. and now you know, why I always want most info about everything, about what system do you have, not because I am hoarder of information, but because of fixing such problems
Anyway, even if launcher doesn't work (for ANY reason), you can still play the game just fine.
What launcher does?
1) It deletes content of your Blitzkrieg folder, excluding Archives and Locale. That is for compatibility reasons, if somebody played with files, their might be incompatible afterwards.
2) It creates 2 folders called BKCMPatchInstalled and BKCMPatch_VIII, these are used for some launcher internal work, and are mostly there only as a legacy from time when you could switch between open beta hotfixes and community patch, their function should be replaced by something else in the future.
3) When start is clicked, it runs RelicCOH.exe -nomovies -dev -mod Blitzkrieg.
So you can practically make these yourself, the first and second aren't even needed most of the time and third you might add to your steam launch properties.
The problem was fixed and patch is already updated.
