Trying to compile well-documented github projects is a crap shoot half the time. iirc no one figured out how to compile even the Windows XP source code when it got leaked and it’s long gone/no longer obtainable so no one can try. The chances of anything coming out of this that the average person will see are almost complete zero.
My experience with large projects is that the bigger they get, the more their build systems turn into large projects in their own right. Maintaining the build for something like Windows is probably many people’s full-time job, so it’s no surprise a bunch of amateurs with no docs couldn’t do it.
Is it possible to create a custom build system by compiling little bits at a time?
For example, you find the opengl code (or whatever gfx lib they’re using), strip it down it only displays a window and doesn’t reference any other gta code. Then it could be compiled without much trouble. Then another small system, say matrix transforms, can be isolated from the original code and integrated with the custom code to get it to compile.
This way you are creating your own build system ad hoc, and you find out what it needs as subsystems are added. Provided the code is decently decoupled and modular, it should be theoretically possible, even if it is still an absurd amount of work.
Or does this sound completely wacky to you?
You have the XP source? The full one? I used to have NT source but not complete
I still have the source for both the NT (3.5 and 5) and the XP/Server 2003 code (nt5src.7z); But you can still fond it all quite easily on Google and even Github.