Load Screen Randomizer - Old School!

[poena.dare]

0) These instructions are for people who use Launch Titanium.bat to launch EverQuest and want some variation in their load screens.

1) Download the pictures attached below. Place them in the resources directory in your EverQuest directory. Make sure they are named loadscreen1.jpg, loadscreen2.jpg, and loadscreen3.jpg.

2) In the EverQuest directory, edit your Launch Titanium.bat file:
@echo off
set /a ran=%random% %%3 +1
number %ran%
copy resources\loadscreen%ran%.jpg resources\loadscreen.jpg
start eqgame patchme

3) Launch and enjoy!

4) Load screens 1 and 2 will appear more often than 3 about 0.003% of the time. Sorry about that.

[Crookstinger]

I love this idea! I play on a Mac with Wineskin, so this won't work as laid out, but it looks like I could theoretically modify the startup script in Wineskin to get it to work. I'll check out doing that. If I get it to work, would it be OK if I posted that solution here?

[poena.dare]

If I get it to work, would it be OK if I posted that solution here?By all means! Please!

[poena.dare]

Whoopsie! Load Screen 3 needs to be 640x480!

[Crookstinger]

I think I have this cracked for Wineskin. Please not that I am NOT an expert so there may be an easier/better way to do this.

Do step 1 above, and be sure the files are saved in 640x480 size (which I had some issues with the first time I downloaded them). You'll need to locate the Wineskin app (the one you click on to play EQ), right click and click "Show Package Contents", then drill down on your drive_c into the Everquest directory to find the Resources folder which contains the loadscreen.jpg file. Copy the three loadscreens there.

In the Package Contents top level, navigate to Contents/Resources, locate the WineskinStartupScript file and open it in an editor (I used XCode but I think any editor will do)

At the bottom, under "# ENTER COMMANDS HERE" enter the following commands:

RAN=$[RANDOM%3+1]
cp Resources/drive_c/"Program Files"/Sony/EverQuest/Resources/loadscreen$RAN.jpg Resources/drive_c/"Program Files"/Sony/EverQuest/Resources/loadscreen.jpg

Check the path in the "cp" command closely above. If your loadscreen jpgs are not located there, then you might have to adjust the path for your particular setup. The quotes around the "Program Files" are needed to handle the space in the directory name, which took me a long time to figure out!

[paulgiamatti]

Here are the loading screens from every expansion:

https://pakcafaneq.wordpress.com/everquest-loading-screens/

[paulgiamatti]

Here's the first three in a zip along with a modified Launch_Titanium.bat - extract it to your EQ directory and select overwrite if you want it to randomize between the first three load screens: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14728818/EQ%20Load%20Screens/eqloadscreens1-3.rar

Here's all 19 in a zip along with a modified Launch_Titanium.bat - extract it to your EQ directory and select overwrite if you want it to randomize between all 19 load screens: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14728818/EQ%20Load%20Screens/eqloadscreens1-19.rar

Remember though, you have to run EQ from Launch_Titanium.bat for it to work.

[Crookstinger]

If you want to use all 19 images in Wineskin, use the 19 image zipped file that paulgiamatti provided above and modify the code I posted above to change the first line to:RAN=$[RANDOM%19+1]

[poena.dare]

@Crookstinger and @paulgiamatti, thank you!

[paulgiamatti]

Fixed sizing on a few of them, redownload using same links if you already grabbed it.

[paulgiamatti]

New links:

Load Screens 1-3 incl batch, extract to EQ folder & overwrite: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14728818/Project%201999/Load%20Screens/eqloadscreens1-3.rar

Load Screens 1-19 incl batch, extract to EQ folder & overwrite: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14728818/Project%201999/Load%20Screens/eqloadscreens1-19.rar

[paulgiamatti]

New links:

Load Screens 1-3 incl batch, extract to EQ folder & overwrite: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e8u66aewgjqbv96/eqloadscreens1-3.rar

Load Screens 1-19 incl batch, extract to EQ folder & overwrite: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nu56kqk8r0k4lfx/eqloadscreens1-19.rar

[paulgiamatti]

2) In the EverQuest directory, edit your Launch Titanium.bat file:
@echo off
set /a ran=%random% %%3 +1
number %ran%
copy resources\loadscreen%ran%.jpg resources\loadscreen.jpg
start eqgame patchme

I was still a batch newb when I first came across this so I didn't notice it at first - what's the purpose of the "number %ran%" line? As far as I can tell, "number" isn't even a DOS command, and the script works fine without it - the output simply shows an error that says "number" wasn't a recognized command if it's left in, but it's brief enough so as to be unnoticeable.

Was this just some undeleted bad code?

[paulgiamatti]

Was this just some undeleted bad code?

This appears to have been the case - I removed the unnecessary line and reuploaded these in .zip format:

Load Screens 1-3 incl batch, extract to EQ folder & overwrite: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sdctaj10bao9bt8/eqloadscreens1-3.zip

Load Screens 1-19 incl batch, extract to EQ folder & overwrite: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0h3dzj9g1c4ldj/eqloadscreens1-19.zip