Haluter’s Skin Downloader for the IL-2 Sturmovik Great Battles series

[BlackHellHound1]

1 hour ago, Spinnetti said:

Tool works great, and recently updated. I donated a couple bux. Thanks!

 

One thing would be nice: ability to show full list of stuff you've already downloaded (basically inverse of the default function), and be able to filter by type (historic, generic etc). That way I could see all my downloads at a glance (and in my use case, be able to delete all the non-historic ones). 

 

Need something like this for missions too

 

Happy to hear you like it. 

There are already filter options in place. You can find them at the bottom of the main browse tab. Make sure to hit the green Apply button to apply your filter options. And after you have done that, you can always click on "owned" at the top of the Skins list which will make all owned or non-owned skins show first. 

 

Hope this helps. 
 

BlackHellHound1

[Spinnetti]

Ah, missed that sort! Thanks! Ok, howa bout filters for axis/allies and for plane family? lol

 

Great stuff!

[Iceni_Queen]

Any way to sort by Newest?

[Haluter]

On 12/29/2021 at 1:47 PM, Iceni_Queen said:

Any way to sort by Newest?

 

Yes, enable "Sort skins by release date" in the Options tab

[BlackHellHound1]

WE HIT 7500! SKINS!!!

 

 

It's been exactly 10 months since we released HSD and we just passed 7500 individual skins on HSD!

This is an amazing milestone and we are really grateful for all your support in making HSD a succes!

 

To give you some insight info, here are a few numbers about the skins on HSD.

• In total 169GB of server storage has been used. Nearly all of that is due to DDS files
• In December you guys managed to create 4.227TB of total traffic of which 4.198TB worth of downloads!
• Number of skins per game category
  • Battle Of Moscow : 864
  • Battle Of Stalingrad : 673
  • Battle Of Kuban : 890
  • Battle Of Normandy : 619
  • Battle Of Bodenplatte : 2008
  • Flying Circus Vol. 1 : 1361
  • Flying Circus Vol. 2 : 261
  • Collector Planes : 644
  • Tank Crew : 178
  • Collector Vehicles : 11
• We have released 5 updates in the  meantime and are hard at work on the next one: The much anticipated account function and edit function!

Man that's a lot of skins. To think we "predicted" 3000 skins after a year would be a lot. Oh were we wrong!

 

Of course this wouldn't have been possible without our generous patrons and donators. Thank you so much for supporting the project and keeping the server running.

 

A big THANK YOU!! for using, supporting and spreading the word about HSD. 

 

The HSD Team!

[Beebop]

Best thing to happen IMO for skins for this game since the il2skins site for the original game. 

Like HSD it had tons-o-skins of all types.

 

Thanks gents! 

[-250H-Ursus_]

U welcome from the cursed Argentinean skining dude

[Dukethejuke]

You created a MONSTER!! is in my mates group the Artist formally known as Diggun. He is getting really  good! Thanks for this site.

[=EXPEND=CG_Justin]

Love this tool! I have all the WW2 aircraft from the HSD (as of Saturday ?). I love being online in either Finnish or Combat Box and spawning in and seeing someone parked next to me with a custom skin. It just adds so much more to my experience online.

 

Thanks to the whole HSD team for putting this together. Such a great little application!

 

Keep uploading, and I'll keep downloading!

 

[SCG_Baryonyx]

Hi, I have seen this a while ago and I already liked the concept. Seeing how this develops makes me happy.

 

At the moment I am considering to upload my skins to this platform as well, but I wonder how many people, especially of the ground forces players actually use this? The reason I'm asking is that I feel like downloading and especially making skins that only I as the operator of the vehicle will ever see is a bit sad and at least from my point of view a bit pointless. I don't look at my own vehicle that much when I play, and if I know that only I will see it, then why should I bother using it? I hope you can understand my train of thought.

 

So if I would know that posting my skins to HSD would increase the chance that other people I encounter online would see my skin when I use it, then I would take this step. But if very few people make use of it against the majority of players, then I don't see the reason for me to do it at the moment.

[Beebop]

I'm curious.  I'd like to see them, maybe even use them.

Look at it this way, if no one ever sees you work, how are they going to know they'd like it?

I agree that it's a shame skins don't migrate to others like they did in the original IL-2 game but you underestimate the Community sir.

I for one send out skins to others in my squad or alert them that they are available on HSD so we can all have, see and enjoy them.  And using HSD makes the job of acquiring skins so easy.  They install automatically.  No worry that the end user will put them in the wrong place and wonder 'where'd they go?'.

 

So go ahead.....

Edited January 10, 2022 by Beebop

[BlackHellHound1]

5 hours ago, SCG_Baryonyx said:

Hi, I have seen this a while ago and I already liked the concept. Seeing how this develops makes me happy.

 

At the moment I am considering to upload my skins to this platform as well, but I wonder how many people, especially of the ground forces players actually use this? The reason I'm asking is that I feel like downloading and especially making skins that only I as the operator of the vehicle will ever see is a bit sad and at least from my point of view a bit pointless. I don't look at my own vehicle that much when I play, and if I know that only I will see it, then why should I bother using it? I hope you can understand my train of thought.

 

So if I would know that posting my skins to HSD would increase the chance that other people I encounter online would see my skin when I use it, then I would take this step. But if very few people make use of it against the majority of players, then I don't see the reason for me to do it at the moment.

 

Happy to see you are considering it. I can't give you precise numbers on individual vehicles or modules. We simply don't have such data.

What I can tell you is that in December just over 10K unique visitors used HSD and made 4M requests. We served over 5TB of data to the users which is approximately the equivalent of 235,000 skins. 

 

Another indicator that it's used a lot is the fact that HSD gets talked about constantly. Various discord servers and sometimes forum posts regularly has people pointing to HSD as the "go to" for skins. And I can say with confidence that I have seen more people with custom skins since the launch of HSD than before. I feel like it's save to say a lot of people use it.

 

I hope this satisfies your needs.

 

BlackHellHound1

Edited January 10, 2022 by BlackHellHound1

[JV44HeinzBar]

4 hours ago, SCG_Baryonyx said:

Hi, I have seen this a while ago and I already liked the concept. Seeing how this develops makes me happy.

 

At the moment I am considering to upload my skins to this platform as well, but I wonder how many people, especially of the ground forces players actually use this? The reason I'm asking is that I feel like downloading and especially making skins that only I as the operator of the vehicle will ever see is a bit sad and at least from my point of view a bit pointless. I don't look at my own vehicle that much when I play, and if I know that only I will see it, then why should I bother using it? I hope you can understand my train of thought.

 

So if I would know that posting my skins to HSD would increase the chance that other people I encounter online would see my skin when I use it, then I would take this step. But if very few people make use of it against the majority of players, then I don't see the reason for me to do it at the moment.

S! Baryonyx,

I'm starting to upload my tank skins as they are vetted by other tankers, like yourself, on the TC skinning forum. BTW, thank you for your comments earlier. I made a change to the latest panther. I need to dirty it up some more, but it's almost ready to go, IMHO.

 

I'd love to be able to download some of your skins from HSD. It will nice to see all the SCG in custom skins when we join Neun's Sunday tank missions.

 

HB

 

 

Edited January 10, 2022 by JV44HeinzBar

[Patricks]

This is fantastic, thank you!! Is there a similar tool for CLoD by chance?

[Spook109]

Has any thought been given to instituting and enforcing a naming convention for skin files?

 

I have accumulated so many poorly named skins that they've become useless because there's no in-game preview to see which skin I'm looking at. I have nothing to go by but the file name and if it's something like "Bf109_skin_1", it becomes a complete guess. I had started to rename the bad ones with something descriptive, but then HSD arrived and I'm assuming that will interfere with its ability to keep the skins updated.

 

Unsure if this is just me being anal or if others find the file names frustrating. Either way, it may be too late to even attempt to herd these cats.

[Reggie_Mental]

3 hours ago, Spook109 said:

Has any thought been given to instituting and enforcing a naming convention for skin files?

 

I have accumulated so many poorly named skins that they've become useless because there's no in-game preview to see which skin I'm looking at. I have nothing to go by but the file name and if it's something like "Bf109_skin_1", it becomes a complete guess. I had started to rename the bad ones with something descriptive, but then HSD arrived and I'm assuming that will interfere with its ability to keep the skins updated.

 

Unsure if this is just me being anal or if others find the file names frustrating. Either way, it may be too late to even attempt to herd these cats.

You can give them your own names.

[BlackHellHound1]

9 hours ago, Spook109 said:

Has any thought been given to instituting and enforcing a naming convention for skin files?

 

I have accumulated so many poorly named skins that they've become useless because there's no in-game preview to see which skin I'm looking at. I have nothing to go by but the file name and if it's something like "Bf109_skin_1", it becomes a complete guess. I had started to rename the bad ones with something descriptive, but then HSD arrived and I'm assuming that will interfere with its ability to keep the skins updated.

 

Unsure if this is just me being anal or if others find the file names frustrating. Either way, it may be too late to even attempt to herd these cats.

 

We have thought about it but no naming convention will ever be enforced. The artist is free to chose the name. Their skin, so their choice of name.

 

 

6 hours ago, Reggie_Mental said:

You can give them your own names.

You should never change the name of the files. IL-2 uses the name to see if other people have it so it can display the correct skin on their aircraft. Secondly, HSD uses the name to check for updates and missing files. If you change the name, HSD will try to redownload the skin as it thinks the file is missing.

[FurphyForum]

Ok. Lets dissect it this way. (And I am by no means destroying the hard work and effort that has gone into making this excellent App).

 

You either leave them as named - so HSD can update it, and you have your subfolders of A/C,  DL from HSD (IMHO) - with poorly labelled skins from A**hole to breakfast. 

OR

You rename them and the onus is one you to have to continually monitor and manually update them to current versions. 

 

Really this could be easily solved just by simply promulgating the need to have naming convention. Especially when you already have to follow the guidelines to upload/update A/C skins anyway.

 

Put it to the vote of the public on this forum, it can't hurt and you get a feel whether its relevant or not. 

 

For the record; I use HSD and recommend it without any hesitation, however I rename ALL my DL's. 

[Reggie_Mental]

3 hours ago, BlackHellHound1 said:

 

We have thought about it but no naming convention will ever be enforced. The artist is free to chose the name. Their skin, so their choice of name.

 

 

You should never change the name of the files. IL-2 uses the name to see if other people have it so it can display the correct skin on their aircraft. Secondly, HSD uses the name to check for updates and missing files. If you change the name, HSD will try to redownload the skin as it thinks the file is missing.

It's not something I do routinely, but I do have a few favourites and unique files in my custom skins folder. And yes, I do use HSD.

[Calicrook]

This is a must have application! I really appreciate having it! 

[Spook109]

On 1/27/2022 at 6:05 AM, FurphyForum said:

Really this could be easily solved just by simply promulgating the need to have naming convention. Especially when you already have to follow the guidelines to upload/update A/C skins anyway.

 

I would think that, as a skin designer, one would want to make their skins as user-friendly as possible. It takes no more work to name a skin with helpful, descriptive terms as it does vague and frustrating ones.

[Beebop]

On 1/27/2022 at 4:05 AM, FurphyForum said:

however I rename ALL my DL's.

So when someone uses a skin in their mission that you downloaded and renamed it won't show in your game.

BRILLIANT! 

Edited February 17, 2022 by Beebop

[Mysticpuma]

On 1/4/2022 at 10:28 AM, Beebop said:

Best thing to happen IMO for skins for this game since the il2skins site for the original game. 

Like HSD it had tons-o-skins of all types.

 

Thanks gents! 

RIP IL2 skins.... you served us well ?

[FurphyForum]

On 2/17/2022 at 3:54 PM, Beebop said:

So when someone uses a skin in their mission that you downloaded and renamed it won't show in your game.

BRILLIANT! 

Why do I rename them?, because I like to keep a uniformity of skins that's not currently present in HSD. That's my choice. Believe me, It doesn't effect you or your skins.  

Edited February 19, 2022 by FurphyForum

[BlackHellHound1]

Update V1.2.2.8 has been released!

 

This update has two main focus points. Primary is the issue where HSD would add skins to the queue for update that you didn't own.

Secondly, the "Skins" list and "Queue" list have been given a major overhaul and are now displayed in the HSD art style. 

 

And of course, there are a bunch more small quality of life additions and fixes.

 

Now quickly launch HSD and update! (And get all the new skins you've missed in the past few days.) 

You can read the full update log in HSD or in this forum log:

Note: We are aware of an issue with the "Download All" and "Delete All" buttons not working. We already have a hotfix in testing.

Edited May 3, 2022 by BlackHellHound1

[BlackHellHound1]

Update V1.2.2.9 (Hotfix) has been released!

 

This hotfix addresses the issue with the "Download all", "Delete all" & "Deselect all" buttons not working correctly.

 

Now quickly launch HSD and update!

 

You can read the full update log in HSD or in this forum log:

Edited May 6, 2022 by BlackHellHound1

[Rjel]

On 1/27/2022 at 5:17 AM, BlackHellHound1 said:

 

We have thought about it but no naming convention will ever be enforced. The artist is free to chose the name. Their skin, so their choice of name.

 

 

You should never change the name of the files. IL-2 uses the name to see if other people have it so it can display the correct skin on their aircraft. Secondly, HSD uses the name to check for updates and missing files. If you change the name, HSD will try to redownload the skin as it thinks the file is missing.

I've been re-doing some P-51D skins I had uploaded to HSD some months ago that I'd like to update. Cleaning up some nose art and markings mostly and tweaking the NMF. I might be misunderstanding the hi-lighted sentence above but does your program allow me to update a skin with a new version under the original name? I hate to clutter up your system with multiple versions of the same skin.

[BlackHellHound1]

3 hours ago, Rjel said:

I've been re-doing some P-51D skins I had uploaded to HSD some months ago that I'd like to update. Cleaning up some nose art and markings mostly and tweaking the NMF. I might be misunderstanding the hi-lighted sentence above but does your program allow me to update a skin with a new version under the original name? I hate to clutter up your system with multiple versions of the same skin.

 

HSD can indeed update skins. We are still working on the actual edit function so we use a manual system for now. 

There is a channel called #request-skin-updates in our discord (Link: https://discord.gg/RPvmtd8). You can request a skin to be deleted for update. We will then remove it. If you then re-upload it using the exact same name, HSD will update the skin for everyone that already had it.

 

I hope that answers your question. If not, you can let me know here or on discord

BlackHellHound1

[jollyjack]

Can anyone remember this IL2 world without Haluter's ? Bless you fellers !

[Rjel]

3 hours ago, BlackHellHound1 said:

 

I hope that answers your question. If not, you can let me know here or on discord

BlackHellHound1

It does. Thank you for the answer and this great utility. 

[pantdino]

When I try to open the exe file, Windows says it is harmful and advises me not to open it. Norton says it is dangerous and deletes it.

[Reggie_Mental]

Norton hates flight sims of any kind. It thinks .air files are Trojans. 

 

Uninstall Norton. It's shite. It is given away by PC World to people who know nothing about computers. Install Kaspersky and you won't have any problems.

 

Having Norton on your PC is just as bad as a virus.

[BlackHellHound1]

[jollyjack]

On 6/1/2022 at 1:27 AM, pantdino said:

When I try to open the exe file, Windows says it is harmful and advises me not to open it. Norton says it is dangerous and deletes it.

 

It places Pegasus software on your PC maybe ...

[Haluter]

On 6/1/2022 at 12:27 AM, pantdino said:

When I try to open the exe file, Windows says it is harmful and advises me not to open it. Norton says it is dangerous and deletes it.

 

I submitted HSD.exe to VirusTotal.com, which uses over 70 antivirus scanners to analyse each file thoroughly, and it detected zero issues with HSD. You can view the report here: VirusTotal report, or you can submit HSD.exe yourself for independent verification.

[Paul_RSXK]

this is brilliant, nothing short of brilliant.

[71st_AH_Mastiff]

my whole folder and files disappeared the other day, is it windows defender doing this?

 

[Haluter]

On 6/20/2022 at 4:55 PM, 71st_AH_Mastiff said:

my whole folder and files disappeared the other day, is it windows defender doing this?

 

 

If you're referring to the folder where you placed HSD.exe then I have no idea how that could happen. I think most AV will either prevent you from running an executable (quarantine it) if it finds it suspicious or even delete it, but not the whole folder. You can download and unzip HSD again, but try to whitelist HSD.exe before you run it.

[71st_AH_Mastiff]

7 hours ago, haluter said:

 

If you're referring to the folder where you placed HSD.exe then I have no idea how that could happen. I think most AV will either prevent you from running an executable (quarantine it) if it finds it suspicious or even delete it, but not the whole folder. You can download and unzip HSD again, but try to whitelist HSD.exe before you run it.

I all ready downloaded the folder, but I have no idea how that whole folder disappeared. This is been happening on my system some icons will be unlinked and the folder of that particular program is missing. I have to redownload. 

Edited July 2, 2022 by 71st_AH_Mastiff

[BlackHellHound1]

10 minutes ago, 71st_AH_Mastiff said:

I all ready downloaded the folder, but I have no idea how that whole folder disappeared. This is been happening on my system some icons will be unlinked and the folder of that particular program is missing. I have to redownload. 

 

That sounds like your drive might be dying. I suggest you make back-ups and do some diagnostic tests.