SquidLord

Sadly, even less than an option with my current physical configuration. As is I use an old-school M-style IBM keyboard with Microsoft's toggling shift/ctrl/alt keys engaged, and my mouse sits on the floor. It does have the advantage of being able to type and move pointer at the same time, but even my toes aren't as flexible as all that. (Actually, the main problem with a stick is the buttons tend to be up on the stick where your fingertips are supposed to go. One that recalled the old Atari exclamation-point shaped ones with buttons on the base might be an option. Generally, though, I've just accepted I'll always be a lousy shot and concentrate on trying to be a decent commander. )

I tried that, too, but it threw off my aiming because of the change in pressure on the mouse. The side buttons take less pressure than the middle, so pressing them doesn't throw me off that extra little bit. I fully embrace that I'm a lousy shot, in the first place.

I actually prefer the lead system in the M1A1 over the Leo, myself. Holding down 'P' while simultaneously tracking and hitting space is ... well, awkward for me. Tracking, dumping lead and then firing is actually more intuitive. Yes, yes, I know, I'm weird.

I was actually looking just before bed (third shift being a weird effecting thing on your social life) at the resources I could bring to bear on the issue. Putting something together is certainly within the realm of reason, I'd just need to poke around and find a reasonable place to host the thing. Its theoretically possible we could get by with just some sort of wiki, but I suspect that might be a bit too free-form, so ... I'm still looking.

If you break out the Comfy Chair, I am so out of here. The thing is, if anyone was to pioneer a standard format, it would likely be either the CZ folk or Viper, being the most coherent and consistent producers, from what I can get from flipping through the current collection and reading the boards. Someone has to be the first and the loudest. There's always a solution for distributed storage. At the bottom end, there's getting some webspace somewhere to store the zip and then using CORAL (http://www.coralcdn.org/overview/) to cache the file in a distributed manner (so long as its under 50mb and you do less than 250gb of xfer a day which should not be too hard). There are online shared storage sites which would host it as well, and you could use them along with CORAL for the two-fisted solution. And worst (or best) case, you could rent some web bandwidth off Pair or somesuch and create a parallel site to SteelBeasts.com devoted to maintaining a collection of mods for the consuming public -- the obvious drawback of such being it rus a few bucks, and we're all rather low-cost folk. We do need some kind of better solution, however. As you note, the number of skins is huge and difficult to manage in general, from a pure storage position. Hmmm, it occurs to me to wonder aloud if our gracious hosts would accept some other folk maintaining a directory / website on their server just for mods and such. Undoubtedly, between the lot of us there's enough web expertise to put together a decent site and then we could institute some kind of skin management system that works a bit better than what we have now. No, my solution to every problem isn't "throw technology at it." Just, y'know, most problems.

Well, that's why you'd end up storing them in individual directories with the replicated architecture underneath. Its how JSGME is designed to work, after all, but the directory hierarchy has to be right under the "description" directory entry, which can be fiddly, at best. Have you seen how many CZ skins there are, scattered around the download section willy-nilly, like sedated children in a kindergarten? Just pulling the things in the first place consistently is a challenge, and then having to manually filter and sort them a directory at a time is no picnic either. Then, on top of that, the zips aren't consistently architected (with BMP files stored at the top level rather than in an intended subdirectory) so you can't just extract it into an appropriately descriptive directory, you have to manually recreate the architecture under that descriptive directory, too ... Its a PitA, is what it is. Which is why I originally suggested you might consider releasing a monthly or whatnot combined zip file with all that stuff done for the folks who might be interested, along with individual skins for folks who had the last major package. I didn't realize I'd be calling down the whole Spanish Inquisition.

The question is whether the directory architecture underneath "My Documents" (in whatever language) is static. Does "textures" and "desert" shift from language to language of installation? If so, then absolutely, making a static zip file work across languages is going to be impossible (and I boggle at the original programmers for making their jobs that much harder). But if "textures", et al, are static, then just target the packaged directory structure for each skin set at that level and let the user place them as appropriate in the mods directory. I freely admit I don't have access to multi-language installations of SB to test such things. (In theory, one could write a custom installer in Python or some such to install abstract hierarchies based on input what the desired language is. I've built such things before, but they are an admitted PitA. The key is always having the initial build-from hierarchy neat and reasonable, which I can only assume you good folk with CZ do.) Ultimately, I'd just like to see the accessibility of the mods available be boosted a bit. Making things easier always means greater use.

The content is wonderful, as ever, Zipuli, but the installation requirements are fiddly. The best, easiest way to package them up would be to make sure the directory structure in the Zip mimics the My Documents/eSim/Steel Beasts/mods/[...] hierarchy, so you can just unzip the whole contents directly into a subdir of MODS, then let JSGME work its evil magic, swapping in mods as needed. The real key is making sure the directories are set up right, and I know that's a bit of a pain in the patootie.

Is there any chance you guys can issue a weekly or monthly compilation of all your skins, in a Zip file with directory structure compatible with the ever-wonderful JSGME? It would make coming to the table late but being very interested much easier.