Re: Original Squad Battles Artwork posted in Mods forum

[monkie]

I appreciate all of the hard work done by the small community to keep SB alive with new art. I have found for myself I had to create a personalized combination of art from the community with some of my borrowed art from other sources to find my best solution.

I find that on the map there really needs to be 3 types of units shown, Leaders, Squads and Support Weapons. I did this by using the Squad Leader type art that others have uploaded and matching them up with proper unit art for the Info boxes. At a glance on the map I can see the general unit type and that helps immensely with getting the overall picture.

The largest challenge as it has been said before is matching up the OOB's with the proper pictures. This can be quite time consuming but I found that using a program called "Auto Hotkey" I was able to create a script where I can easily move through OOB's using just quick keyboard commands. While it's still a bit labor intensive I can do it much faster than when having to click on the small buttons using a mouse and once I got into a groove I could easily get most OOB's done in about 5 minutes or less. If anyone is interested in the script let me know I am happy to share it with you if it would help.



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[Warhorse]

I appreciate all of the hard work done by the small community to keep SB alive with new art. I have found for myself I had to create a personalized combination of art from the community with some of my borrowed art from other sources to find my best solution.

I find that on the map there really needs to be 3 types of units shown, Leaders, Squads and Support Weapons. I did this by using the Squad Leader type art that others have uploaded and matching them up with proper unit art for the Info boxes. At a glance on the map I can see the general unit type and that helps immensely with getting the overall picture.

The largest challenge as it has been said before is matching up the OOB's with the proper pictures. This can be quite time consuming but I found that using a program called "Auto Hotkey" I was able to create a script where I can easily move through OOB's using just quick keyboard commands. While it's still a bit labor intensive I can do it much faster than when having to click on the small buttons using a mouse and once I got into a groove I could easily get most OOB's done in about 5 minutes or less. If anyone is interested in the script let me know I am happy to share it with you if it would help.

Well that is badass! I love the top down and all, but having played ASL for a few decades, I absolutely love those pics! If you wouldn't mind, I could definitely use that script, was thinking about adding the single man to the games as I have in the mod? Thanks in advance!

[Cashew]

I appreciate all of the hard work done by the small community to keep SB alive with new art. I have found for myself I had to create a personalized combination of art from the community with some of my borrowed art from other sources to find my best solution.

I find that on the map there really needs to be 3 types of units shown, Leaders, Squads and Support Weapons. I did this by using the Squad Leader type art that others have uploaded and matching them up with proper unit art for the Info boxes. At a glance on the map I can see the general unit type and that helps immensely with getting the overall picture.

The largest challenge as it has been said before is matching up the OOB's with the proper pictures. This can be quite time consuming but I found that using a program called "Auto Hotkey" I was able to create a script where I can easily move through OOB's using just quick keyboard commands. While it's still a bit labor intensive I can do it much faster than when having to click on the small buttons using a mouse and once I got into a groove I could easily get most OOB's done in about 5 minutes or less. If anyone is interested in the script let me know I am happy to share it with you if it would help.

Is there a way for you to share your modded OOBs maybe packaged with the art, for people like me who are scared of the word "script"?

Such a small community sure has some talented people!

[NikolaiB]

@Workhorse Hey, no worries! Bad days happen to all of us :) I really appreciate the human component to the developer responses instead of just corpo-speak. If anything, this thread has convinced me to start playing more SB (maybe start pbem soon) and to check out the mods.

[Compass Rose]

I appreciate all of the hard work done by the small community to keep SB alive with new art. I have found for myself I had to create a personalized combination of art from the community with some of my borrowed art from other sources to find my best solution.

I find that on the map there really needs to be 3 types of units shown, Leaders, Squads and Support Weapons. I did this by using the Squad Leader type art that others have uploaded and matching them up with proper unit art for the Info boxes. At a glance on the map I can see the general unit type and that helps immensely with getting the overall picture.

The largest challenge as it has been said before is matching up the OOB's with the proper pictures. This can be quite time consuming but I found that using a program called "Auto Hotkey" I was able to create a script where I can easily move through OOB's using just quick keyboard commands. While it's still a bit labor intensive I can do it much faster than when having to click on the small buttons using a mouse and once I got into a groove I could easily get most OOB's done in about 5 minutes or less. If anyone is interested in the script let me know I am happy to share it with you if it would help.

Thanks for posting pics of your mods.  I always enjoy seeing other player's as some can be very creative and look really good.

For me, that has always been a big asset of JTS games in that you can normally get the look that you desire and not be forced to use stock graphics!

JTS games are very "Art Mod" friendly!

[monkie]

The mod I use really isn't my mod, like I said it's borrowed from several others work off of TF Echo website  and some of Iron X's mods all kinda pieced together and correlated so that they match up onto the map. Again the hard part is using the OOB editor to change the pictures for each and every unit.

As far as the "script" it's simply a text file that the program AUTO HOTKEY uses to tell it where to press when your have a certain program open, such as the OOB editor. I have it set up where I can use the 4 Arrow keys plus the W,A,S,D keys to quickly fly through the OOB's and change the pictures.

As far as me packaging the OOB's that is kind of a tough one, because if you use the exact art that I"m using it's fine but once you use something differen't it won't work.  What I've been doing is just going through each OOB for what I am about to play and editing it at that time vs trying to go through each one. Since there are a million combinations of artwork pepole might have the OOB would be unique to each persons setup.

I tried to attach the autohotkey script file but it won't allow it, I am guessing it's a virus type protection thing. So here is the raw data which you can easily just paste into your own script.


#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
#Warn  ; Recommended for catching common errors.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.


Menu, Tray, Tip, PzC Hotkeys ; Tray icon's tooltip
^q::ExitApp ; Ctrl+q - Terminates the script unconditionally
#If WinActive("ahk_exe sqoob.exe")


#up::click 380,135
#down::click 380,155
#right::click 410,145
#s::down
#w::up
#d::Send !de
d::click 140,60
w::click 380,135
s::click 380,155
a::click 410,145
return

[monkie]

I tried to attach some of the .bmps for others to check out but the website is limiting the size to 500kb and these run about 2MB

As a side note some of the art I used it obviously taken from some other wargames and I only used them for my own personal copy, so not how distribution would work. I am guessing not much of a problem since even the squad leader graphics are technically copyrighted but only offered up as a "mod" for personal use.

Perhaps I could put them all into a .zip file and upload offsite somewhere.

[Warhorse]

No problem, and yes wouldn't work for what am planning, but very much appreciate the offer just the same! I will pursue this project, see what happens! Good to see there are folks out there into this series!