Allie resumes work on two scenarios

[Alinestra Covelia]

It's ... Jorrit ... isn't it?

Thanks for 2. I'll get on those and work out what's up with them.

So they never had an editor to alter unit shields, eh? That's a shame. I remember FW had a simple little thing that you could do that with but they must have left it out for ToT.

Does this go true even for still pictures? I'm not using animated sprites.

[Mercator]

Yes it is...

Yes, even for still pictures. Actually, with sprites there's just a little bit more leeway.
The shield is always centered at the top of the image, so if you give the unit sprite another size, the shield will also move. E.g. you could have a 64x32 unit sprite, instead of 64x64, and then the health bar will be halfway lower. (does that make any sense?)

[Boco]

1. You can't... Aargh! It's always positioned centered at the top of the unit graphic.

Mercator's right, but a while back Daftpanzer found a way to tweak the unit key to make the best of a bad situation. You can actually play with the unit key graphics a fair amount. The template is found in the upper right of the Units.BMP file. See Daftpanzer's thread on Unit Keys. Mercator came up with a slick metered look. Here's a few examples of what you can do.

On the screen they look like:
[Edit: I thought these things were supposed to show up as images rather than links now]

Don't forget that if you want to create something like impassable terrain units, you can use the invisible flag in @UNITS_ADVANCED.

[Alinestra Covelia]

That's too bad. I had wanted to make certain units blend in with the background so if you were really observant, you could see them. However, the fact that they put the health bar right in the middle of the top means that there's no real way I can hide these Hill Base units.

[Boco]

How about making giving them the invisible flag? Then you can't see them unless you look in a city screen or see their name pop up when you right click an adjacent square in which they reside.

Here's an example. The game is in view mode, so the top pane gives info about the selected square. It's a mountain (Jhebel) square containing a 'Terrain' unit from the 'Impassable' civ. Other than the description in the top pane, there's no other clue.



Or would giving your unit the submarine flag work?

[Alinestra Covelia]

The point is that they'd be hill base units, so that Osama bin Laden (for example) could hide in them but if an American unit wants to get him, it has to attack and defeat the Hill base unit first (easier said than done).

To prevent this from knocking out all the units on the same square, I'll put airbases down. They're less visible than fortresses, as they're underneath the unit bmp, whereas fortresses are superimposed on top of them.

[Alinestra Covelia]

How does the Invisible ability work? I always thought that Stealth Fighters and Stealth Bombers would logically have it, but then again I might be wrong.

[Boco]

In the @UNITS_ADVANCED, for each unit there is a set of flags to set. The very last one on the line governs whether the unit is visible as usual (0), or invisible until it attacks or is attacked (1). It's not completely hidden, since the unit description shows in the top panel when a friendly unit has moved adjacent to the invisible unit. No icon shows on the map, though. In addition, the description only lists the top unit.

So with a little experimenting, you could probably make the base a unit that is always listed instead of the terrorist. IIRC, a zero-range air unit can serve as the base, and the terrorist can be a land unit. Then the player can discover, with a little difficulty, where the hidden bases are, but not which base is 'contains' a terrorist unit.