Author Topic: Soldat Screenshot Converter  (Read 20453 times)

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Offline Toumaz

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Soldat Screenshot Converter
« on: July 17, 2009, 06:52:09 pm »
Soldat Screenshot Converter is a tool that automatically converts any screenshots taken during your game session to PNG/JPG format, followed by deleting the BMP files that are made superfluous.

What might distinguish this application from many other generic batch converters is that it is fully automatic and non-obtrusive; as soon as you've exited your game SSC will get to work with converting your screenies. It'll save you the time and bother of manually converting them and immediately making sure there's no overly hefty BMP files nomming up all your disk space (users who automatically take a screenshot of the end-game score will know exactly what I'm talking about).

The download is attached to this post; scroll down!

Kudos to Deathdancer aka Dancing Walrus for inspiring me to code this. Cheers to Caphriel, Cory and Geoffrey for testing.



SSC v1.1 2009-07-18
  • Format can now be set to either PNG or JPG (right click tray icon)
  • Possibility to convert old BMP:s (right click!)
  • Fixed program arguments issue when using double quotation marks

SSC v1.0 2009-07-18
  • Initial release



Installation Instructions
While the application itself will give you a lot of helpful nudges along the way in case you'd do something wrong, here goes:

  • Extract the contents of the .zip file to your Soldat directory.
  • Rename Soldat.exe to Game.exe.
  • Rename ssc.exe to Soldat.exe.
  • You did well!



Before you'll ask "hold up wtf wtf why do I need to rename my soldat executable" - let me explain how this works a bit more in-depth.

Pretty much all SSC does is to spawn the Soldat process and then check the Screens folder for newly created files. In order to have SSC run every time you start Soldat, the easiest way to integrate this with start menu shortcuts/clickers/etc. is to simply have SSC act as the game itself.

SSC will pass any arguments on to the actual game.exe - in other words, mods and clickers will still continue to work with no problems whatsoever - and then simply convert any newly created screenshots as soon as Soldat is shut down.

So the entire renaming process is simply in order to streamline the integration with Soldat, and make sure that SSC will run whenever you really intended to start Soldat directly. Oh, and it comes pre-equipped with icons with proper alpha transparency, too, and not the dirty paintjob Michal did around the time 1.4 was released!

Sadly, SSC will require you to run it as an administrator since it needs to do some registry edits in order to maintain the soldat:// URL handler which Soldat will otherwise re-create pointing to game.exe.

Oh, and you'll need the .NET framework, too. Don't have it installed nor do you want to install it? Don't download this application.



Anyhow, enough blabbering!
Here's a series of screenshots to show how this actually works in action:


Upon startup, SSC will start Soldat and then snugly position itself next to it in the tray, and you really don't need to care about it. However, if you're Curious George, double clicking it will yield...


...this. Nothing fancy; merely gives you a few instructions on how it works in case you need that little extra push along the road.


SSC will detect screenshots and list the number of screens it'll process once you quit Soldat.


And as soon as you Soldat is exited, that's exactly what it'll get to work with! Again, SSC is non-obtrusive; you'll only see this dialog if you've explicitly asked the window to appear by double-clicking the tray icon.


And as soon as it's all done with its dirty work, it'll inform you that all screenshots have been converted, and wish you a happy life.



Download down below!
« Last Edit: July 18, 2009, 01:59:48 pm by Toumaz »

Offline Geoffrey

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #1 on: July 17, 2009, 07:06:39 pm »
A pleasure to use.

DarkCrusade

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #2 on: July 17, 2009, 07:13:52 pm »
Would be cool now if the program would automatically do screenshots of the endscores. It is cool, though :)

Offline Biggles

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #3 on: July 17, 2009, 07:24:02 pm »
Amazing! this saves me lots of time :) thanks alot!

Offline DorkeyDear

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #4 on: July 17, 2009, 10:54:31 pm »
I love the way you worded it :D
Also great idea for those who hate all that extra memory being used, but still want them screenies.

Offline jrgp

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2009, 11:29:23 pm »
Cool work. Added to Fan Apps list.
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Offline xmRipper

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #6 on: July 17, 2009, 11:52:06 pm »
Awesome idea. Love you :P
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Offline n2j3

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #7 on: July 18, 2009, 04:21:16 am »
Great stuff as usual Toumaz.

Would be cool now if the program would automatically do screenshots of the endscores. It is cool, though :)
Can't you enable that option in soldat's config?

Offline Toumaz

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #8 on: July 18, 2009, 05:19:30 am »
Would be cool now if the program would automatically do screenshots of the endscores. It is cool, though :)
Um. As n2j3 already said, End_Screenshot=1 in Soldat.ini. SSC will convert those, too.

Offline Mr.Spoon

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #9 on: July 18, 2009, 05:30:04 am »
There's also "Automatically take screenshots of final game score" in the setup... which i thought was well known by now, eh?
If you don't see it, it is under the "more"-tab.

Okay, maybe that's just what n2j3 meant... damn.
« Last Edit: July 18, 2009, 05:32:33 am by Mr.Spoon »

Offline Toumaz

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #10 on: July 18, 2009, 08:07:04 am »
SSC v1.1 has been released, dealing with a rather major bug in v1.0 as well as adding some functionality.

Offline ~Niko~

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #11 on: July 18, 2009, 08:44:12 am »
You could also use "Convert all BMP's to PNG's" button. Because I have around 350 BMP screenies that I'd like to convert to PNG :P

Though this is awesome! From 900kb to an avarage of 250kb. Amazing!

Offline Toumaz

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #12 on: July 18, 2009, 08:48:17 am »
You could also use "Convert all BMP's to PNG's" button. Because I have around 350 BMP screenies that I'd like to convert to PNG :P
Right click the tray icon, Queue old BMP:s.

Offline ~Niko~

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #13 on: July 18, 2009, 09:46:02 am »
You could also use "Convert all BMP's to PNG's" button. Because I have around 350 BMP screenies that I'd like to convert to PNG :P
Right click the tray icon, Queue old BMP:s.
300MB to 100MB, awesome! :P

Offline homerofgods

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #14 on: July 18, 2009, 11:56:46 am »
Oyeah, using it allready

Offline Toumaz

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #15 on: July 18, 2009, 02:00:45 pm »
Since I'm sorta stupid and accidentally left some debug code in there, download the latest version zip again.

Offline ~Niko~

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #16 on: July 18, 2009, 06:35:34 pm »
Since I'm sorta stupid and accidentally left some debug code in there, download the latest version zip again.
I'm noob here. What's that debug code, and why is it removed?

Offline Toumaz

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #17 on: July 18, 2009, 07:12:12 pm »
Since I'm sorta stupid and accidentally left some debug code in there, download the latest version zip again.
I'm noob here. What's that debug code, and why is it removed?
I accidentally left in a message box containing some path information popping up upon startup. :P

Offline scarface09

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #18 on: July 20, 2009, 05:19:37 pm »
Cool!
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Offline MetsuriTossavainen

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Re: Soldat Screenshot Converter
« Reply #19 on: July 21, 2009, 10:55:34 am »
Oh yea!