Semi-Transparent Map Icons for SF2 Series 1.0

Compatible with Strike Fighters 2 Series of games.

One thing that has bugged me about the Strike Fighters series is the object icons are both large and opaque. Compound this with the fact that they cannot be filtered, and it makes for difficult mission planning over areas of dense activity. This mod reduces the icon size by 25% and makes the icons semi-transparent, which allows you to easily see the enemy and friendly forces while still seeing the map underneath the forces. This is especially useful for runway strikes, where you will want to know the orientation of the runway prior to setting up your Initial Point.

Specifically, his mod converts the BMP object icons to TGA and adds an alpha channel that ranges from 50% to 75% opacity. Likewise, this mod updates the PLANNINGMAPSCREEN.INI in order to call the new TGA files as well as reduce the Object Icon Size from 32 pixels to 24 pixels.

Easy Installation (if you are not running any other menu mod)

Copy the included Menu folder into your SF2 mods folder

Manual Installation (if you have an existing menu mod)

As long as your menu mod doesn't change the PLANNINGMAPSCREEN.INI file, you should just be able to copy these files to your SF2 Mods folder. If you do use a custom PLANNINGMAPSCREEN.INI, then in addition to copying the TGA files to your [sF2 Mods]\Menu folder, you will need to make the following changes to PLANNINGMAPSCREEN.INI:

[MapData]
<...>
FriendlyAircraftIcon=FriendlyAircraftIcon.tga	<-------change these from BMP to TGA
FriendlyGroundForceIcon=FriendlyGroundForceIcon.tga
FriendlyNavalUnitIcon=FriendlyNavalUnitIcon.tga
FriendlyRadarIcon=FriendlyRadarIcon.tga
EnemyAircraftIcon=EnemyAircraftIcon.tga
EnemyGroundForceIcon=EnemyGroundForceIcon.tga
EnemyNavalUnitIcon=EnemyNavalUnitIcon.tga
EnemyRadarIcon=EnemyRadarIcon.tga	
<...>
ObjectIconSize=24 <---- change this from 32
<...>

You can resize the ObjectIconSize to whatever you like, but the included HighlightIcon.tga is set for a 24 pixel Object Icon. If you wish to keep the ObjectIconSize at 32, you can do so; just remove the HighlightIcon.tga from your [sF2 Mods]\Menu folder and the default icon from the CAT file will be used. If you wish to use any other size icon, you will need to make changes to HighlightIcon.tga yourself. If you know of a way to change this in the INI file, please let me know so that I can put it in my next update.

Future Compatibility Issues

In order to ensure compatibility with future official SF2 patches, you may need to extract PLANNINGMAPSCREEN.INI from the MenuData.CAT file and compare the files to ensure compatibility. You can quickly find my changes in the sections bracketed by //.

For support, please post in the corresponding File Announcement thread at CombatAce.