Innominandum

I don't know of a way to download hotfixes via script yet, but i'm guessing that you could write a script to parse the mssecure.xml file (microsoft's hotfix list) and download and install the hotfixes. Or , you could download them yourself and use this script to install the hotfixes on local and remote systems. You could find some information here.

Clever

I don't think that will work because the executable doesn't have any code to handle resources. Doing this you will probably damage the file. But then again, you won't know until you try.

They use a programming language and they write the game from scratch. The graphics are made in some graphics program (photoshop, 3dsmax,etc.) and they put it all together. About the objects you are reffering to, I think they create the objects in a 3d program and manipulate them in the game using code. (or something like that). I hoped that helped..

To add you own functionality to the setup.exe program, you will have to decompile it, find caves to add your own custom code, change jump instructions in the decompiled code to point to your code and ofcourse add your own extra radio buttons and stuff. It requires a pretty good knowledge of ASM and executable files structure. I agree with the others, go with Autoplay Media Studio.

It won't work with resource hacker or any resource editing program, because the executable that bat2exe makes is a DOS program not just a console program. So no luck there. You can try Batch File Compiler (google it) but I haven't tried it so I can really say for sure. Any way , good luck and if you find anything post it here so we all learn the trick.

You can use the source code found here to do it, but you must have some programming knowledge and VS.Net to compile it. I hope this helps.