iw4L/docs/WINDOWS.md

Portable Windows folder

make launcher windows creates dist/windows/iw4l-windows-{dev,prod}.zip. Both archives use the password contextrot and are self-contained — the game binary is inside, so the folder runs with no network at all.

iw4l-portable/
├── iw4launcher.exe       from the archive
├── iw4l.exe              from the archive; replaced only by `iw4launcher update`
├── iw4l-ca.pem           public trust anchor
├── LICENSE NOTICE OFL-Oxanium.txt COPYING-FreeFont.txt
├── .env                  from the archive; player edits win forever
├── Modern Warfare 2.lnk  target: game folder or title .exe
├── Black Ops.lnk         optional
├── Modern Warfare 3.lnk  optional
└── iw4l-artifacts/       saves, caches, demos, logs and captures

The four licence files are not decoration: iw4l.exe has both fonts compiled in with include_bytes!, so an archive carrying the binary carries their licences too. release.rs::LEGAL_FILES is the list; a build shipping without them is a bug.

Extract into any dedicated folder and add ordinary Windows .lnk shortcuts to installed Call of Duty title folders or executables. MW2 Multiplayer files are required for the menu (zone/**/common_mp.ff); zone/dlc/*.ff alone is insufficient. BO1 and MW3 are optional. The launcher starts the game without modifying those installations.

Updating is something you ask for. Plain iw4launcher.exe starts the iw4l.exe already in the folder and touches nothing else. Fetching a newer build is iw4launcher.exe update (or IW4L_UPDATE=1 for a shortcut that cannot pass an argument), which needs IW4L_UPDATE_URL in the portable .env. No build replaces its own binary on its own. Publishing is DEPLOY.md.

Steam shipped MW2 and MW3 re-releases whose FastFiles are serialized with 64-bit pointers. MW2 is read in both serializations; MW3 x64 zones are detected and refused, so an MW3 shortcut to such an install contributes no weapons and no maps, and says so in the log (IW5 zone is serialized x64 (Steam re-release)).

The folder holding the two executables is the process working directory even when Explorer supplies another; IW4L_GAMES defaults to it, and .lnk targets inside it are additional read-only search roots. .env is loaded before release-manifest defaults, created only when missing and never overwritten.

.env holds IW4L_UPDATE_URL=https://host:8443/prod plus the master keys from MASTER.md. An unreachable master is not a launch error: the browser keeps retrying. All writable state stays below iw4l-artifacts/ (including settings.cfg, unless IW4L_SETTINGS_PATH overrides it); shortcut targets are never output paths.