NOTES ON CUSTOM FACTION CREATION

I've included the sample files from Chuft's guide to .flc creation: sample.gif, sample.flc, and flicpalette.PAL. The guide is available at http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2996

I mention it here because I needed to make adjustments for use of Paint Shop Pro instead of Photoshop, and thought others might benefit from my trial-and-error.
Hue 160 works for Paint Shop Pro where Hue 225 was used in Photoshop. This is because apparently Photoshop and PSP have different colors at Hue 0.
Use Saturation 64, too--Saturation 25 apparently means 25%... which in this case is of 255.



For the faction.pcx, faction2.pcx, and faction3.pcx files, I have used the SMAX palette, but have included both as .PAL files.
Purple and pink/magenta palettes should be interchangeable for most purposes, since the transparency is always at index 255.

In Paint Shop Pro and possibly other editing programs, picking a color from an existing palette in a 256-color image might not get you the exact index you want if there are multiple indices with identical color values. In this case, the SMAC color palette (magenta transparency) has a color at index 208 that is identical to the #FF00FF of index 255, while the SMAX color palette (purple transparency) has a color at index 252 that is identical to the #64109C of index 255. The problem is that PSP, at least for me, reproducably picks the first color in the palette that matches the color picked with the eyedropper exactly--not the same index. The workaround for this is to edit the palette so that these identical colors are "one off" and then use the eyedropper and commence the editing. (eg. change index 208 to #FF00FE or index 252 to #64109D) Then simply load the SMAC or SMAX palette with "Maintain indexes" before saving.

I have included "one-off" palettes for both SMAC and SMAX; each should prove useful in bringing high-color images down to SMAC-friendly palettes.

I touched the original "blanks" files I was given up a bit for the faction2 and faction3.pcx files--due to JPEG compression, there was a lot of area supposed to be transparent that wasn't, and I don't know how that'd affect loading factions in the game, so I touched it up just to be sure.