Another question. I have been looking at options to improve on the black background, ribbon-less medals of VB6.
Option 1: Keep the VB6 medals. No work required, but black background looks odd on dark blue, there are no ribbons and there is a relatively small choice of medals.
Option 2: Use medal ribbons on the Commander window instead of the physical medals. This is a simple option as they all the same size, or at least are easy to resize, and I don't have to worry about background. There are MANY available online for real-world medals. There would be plenty of space on the commander window where I would add them in rows as on a uniform and could even add priority of display. I could also add to them to each row of the medal list on the Medal window, rather than needing to clock on the row to see a medal.
For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards_and_decorations_of_the_United_States_Armed_ForcesOption 3: Use PNG medals with attached ribbons and a transparent background. This would probably look the most impressive as you would see a row of medals with ribbons but it requires a lot of messing about. Firstly, most of the images I can find are all different aspect ratios, so I would have to crop them to get them to line up. Many of them don't have transparent backgrounds and white backgrounds would look odd. Cropping those that do have transparent backgrounds removes the transparent background, so then I need an editor that can handle that and perhaps add transparent backgrounds to some others. There are also some issues that different medals are shown with different length ribbons so they don't line up neatly.
For example:
https://www.usamilitarymedals.com/collections/military-medalsI have been playing around with option 3 quite a lot in an effort to make it work but I am starting to think option 2 is a lot more practical and useful. I would also be able to create a huge amount of choice relatively quickly.
Open to comments and feedback on my musings