[4./JG53_Badger]

Hey Guys,
I dont know if this is happening to anyone else. I have the splash screen cycler installed and when I click on it, it starts fine and I see all of my different screens. My problem is if I use this cycle program to go into my game, then I cant use the new maps in QMB. It only shows the stock maps. Is this happening to anyone else? It's no big deal I just click on my desktop icon and can play QMB missions that way, but it would be nice to use just my cycler shortcut to go into game and play QMB missions....

[OuttaTime]

Tried it and didn't work, background don't change...

Isn't it supposed to change your background automatically?

Where are you supposed to put the .bat file?

The read me is kinda vague.

[Bearcat]

Where is this mod at.. I go straight to the FF main page when I hit the link on post 1.

[Quelty]

Hi Bearcat,
Lots of my FF stuff up and disappeared around April this year with the sale/closing down thing, maybe same fate happened to this mod - I'm uploading it to mediafire as I type, will take a while (114MB), will post a link when it's done.

Cheers

Quelty

EDIT: Finally uploaded, had to pull a few tga's out to get it under the 100MB free limit;

EDIT 2: Link deleted, see Able72's first post for new link details.

[Bearcat]

Thanks!!

[Lupus]

Updated the link on the front page with a freshly uploaded copy of the latest version of the mod. I am now submitting my mod to the Mods for approval and hosting on this sight

[Spinnetti]

Haven't tried it yet, but will... Had proposed this very method a long time ago, but wasn't much of a windows batch guy.. Glad you did it. Over time, I've collected quite a few of my favorite in-game shots, and decided to write a photoshop action (rather than do these dang things one at a time) that takes my folder of pictures, opens each file, adds my Splash screen text and images on the picture, resizes, scrunches it from native widescreen (so it stretches back out when running at 1680x1050) and saves as a .tga named Backgroundnnn. Really handy if you want to create tons of splash screens!

example:

[Lupus]

Sweet. I'd love that photoshop script, only I run the game at 1600x1200 (I still use a 22" CRT)

[Spinnetti]

Sweet. I'd love that photoshop script, only I run the game at 1600x1200 (I still use a 22" CRT)

Easy enough.. You just change the resize step to size to what you want. In my case, I run wide screen with the widescreen GUI mod, so all my screenshots and GUI screens happen to be 1680x1050, but can do at 1600x1200 just as easy. If you have PS, here's a guide to do it.

Starting conditions:
Have a folder of the images you want to process
Build a .PSD template of the text and images that you want to overlay the target images. Make sure the image size is the SAME as your target resolution of your load screen and GUI . The template should have an empty layer to paste your target images into.

Steps to recreate:
Show the actions window
Create a new action, Name it whatever you want - mine is "Create IL2 Load Screens"
Hit the record button
Navigate to the folder where your .PSD overlay image is and select it
Open the PSD file
Navigate to the folder of your images to be processed
Pick one of the images to be processed (it doesn't matter which one, because we will be overriding this in the batch process anyway)

At this point, you are still in action record mode and have one of your images open, and the PSD overlay image open, both at your target resolution
Select the image you picked to process
Select all the image
Copy
Close the image
Paste the image (in the copy buffer) into the blank background in the PSD image
Resize to 1024x768, with the option to save aspect ratio OFF (when it gets stretched back out in game, it will look right again)
Save as Targa to wherever you want the completed images to go.
When the options come up, save as 24 bit as normal. You can name it whatever you want, because we are going to override this with the batch process too.
Close the image
Stop the recording of the action
** This is important **
Uncheck the first open command in your action script. This will allow us to use the batch command to feed it all the files. Otherwise you will get the same image every time!

At this point PS is still open, but the files are all closed. In the actions window, you will have something that looks like this:



Now its time to run the batch from under the file menu:


On the batch screen, it should look just like this:


There are two folders. The first is where the images to be processed are, and the second is where you want to put them. Once you click ok, it will build your IL2 ready .tga files, in this case all named Background with a sequence number appended.

Voila!

I just created 300 splash screens in about 5 min If you want to be clever, you have have multiple PSD overlay screens, build a whole mess of them, then just hand delete the ones you don't like the look of.

Hope this makes easy work for you... I also did a variant of this that simply resizes and saves as .tga for my mission load screens.

[WindWeapon]

Was attempting to get this working on a Vista 64bit system and receive error that the randfile.exe file is not compatible with 64bit systems. Anyone else running into this issue?

[Doolittle81]

I am looking for help in writing a random SplashScreen generator for another Game/Sim. I've been unable to adapt this MOD to that purpose. Can someone give me a generic tutorial on how to create the correct Bat file/program?

[Spinnetti]

I am looking for help in writing a random SplashScreen generator for another Game/Sim. I've been unable to adapt this MOD to that purpose. Can someone give me a generic tutorial on how to create the correct Bat file/program?

Every game is different, and its unlikely this concept will work for anything else. You would need to know how its coded first. Most games don't have any easily hackable code to change the screens. This is just for IL2

[Doolittle81]

I am looking for help in writing a random SplashScreen generator for another Game/Sim. I've been unable to adapt this MOD to that purpose. Can someone give me a generic tutorial on how to create the correct Bat file/program?

Every game is different, and its unlikely this concept will work for anything else. You would need to know how its coded first. Most games don't have any easily hackable code to change the screens. This is just for IL2

Actually, it is very likely to work. Sometimes you need to break the code, sometimes the pertinent files are openly evident/visible. I have no problem changing the file/image in question in the other game/sim...I do so frequently... I only need the "randomizer Visual Basic application", for which luckily I found found an expert to help me out.

Ohhh...it is not a batch (*.bat file) program as I mentioned erroneously...it has to be a VB application. (Tougher to understand/write).

[socorrista22198]

Thanks Able72 and others for the support, it

[atoll1]

Thanks for this. I know it works in Windows XP 32 bit, but I just tried it in Windows 7 64 bit and found that it doesn't work.

Does anyone have a link to a 64 bit splash screen randomizer that works in windows 7 64 bit or know of how to make it work in 64 bit?

Thanks in advance...