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