Increase of the unit’s visibility

bongo · #1 July 2nd, 2015, 10:49 AM

Here is a Steel Panthers typical confuse situation…

Hard to know who is whom and to have a synthetic vision of the battlefield.

I consider that in this game we play the role of staff officer rather than a ground commander, thus it is more logical, for me, to have a representation more clearly of the battlefield than the one that we could have by observing it simply binoculars.

It is necessary to admit that the great work of pixel art on thousands of vehicle’s icons of the game is remarkable both at the level of the details and of the camouflaging painting.
As a result, it can be difficult to see vehicles when these are spread in the map’s decorations…

I asked myself the question to know how to return these units more visible.
The solution came from what is made in the world of boardgames :

Draw a white net around the vehicle to contrast it with the bottom on which it is put. Simple, but very effective.

Also, I replaced the infantry’s icons by wargame’s style counters with different colors to be well able to see who is to whom. While being at it I took advantage of it for differentier ATGM and SAM infantry of the standard unit as well as the machine guns.

Certain vague battles became clearer now.
Obviously, there is a small "plastic toy" effect but it is not to displease me.

If some of you are interested in this modification, I could assemble files to make a MOD and post it in the appropriate section.

Let me know…

Bongo

scorpio_rocks · #2 July 2nd, 2015, 07:49 PM

Personally I don't like it - sorry.

If you need to differentiate between factions (and find units) then turn on the ID tags (use one of the small flag mods to avoid the default large flags covering the Icons) and/or ID numbers.

I prefer the "tabletop wargame" look to the "boardgame look" - I play without hexes for instance - and find that your infantry "counters" hide the detail of what terrain those infantry are actually sitting in (many mods are trying to ensure that you can see more, rather than less, of the terrain - roundel VP mod for example). I know some people have even toyed with the idea of a mod to make all infantry the same scale as vehicles (rather than them displaying "bigger" as they do currently) - I have already done this for my motorcycles, etc.

Just as an aside - redrawing every icon in the game would be an enormous and daunting task!

The "cardboard, boardgame tokens" are nicely done btw, just not for me - sorry.

Imp · #3 July 2nd, 2015, 08:25 PM

Why not just turn unit IDs on keypad 5 if you have bought the game.
Also putting ID tags on tells you which side the units on at a glance.
I turn them & the hex grid on & off depending on the situation.
All off & the game really does make you feel your playing with table top miniatures, you also become very good at judging distances after a while.
Cluttered situations turn them back on for a clearer overview.

Mobhack · #4 July 2nd, 2015, 09:55 PM

The whole thing that sold me on the original SP1 was the visual resemblance to proper 1/300 tabletop wargaming. Stacks of cardboard shuffled about a paper map never appealed much to me.

So - making the game look anything like a cardboard stack of counters isn't going to be happening. Though some may prefer it, and release their own mods perhaps.

cheers
Andy

KAreil · #5 July 3rd, 2015, 12:23 AM

If the boardgame-look fits your needs fine!

For it's a no-go - i really really really like "realistic" view SP has. As mentioned before, the small-flags-mode + turned off hex outlines looks great.

bongo · #6 July 3rd, 2015, 03:32 AM

No problem, I made it for my personal comfort above all.

I am an old player of Squad Leader and I always look for to feel the same feeling as when I played this game. It is the sense of my approach here.

To scorpio_rocks,

For your information, extracting in BMP, redrawing with white line and recompacting in SHP the 3 544 icons that contains hulls tooks me less than one hour (to be perfectly honnest, it tooks to my computer because these tasks were entirely automated…).
The real job was to re-center each icons with the SP-FIX tool (7 hours with the well known SHP EDIT «WRITE-SHOW-WRITE» method…) but it was a piece of cake compared to my daily job as web designer.

This weekend, i'll do the same for WinSPWW2...

To Andy,

I am stunned that you are a fan of tabletop wargames because you are the only ones in the world of the wargame to have managed to realize a computer adaptation which returns as well the sensations of a classic boargame hex and token. Many developers ventured on it and none, according to me, reached in by The Camo Workshop there … Incredible …

I hope that you are conscious there. You created the "grail" of every fan of classic wargame.

scorpio_rocks · #7 July 3rd, 2015, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bongo

... extracting in BMP, redrawing with white line and recompacting in SHP the 3 544 icons that contains hulls tooks me less than one hour (to be perfectly honnest, it tooks to my computer because these tasks were entirely automated…)...

WOW! Would love to get my hands on the little program that pulled that off! I would happily pay good money for the ability to extract all .bmps from a .shp file in 1 go and load a bunch back into one. My guess is a number of the other modders of this game would give their eye teeth for such a tool!

bongo · #8 July 3rd, 2015, 08:16 AM

Are you serious ? Don't tell me you extract them manually... Oh my god, It takes hundreds of hours.
I used 2 little programs made by Fred Chandlas (the same as SHP edit) originnaly developped for Panzer General but they work fine for WinSPMBT and WinSPWW2 (simply don't forget to use the Camo_Workshop_Palette.pal file as a palette for these 2 programs).

shpsym for extracting all icons as BMP files
(You can download it here)

makshp for recombining all BMP files as an SHP files
(You can download it here)

If you need tips for using these 2 programs, you can ask me, it will be a pleasure to help you.

For automated drawing, i used the automatic programable tasks from Adobe Photoshop.

Now, if it can help you or another modders, here are all the 8 600+ original icons for WinSPMBT in BMP format in a RAR file :
(You can download it here)
(take care about the IDX files they are needed for recombining)

And here are all the 5 900+ original icons for WinSPWW2 in BMP format in a RAR file :
(You can download it here)
(take care about the IDX files they are needed for recombining)

Hope your dream come true...

scorpio_rocks · #9 July 3rd, 2015, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bongo

Are you serious ? Don't tell me you extract them manually... Oh my god, It takes hundreds of hours.

Yep afraid so.

Thanks for this it will be a god send for doing updates to things like the flag and roundel mods.

You have made my life a HEAP easier - Thank You! (Merci beaucoup!)

bongo · #10 July 3rd, 2015, 08:58 AM

I am frightened by what notice there.
I can't imagine i am the only one to know these programs on this Forum. Didn't anybody told you about these before ?
It shocks me.
I work at present as Web designer / programmer in the world of the university research and we used to share our works.
We work daily in a collaborative way.
You cannot imagine all that we can realize together if we use the skills of each.
Internet and more specially a forum are not just postal services, they are multipliers of strength. If in more we use the strength of the cloud computing and the possibilities of modern data processing, we can realize real miracles.

That's the meaning of my post about the future of Steel Panther.