SB HQ (Squad Battles launcher)

[Xerxes77]

[Note: Version 1.02 attached, with small fixes and improvements to mod management]

Hey folks,

Just wanted to share another little program I've been working on.



SBHQ is a launcher/front end for the Squad Battles series. Its primary purpose is to provide a single point of access to a collection of SB titles and includes a few handy features for designers as well.

Installation is as simple as it gets - just unzip the file attached and drop SBHQ.exe in the root folder where your SB games are installed (it can coexist with the official WDS launcher). Double click to run. Once started, SBHQ.exe will look for available SB games under the root folder (including mods, as long as they're installed as separate folders containing a recognized executable) and will ask the user to select one of the titles found. Once a game is selected, the screen shown above will appear, from which you can launch a scenario, play a saved game, manage mods (provided JSGME is present in the game folder) and open/edit auxiliary files like .oobs, .pdts, manuals, etc.

The behavior of the different sections of the program should be for the most part self-explanatory. A few notes:

- Columns in the main scenario list can be sorted by clicking on the column header. They are also resizable.
- Clicking on the main game title at the top will bring back the game selection dialog.
- The radio buttons allow filtering by game status (new / old) or mode (except for Direct-Play, currently not supported).
- The "Play" button will launch the game and start the selected scenario automatically, bypassing the classic File Selection Dialog.
- etc.

There's also a button labeled "Autoplay!". This is only available for campaign-enabled titles. Essentially, it lets the user watch the computer fight against itself (AI scripts must be defined for both sides). When clicked, the Autoplay button will create a "dummy" scenario named "#### Autoplay ####.scn" and launch the SB game as usual. The dummy Autoplay scenario should be then selected in the File Selection Dialog in-game like any regular scenario. The difference is that you will see the battle play out automatically, with the AI against itself. This is mostly for fun, but can also help adjust balance issues or tune the AI performance in a given scenario.

The launcher can be invoked via a shortcut that can be pinned to the taskbar/desktop. This provides easy access to a user's full SB collection with just a few clicks.

It's been a fun project. Hopefully it may provide some enjoyment to others. As usual, looking forward to comments, feedback, requests, etc.

Current version: 1.02

[Embis]

This is brilliant.. love it.

[Xerxes77]

This is brilliant.. love it.

Glad you like it!

Forgot to send a BIG shoutout to Ashcloud, who generously provided essential help with testing, feedback and support

[Embis]

well....you asked for it....

Here's a couple of suggestions for tweaks:

I am in the process of building some campaigns so I am in and out of the map editor and the sub map editor all the time so it would be nice to see those utilities added under the scenario files box, I can get to from the WDS menu, but I do prefer your interface and I would use your program more often if I could do that.  I also need to find and and edit .CPD  files so it would save me some scrolling and squinting if I could load those into notepad to be edited and saved.

..in fact maybe that's a whole new utility that needs designing: A Campaign Editor. Building a campaign has to be done by manually editing a .cpd file in notepad. A space in the wrong place, or something on the wrong line can screw the whole thing up quite easily, and there is no real documentation on how to write these files, I had to unpick the structure of the file by trial and error, mainly error, and with a fair amount of help from the community here. It would be nice if a program could be produced that would automate the writing of that .cpd file.

And one very minor niggle; I run a system with the display extended over two monitors. The program always opens in the centre, bridging both monitors. It would be nice for it to either just open in my main display or open in the place where it was when I last used it.

But as I said, I really like this and I think I will probably be using this in preference to the WDS menu most of the time. The proliferation of .pdf docs with the games in the last few updates overpopulates the WDS menu program with stuff that I really don't need to be scrolling through so that I can get to the utilities I want to use. Your program neatly cuts through all that. I am sure some people will want a viewer for those files as well.....but someone else can ask for that, I've got in my requests for now.

[Xerxes77]

well....you asked for it....

Here's a couple of suggestions for tweaks:

I am in the process of building some campaigns so I am in and out of the map editor and the sub map editor all the time so it would be nice to see those utilities added under the scenario files box, I can get to from the WDS menu, but I do prefer your interface and I would use your program more often if I could do that.  I also need to find and and edit .CPD  files so it would save me some scrolling and squinting if I could load those into notepad to be edited and saved.

..in fact maybe that's a whole new utility that needs designing: A Campaign Editor. Building a campaign has to be done by manually editing a .cpd file in notepad. A space in the wrong place, or something on the wrong line can screw the whole thing up quite easily, and there is no real documentation on how to write these files, I had to unpick the structure of the file by trial and error, mainly error, and with a fair amount of help from the community here. It would be nice if a program could be produced that would automate the writing of that .cpd file.

And one very minor niggle; I run a system with the display extended over two monitors. The program always opens in the centre, bridging both monitors. It would be nice for it to either just open in my main display or open in the place where it was when I last used it.

But as I said, I really like this and I think I will probably be using this in preference to the WDS menu most of the time. The proliferation of .pdf docs with the games in the last few updates overpopulates the WDS menu program with stuff that I really don't need to be scrolling through so that I can get to the utilities I want to use. Your program neatly cuts through all that. I am sure some people will want a viewer for those files as well.....but someone else can ask for that, I've got in my requests for now.

Hi Embis,
Just updated the first post with a new version (1.0.1). Two of your wishes (prevent screen straddling and a button for the submap editor) have been granted. Please let me know if they work correctly on your end?

The campaign editor was actually my original pet project. I was researching that before I discovered the Autoplay switch and got sidetracked. I have more ambitious plans, but in light of the recent news it might be prudent to wait for the next update and see exactly what changes before putting more work on those. I will probably keep developing the standard editor though

Thanks for your suggestions, and keep them coming!

[Warhorse]

I love this, thank you very much!!! Brilliant, I absolutely busted a gut laughing at the descriptions for some of my scenario's, Massive, Outrageous, etc.!!! Really good work will use it a lot!!

[Embis]

well....you asked for it....

Here's a couple of suggestions for tweaks:

Snip Snip

Hi Embis,
Just updated the first post with a new version (1.0.1). Two of your wishes (prevent screen straddling and a button for the submap editor) have been granted. Please let me know if they work correctly on your end?

The campaign editor was actually my original pet project. I was researching that before I discovered the Autoplay switch and got sidetracked. I have more ambitious plans, but in light of the recent news it might be prudent to wait for the next update and see exactly what changes before putting more work on those. I will probably keep developing the standard editor though

Thanks for your suggestions, and keep them coming!

Now... thats what I call service !    And it all works just fine here, thank you!

[budd]

Thanks for making this, looks good. One thing, hitting the mod button gives error "failed to execute" the error code is 740.
it doesn't open JSME for me.

[Xerxes77]

I love this, thank you very much!!! Brilliant, I absolutely busted a gut laughing at the descriptions for some of my scenario's, Massive, Outrageous, etc.!!! Really good work will use it a lot!!

Hey Mike, I also thought they were funny *and* appropriate!
Those labels are actually assigned based only on map size (i.e., height x width) but are mostly subjective... at the time I came up with those I hadn't realized that some descriptions already included the scenario size, and they don't always match my categories. Oh well, there's always room for improvement!

(And now that you mention it, I notice that the column is sorted alphabetically and not based on the actual sizes... hum something to fix in the next version)

Now... thats what I call service !    And it all works just fine here, thank you!

Awesome, thanks for confirming!

Thanks for making this, looks good. One thing, hitting the mod button gives error "failed to execute" the error code is 740.

it doesn't open JSME for me.

Hey budd, thanks for bringing this up. Are you trying to launch the program via a shortcut?

If affirmative, the likely reason is that SBHQ.exe needs to be run as Administrator in order to interact with JSGME. I've done some cursory reading online and it seems that previous versions of JSGME did not have this requirement.

The process involves right-clicking sbhq.exe (or its shortcut) and selecting Properties->Compatibility->Run this program as Administrator. If you try it, please let me know if that did the trick?

[Compass Rose]

Very creative and impressive Xerxes77!

Thanks for sharing such a program!