NextUI Icons

NextUI Icons is the strategic-icon companion mod for NextUI. It is a separate FAF UI mod: it owns the generated icon sets, blueprint-to-icon assignments, and the small upgrade-state overlays.

The mod will also add an upgrade animation to all upgrading structures.

Installation

Keep this repository in the FAF mods directory as NextUI.Icons, enable NextUI Icons in the UI Mods menu, and restart the game after installing or updating it. The mod uses its own UID and can be enabled independently of NextUI.

Mods Directory: Linux: /home/username/My Games/Gas Powered Games/Supreme Commander Forged Alliance/mods

Replace username... with your username.

NEW: Editing and generating icons with Python

First you need to install the requeriments by runing the following command:

pip install -r requeriments.txt

You can create your own icons by running:

python icon-generator/main.py

To define new icons or to modify existing icons you should edit icon-generator/main.py.

Chinging icon colors is easy as: compose_faf_icon_with_variants([square, pgen_symbol_outlined(pink_signal)], "icon_structure[T]_energy", [2, 3])

As you can see you only need to specify the argument with parentheses pgen_symbol_outlined(pink_signal)

To add new pixel patterns modify icon-generator/pixel_patterns.py.

At pixel_patterns you can find all the pixel patterns that are used to generate icons, you can use them to generate new icons or to modify existing ones.

Apart from that you dont need to modify anything else to work with the icon generator..

OLD: Editing and generating icons with bash

tools/strategic_icon_config.sh is the user-facing recipe file. tools/generate_strategic_icons.sh is the generator entry point. Its internal implementation is grouped by responsibility under tools/strategic-icons/. A create_icon recipe declares both its artwork and the blueprints it targets, so generation updates the DDS files and mod_icons.lua together.

# Validate recipes without writing outputs.
bash tools/strategic_icon_config.sh --check

# Generate all DDS states and preview sheets.
bash tools/strategic_icon_config.sh

# Inspect the public recipe catalog.
bash tools/strategic_icon_config.sh --list-shapes
bash tools/strategic_icon_config.sh --list-symbols
bash tools/strategic_icon_config.sh --list-border-patterns
bash tools/strategic_icon_config.sh --list-border-styles
bash tools/strategic_icon_config.sh --list-icons

Generated game assets live in custom-strategic-icons/. Human-reviewable preview sheets live in artwork/strategic-icons/previews/. Native files extracted during generation and cache data are local build inputs and are not part of the repository.

Internal generator layout

The implementation under tools/strategic-icons/ is split by responsibility:

• common.sh: shared paths, state, cache, and generated-file lifecycle.
• config_api.sh: declarative functions used by the recipe file.
• rendering.sh: ImageMagick primitives and icon-layer composition.
• native_icons.sh: FAF archive discovery, extraction, and TECH sources.
• outputs.sh: DDS families, overlays, and preview generation.
• validation.sh: configuration checks and read-only listing commands.

Every icon family uses all four FAF states:

<icon-set>_rest.dds
<icon-set>_over.dds
<icon-set>_selected.dds
<icon-set>_selectedover.dds

For example:

create_icon \
    --name smd \
    --shape square \
    --techs "3" \
    --target-categories "STRUCTURE ANTIMISSILE" \
    --symbol antimissile \
    --color "$blue_cobalt_defense" \
    --border corners_small_blue

Use --target-categories when every listed blueprint category must match, or --target-icon-names for exact FAF StrategicIconName values. The selected tech must also be present in --techs. mod_icons.lua is generated from these targets; do not edit it manually.

Strategic icon draw order

FAF uses StrategicIconSortPriority on unit blueprints to decide which strategic icons draw above others. Lower values draw above higher values:

0   highest priority
255 lowest priority

Edit strategic_icon_priorities.lua to raise specific icon families. The default rules raise TML, SML, SMD, and T3 artillery so they remain visible over lower-priority economy and structure icons. Rules can match by tech, categories, exact FAF StrategicIconName, and excluded blueprint IDs.