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Any plans for Vin's animated text to be updated


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  • 1 month later...

A new set of patches, and the eternal question:  when will the latest files be fitted to this great mod?

It must be a pain to continually update it every time, especially with multiple engines needing separate treatment.  Would it be possible for someone who knows how to produce a tutorial for those wishing to update their own animated text?  This would relieve the pressure on Vinnart and CMFDR.

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On 30.12.2016 at 0:07 AM, Holman said:

A new set of patches, and the eternal question:  when will the latest files be fitted to this great mod?

It must be a pain to continually update it every time, especially with multiple engines needing separate treatment.  Would it be possible for someone who knows how to produce a tutorial for those wishing to update their own animated text?  This would relieve the pressure on Vinnart and CMFDR.

How detailed do you need that tutorial to be?

Basically it's quite easy:

  1. RezExplode the newest brz archive containing the new strings.txt (e.g. final blitzkrieg v200.brz).
    Note: Mac users are already sh*t out of luck at this point, since there still is no RezExplode utility available on Mac, as far as I know.
    But you can try to ask a friendly Windows user to provide the file for you, they are platform independent ;).
     
  2. Locate the Animated Text Mod folder, rename the strings.txt in this folder to something like strings_old.txt.
     
  3. Copy the exploded strings.txt from step 1 into the Animated Text Mod folder.
     
  4. Open both files (strings.txt , strings_old.txt) in Notepad++. Use the Notepadd++ plugin "Compare" to easily compare both files.
     
  5. Locate the "Soldier State Display" section, it should also show the most differences in the "Compare Nav Bar" (currently around line ~5200).
     
  6. Copy the animated text blocks one to one from the strings_old.txt into strings.txt.
     
  7. Save strings.txt, delete strings_old.txt.

Voila, you're finished. Takes about 5 minutes, I'm doing this regularly now for all updates. Just don't want to go through the extra effort of packaging, uploading etc., which in any case takes longer than doing the adjustments. Anyway, it's not my mod ..

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10 hours ago, Vinnart said:

If it is for CMBN Astrocat it won't work. I have been playing mainly Italy these days so let me see about getting CMFB updated so I can get to the "strings" file.

Generally I would agree, you shouldn't mix strings.txt from different games. But I guess it is noteworthy that the strings.txt is an "engine-file", as such it is not really specific to a single title like CMFB or CMBN as such. For example, modern CMBS strings like "Laser Warning" are also in strings.txt files for the WW2 games.

I quickly compared the strings.txt for CMFB v2.00, CMBN v4.00 and CMRT v2.00:
They are all three identical, so if you updated one, you could simply copy it across to the other games.
I'm not recommending to do this though, just to be on the safe side. But if you do a comparison of the unchanged original files first and find them to be identical, it should work.

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3 hours ago, Mad Mike said:

I quickly compared the strings.txt for CMFB v2.00, CMBN v4.00 and CMRT v2.00:

They are all three identical, so if you updated one, you could simply copy it across to the other games.
I'm not recommending to do this though, just to be on the safe side. 

Indeed, the release of four versions of the games all at once at the same time is a rare event. Even a patch is likely to put them out of sync again.

BTW thanks for the instructions. Doing that on my own is on my long to-do list :)

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7 hours ago, IanL said:

Indeed, the release of four versions of the games all at once at the same time is a rare event. Even a patch is likely to put them out of sync again.

BTW thanks for the instructions. Doing that on my own is on my long to-do list :)

Yes indeed. Rarely have the stars aligned in the past with them being able to work cross games, but glad it is as it is less updating to be done ;)

Thanks for typing out a tutorial Mike. There you go fellas update away if I am lagging behind in putting anything "official" out.

Edited by Vinnart
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  • 4 weeks later...
18 hours ago, JoMc67 said:

Ok, I downloaded AstroCat's Vin's Annimated Text, and extracted with 7Zip to my Z Folder, but it doesn't appear in CMBN :-(

Joe

It should work....I used the same files in all the 4.0 games without issue. Hmmm...

Edited by AstroCat
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Just want to give a shout out thanks to AstoCat for taking care of this update for everyone that appears to be working cross games (think it only happened once before), that is until the next game gets a patch and will likely need updating again. :blink:

I really wish BF would just replace the stock with the graphics of this mod, thus it would be updated automatically with patches and builds. I say this also, not just because it is my mod, but because it simply functions better than text alone in this capacity and would improve the player's experience out of the box. I'm confident that "once you go animated, you never want to go back", so yeah fellas I feel you when I lag on getting updates out. It just gets hard to keep up with it all especially since most of my playing time is always focused on the latest beta game I'm testing so I'm not playing all the titles all the time and am not up to date on all titles all the time.

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On Wednesday, January 25, 2017 at 5:10 PM, AstroCat said:

It should work....I used the same files in all the 4.0 games without issue. Hmmm...

Ok, So its indeed working on all my WWII titles (and sure when FI gets re-released)...What thru me off when firing-up a Scenario was the initial word 'Spotting' for my troops...Then, I remember you saying, it's the 'Light Version' (Spotting word retained instead of Eyeball Symbol). I also didn't pay attention to rest of the different 'Text' Symbols (replacing words) when troops were moving, etc.

All is good, and thanks again Vinnart & Astro :-)

Edited by JoMc67
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8 minutes ago, JoMc67 said:

Ok, So its indeed working on all my WWII titles (and sure when FI gets re-released)...What thru me off when firing-up a Scenario was the initial word 'Spotting' for my troops...Then, I remember you saying, it's the 'Light Version' (Spotting word retained instead of Eyeball Symbol). I also didn't pay attention to rest of the different 'Text' Symbols (replacing words) when troops were moving, etc.

All is good, and thanks again Vinnart & Astro :-)

Cool, glad it's working! :)

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1 hour ago, gundolf said:

I'm kinda mod lazy but if you don't mind me asking what exactly does this mod do? I see a soldier status perhaps on the screen, and symbols. It's got me interested, for moment.

In the normal game, when you select a unit you see a list of its individual soldiers' activities on the lower-left side of the screen.  So, for example, a 10-man squad will show you each soldier's title (squad leader, gunner, rifleman, etc) along with the activity each is pursuing (spotting, aiming, firing, reloading, cowering, etc).

In the vanilla game, those activity labels are text.  This mod replaces that text with easily recognized icons ("spotting" becomes a crosshair, "cowering" shows a small prone figure, etc).  For most people, this makes it *much* easier to take in a squad's status at a glance.  It's far simpler to interpret a column of cowering icons than to read a list and parse how many say "cowering" vs. how many say "reloading" or something else.

The mod always comes in two flavors.  I prefer the "Light" version, which changes all the terms except "spotting," leaving it as text.  ("Spotting" is the default activity that means the unit is basically un-engaged and un-busy, and leaving it as text gives you a quick sense that the unit is not actively doing anything.)

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39 minutes ago, Holman said:

In the normal game, when you select a unit you see a list of its individual soldiers' activities on the lower-left side of the screen.  So, for example, a 10-man squad will show you each soldier's title (squad leader, gunner, rifleman, etc) along with the activity each is pursuing (spotting, aiming, firing, reloading, cowering, etc).

In the vanilla game, those activity labels are text.  This mod replaces that text with easily recognized icons ("spotting" becomes a crosshair, "cowering" shows a small prone figure, etc).  For most people, this makes it *much* easier to take in a squad's status at a glance.  It's far simpler to interpret a column of cowering icons than to read a list and parse how many say "cowering" vs. how many say "reloading" or something else.

The mod always comes in two flavors.  I prefer the "Light" version, which changes all the terms except "spotting," leaving it as text.  ("Spotting" is the default activity that means the unit is basically un-engaged and un-busy, and leaving it as text gives you a quick sense that the unit is not actively doing anything.)

Shhh...but what, Holman, really meant is that Text 'Spotting' is actually an 'Eyeball' (not Crosshairs as that's for 'Aiming').

Edited by JoMc67
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