[Will]

If you don't understand what the parts of the Win32 API are for, then yes, it may seem like a mess. And yes, there are some parts that are unnecessarily hairy. But the same thing can be said about parts of dotNET.

The 22.4MB download is not the entire download. That's the part that checks for previously installed versions, hardware profiles, etc. and then queues up the rest of the framework for download and integration/compilation. So if you're upgrading from 1.0 to 2.0, it doesn't need to re-download all the backwards compatible stuff. The framework itself is 280MB for the x86 version. And those 280MB need to come from somewhere.

And less memory usage is a good thing. Even 11MB is worth quibbling over, especially for a rather trivial application like a modlauncher. Because there are lots of those trivial little applications, and if all of them begin using triple the RAM they needed, you very quickly run into performance issues.

Anyway, you should probably give Win32 another shot, it seems like you've had bad experiences. Especially for an app like this, the difference between coding with .NET and with "old technology" is practically zero. Any decent visual editor will take care of all the messy GUI bits, and you can just fill in the actual logic. Which really only consists of overwriting a text file with a given relative path, and calling a run() method that optionally includes a saved file in the command switches. And doing that is virtually identical between the COM and .NET interfaces.

Unless your major complaint is making the GUIs, which means you aren't using visual editors, and also that you're masochistic enough to hand-code that stuff. To which I have to say, "Good God man, you have better uses of your time!" Let the machines handle that mundane stuff.