Ive recently seen an increase in activity here, saw quite a few good ships/fleets and good builders. Always nice to see BSF shipbuilding isnt dead, despite lack of game development.
Also recently, ive discovered Autohotkey. Its a macro player/recorder with its own high-level scripting language, which turned out to be quite powerful. So, without much thinking, i decided to write a few hopefuly helpful scripts that recreate some of the features SM Alternative was supposed to have. A few hours of coding, and this is what i have.
INSTALLATION AND RUNNING:
First off, youll need the Autohotkey executable. Download it from here:
http://www.autohotkey.com/download/
Now download my script:
http://www.autohotkey.net/~Kaelis/SMHelper1.10.rar
Install Autohotkey, then extract SBHelper.rar. It has two .ahk files and a colors.txt file, they all need to be in the same directory.
To start SM Helper, simply double-click on SMHelper.ahk. You can terminate it by either closing the window or right-clicking the icon in tray menu (white H on green background) and choosing 'Exit'.
OVERVIEW:
Screenshot:
Features:
- Nudging pieces by specified amount of pixels with a single mouse click or key combination
- Mirroring one piece around another
- Changing custom color of pieces with a single mouse click or key
- Several alterable color fields to use for color changing, with hotkeys and saving
USAGE INSTRUCTIONS:
* Moving:
You can nudge selected piece by amount of pixels (offset) specified with +/- buttons in Move Mode. To do this, use the combination of windows key+movement arrow. So if offset is 10 and you press Win+Left arrow, selected piece will move 10 pixels to the left.
You can also go into move mode by pressing Up/Down/Left/Right button or by using [ (left square bracket key)+ movement arrow combination. This allows you to move pieces in specified direction with a single left click, without the need to select it first. To exit out of move mode, press space.
There are two methods for moving: Edit, the default one, moves pieces by going into the edit tab of shipmaker and changing x/y coordinates there. Second one, Keys, simply simulates keystrokes (shift+arrow), but is limited in number of pixels to move - itll always move by 10, disregarding current offset setting.
While in move mode (or color mode), do not experiment; don't try to do anything other than clicking on pieces to move them/change their colors, because you may experience some unexpected behaviour. If you need to do something else (especially with mouse), simply exit out of relevant mode.
* Mirroring:
SMHelper has an ability to mirror piece A around piece B, using piece C as parent. To do this, first select the piece you want mirrored and press , (comma), this will mark it for mirroring. Next, select a piece you want to mirror around and press . (dot), this will mark it as mirror center. Now just select a piece you want to be a parent for the new mirrored piece, and press / (slash) in order to perform the mirroring. You can also select the mirror point first, and mirroring target after that, the order doesn't matter.
* Changing color:
By pressing ' (apostrophe key) you can change the custom color of selected piece to the color thats currently active. You can also use windows key + left mouse button to change the color of a piece thats under mouse cursor.
To go into Color Mode, press the corresponding button or ] (right square bracket key). In color mode, you change piece colors by simply clicking on them. To exit out of color mode, press space or ].
To switch active colors, first press numeric dot/del key to toggle color hotkeys on, then press corresponding numeric key to activate that color. Five stars in color field will indacate currently selected color. You will now 'paint' with that color. You can also use - (minus/underscore) and = (equals/plus) keys to cycle through active colors.
To change colors, click on their corresponding buttons. The default starting colors are defined in colors.txt file.
* Other hotkeys:
~ (tilde key) suspends (toggles off) all hotkeys except alt+r. Tray icon will change from H to S to indicate that hotkeys are currently suspended.
Alt+r reloads the script. Due to the nature of macros, sometimes they can get messed, lock up, etc. Should this happen, try reloading the script (note that colors will revert to their defaults, reloading is just like closing and running it again).
There you go. Hope someone can benefit from it.
You can post your ideas/requests, ill see what i can do. Id also be happy to help with explaining/modifying my script.
