Advanced strategic icons mod

ProCrastinatinG

I really needed this too to play FAF on a 4k monitor at full resolution and I think I fixed it. It took me longer than I'd like to admit, but here it is: I copied all the icons from advanced strategic icons (large version) and made it into a mod. Hope it works for you. I called the mod Advanced Strategic Icons XL. It should be under UI mods, but it's the first mod I uploaded, so maybe I messed something up.

RubberN

Hello guys
I'm trying to play FAF on Linux and I'd like to install these icons too
As far as I understood after installation a file Advanced strategic icons.nxt should come up in folder C:/ProgramData/FAForever/gamedata/

Can anybody provide me with this file?
I think I know where I should put it

Jip

It is best to download the Brewlan UI mods (small / large / classic). They work as intended, assuming that you enabled them.

macdeffy

If you use medium set on higher res i can send you what I'm working on which is a overhaul of asi, but I've not yet finished to upload as a mod yet. Otherwise for small use brewlan as suggested.

RubberN

@jip I don't know why, but Brewian UI mod doesn't work

I'm okay with any strategic icons except default one

RubberN

@macdeffy let's try
my email: [email protected]

Jip

Are you playing via featured mods? Those do not support the custom icon approach (yet).

RubberN

@jip I added the mods through FAF client, but it doesn't work

Do you know how I should do it to make it work?

Femboy

@rubbern Maybe close and open FAF? or make sure another UI mod isn't applied to your icons

Jip

@RubberN and what featured mod do you play, e.g., the game type?

They do not all support this.

ladvip

How to download this mod? The link from the old forum does not work. The google drive link doesn't work either, sorry: the file has been placed in the trash. Where to download the file?

A Former User

@ladvip https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AwuXFpLXiewWKTnirq4Oh3OfCj4htg2z/view?usp=sharing

A Former User

ASI stopped working with FAF. Still works with the naked Steam version.

Anyway, looks like the Redux icons you can get in the mod vault is a good replacement, as it highlights strat launchers and defs the same way.

Cetea

ASI still worked for me as of the 2023 2.0 version of FAF, but with the latest version, it goes right back to the default icons. Anyone know of a way to make it work for the most recent client version? I really like the whole design, but especially the way the mex icons look.

CheeseBerry

ASI still works (on my machine), but only only for games you play, not for replays.

The reason is probably the recent (and very welcome) change of "Allow watching replays while in queue" duplicating the game files when you go into a replay, and the old ASI installer only modifying the base non-replay files as it doesn't use the new UI mod tools for icon mods.

going through the changes it seems the duplicated files are in programdata>faforver>replaydata>gamedata but they use another file format than the normal faf files and pointing the ASI installer to that directory doesn't seem to work.

Sadly the ASI are under a pretty restrictive license by the old author ("You may not sell or change this creation in any way.") so converting them to the new icon tools and uploading them to the vault is technically possible, it's very much a no-go.

Sadly I haven't found an icon set on the vault that I prefer as much as ASI. This is almost certainly a minority opinion but for people that are seemingly as blind as me when it comes to icon recognition, none of them do the trick.

Cetea

Yeah I just really need the mex icons, tml, tmd, nuke, and nuke def. The factory tech level and pgen icons also really helps me out as well, but those are the key ones for me.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know they still work in a normal game though!

EDIT: I would love it if there's some post where I can learn how to customize my own icon set, that would be awesome.

EDIT 2: I tried out redux strategic icons (small) after reading that thread where people argued the pros and cons of ASI, and I mostly love it, except I prefer how the mexes look in ASI. Is there any way I can replace the mex icon there with the icons from ASI?

BlackYps

The files in replaydata don't use a different format, they are just copied over. I don't know why the ASI installer is failing, but I guess it just drops an archive in the folder anyway. You could locate it in gamedata and just copy it over, then it should work in replays as well.

Cetea

@blackyps said in Advanced strategic icons mod:

The files in replaydata don't use a different format, they are just copied over. I don't know why the ASI installer is failing, but I guess it just drops an archive in the folder anyway. You could locate it in gamedata and just copy it over, then it should work in replays as well.

That would be awesome! I'm trying to find where exactly I should copy the files over. I got an "Advanced strategic icons.nxt" file in my ProgramData/FAForever/gamedata; is the file I need to copy? And if so, where should I copy it to?

BlackYps

I think so. Copy it to ProgramData/FAForever/replaydata/gamedata

Cetea

@blackyps

Got it working now, thanks again! On another note about modifying it a bit, anyone know exactly how I can delete certain icons from showing? For instance if I just want it to do mexes, radar, pgens, tmls, tmd, sml and smd, how would I go about doing that.

EDIT: I think I found the way, I can open the installation exe file and delete all the icons I don't like! However for some reason winrar is saying archive corrupted for now.

EDIT 2: Fixed it! Turns out I needed to edit the nxt file installed by the installer with 7zip, not the actual exe. Got it working the way I want now !

Thanks again to Cheese for linking the thread where Blackheart explained the downsides of the mod, I think this is the best of both worlds probably IMHO.