The SCA UI mod
Unlike some other big name PC games in recent memory (I’m looking at you, Oblivion!), SupCom ships with a fairly respectable default interface. There are a few little annoyances, like the upgrade system, but it is by and large intuitive and functional.
Because of this, most players probably don’t feel the need for a user interface (UI) mod. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Wrong, at least in this case, as there is a truly amazing mod for SupCom that does things for the user interface you wouldn’t believe. I am talking about the SCA UI mod, of course. This gem of a mod adds additional functionality to the interface, as well as a level of customization that puts the default interface to shame.
Installation is quite easy. Simply download the UIMOD_SCA-ver.3.scd file, and save it in your Supreme Commander/gamedata directory. When you start up SupCom, go into Extras, and then Mods, and enable it. Since the mod is strictly a UI mod, you can use it in multiplayer without anyone else in your match having it. This includes the ability to use it in ranked games.
This mod has many, many features, most of which probably won’t be used by the average player. However, I’ll go over some of the basic features here so you know what you are getting. Basically, when you first start playing with the mod installed, you choose one of several basic layouts, most of which take up significantly less screen real-estate than the default interface. You can then further customize these layouts by moving stuff around, and adding or removing windows. The mod has a simple system for saving and recalling multiple layouts, which is quite handy.
In terms of customization, everything is accessed through the SCA UI mod panel, which by default is minimized on the left hand side of the screen. It is opened up by a single click, which then lets you mess around with the UI to your hearts content. Besides the graphical user interface, you can also setup hotkeys, change assorted camera parameters, and view a variety of statistics graphs. The graphs in particular are really cool, and you can also view all of them in the final report after each game.
I have only scratched the surface of what can be done with this mod, but the best way to learn is to install it and experiment. Almost everything is very intuitive. I should mention one small issue that took me a few minutes to figure out. When you click on the Show Stat button, it creates a minimized, semi-transparent window by default. To customize or delete this window, you need to double left click anywhere on the minimized window. Before I figured this out, I clicked the Show Stat button several times, and thus had several identical windows that I couldn’t delete.
Overall, however, the mod is excellent. I highly recommend everyone give it a try.
June 27th, 2007 at 11:39 am
One of the great features of this mod is that it allows you to upgrade multiple SCUs at once. Very handy in the T4 late game. Combine it with the sequential upgrade mod, and you’ve just saved yourself a lot of micro!
June 27th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Sounds like this mod is good enough to give a competitive advantage, no?
June 27th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
It has a few minor bugs but even then one can wonder why GPG hasn’t hired the people behind this mod yet. The least thing they could do is acknowledge its brilliance and implement it as a standard in the full game (or just the expansion).
June 27th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
From the screenshots on the forum, this looks amazing. I’ll have to try it out. I would love to see more custom mods and maps covered and reviewed on this site–they should start coming out now that the game’s been out a while.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Hey I just found out something :D I know it’s off topic but meh. There is a bug in Zone control, if you give away your turrets and they get destroyed it doesn’t matter, your units just keep on spawning, and your enemy cannot capture the turret because it never comes back :P
June 27th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Warning: Once you play around with the SCA UI mod and realize how much more screen real estate you can free up while still maintaining all your panels it’ll be tough to go back!
In fact when 3251 patch came out, I literally couldn’t stand to play the game until the SCA UI mod was made compatible with that patch (which happened fairly quickly thankfully).
June 27th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
I can’t wait to use it.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:39 am
It is sex. I am trying to get used to my fancy layout but right now for ranked games and such I use my standard gpg layout… But I still use it because being able up scus without tedious micro is awesome and gives me a huge advantage. (:
June 28th, 2007 at 12:54 am
You can upgrade SCUs without tedious micro using this interface mod? Okay, that’s a huge advantage. Now I have to try it out.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:28 am
So, what layout are you using?
Here’s mine:
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/4883/uiaj2.jpg
June 28th, 2007 at 6:06 am
You can also use Goom’s SCU Manager Add-On (it works with SCA UI, too) to ease up SCU upgrading even more.
June 28th, 2007 at 6:06 am
Oh yeah, I use Ollo’s skin for the UI, and might switch back to Ollo’s UI, because it eats less performance.
The end-game graphs are pretty damn awesome, though.
June 28th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Oops I forgot to add my opinion on the UI :P Yeah I just got it and really like it, thing is, I have no idea how to use the UI to upgrade the SCUs without the micro, can anyone explain please?
June 28th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I’ve installed it, and it definitely owns the base UI hands down but I can’t seem to find the timing box or the different style squad box on cattletech’s screenshot. Where are they? Also what’s the green symbol in the tp left? Thanks.
June 28th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
The “timing box” is activated with F2. The squad box is actually another mod I’m using, look for it in the GPGnet forums. The green symbol belongs to the sequential upgrade mod (although I’m considering switching to using the pause mex + upgrade with engie method since it’s no longer an exploit).
Handy links:
http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=12949
http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?p=156326#156326
I think you need to activate the SCA UI mod before activating the upgrade mod.
June 29th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
It would be strange to want to use a UI mod if you’re still going to cover up so much of your screen with interface! =P
Mine:
Pic1
(also same URL just TUI2.jpg for the filename for another pic… filter prevented my comment due to having two links)