Civ2 DLL Editing Guide

[Harry Tuttle]

I made up this handy guide after discussing DLL editing with Boco.

As discussed in another thread this guide covers editing the MK.dll (Conquered Civs and Diplomacy), CV.dll (City View), PV.dll (Throne Room), SS.dll (Space Ship), and the tiles.dll (Report Windows) in the Civ2 directory.

These five files were chosen as to their applicability to scenario making. Please include any other tidbits of info you have about DLL editing in this thread. I made up a somewhat detailed README in the excel workbook file attached. There is also an html version for those of you who don't have excel.

[Mercator]

Have you seen my DLL guide? It's available on my site's reference section. The download version also includes a full list of all the images. It covers most of what's in your guide, except it isn't as explicit about all the image sizes... Another thing, for MGE/ToT you should use Resource Hacker rather than GifX. With ResHacker your images don't need to be smaller than the original. It doesn't work for the earlier civ2 versions though (FW, CiC, classic).

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Mercator
Another thing, for MGE/ToT you should use Resource Hacker rather than GifX. With ResHacker your images don't need to be smaller than the original. It doesn't work for the earlier civ2 versions though (FW, CiC, classic).

Smaller? How so? I didn't see anything in GifX about smaller images?

Probably should have looked on your site first, but the main reason why I listed all the sizes was so that someone searching for images to replace the ones in game could get a relative idea of what they need to find. For instance, in the western scenario I'm working on I hope to replace the DLL gifs for the spaceship with a train platform or something alluding to traveling to Chicago.

[Mercator]

Smaller in file size (bytes), not surface, or well, not larger anyway. GifX can't replace an image with an image larger than the original.

And I would assume someone looking to change the DLL's would have a look at the image before actually trying to change it. Not to mention you'd already have a rought idea since you've already seen it in action in Civ2.

But then I've never done a lot of DLL replacing either.

[Harry Tuttle]

Really? Smaller in bytes? Never heard that. Something I'll have to look out for.

As for knowing the size, I think it's important for finding a decent pic and not having to resize it, or frame it, etc... Plus, getting the pieces to fit on the spaceship would be a pain I guess.

Oh well, it's there if anyone wants to use it.

[Stefan Härtel]

I've been replacing leader pics for a while now, and I always have to do trial and error to get them look at least somewhat good. There's no way I can adapt the colour table of the original leader pics to work with the pics I want to use (try changing Indira Gandhi's picture with GifX and you'll know what I mean).

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Mercator
Another thing, for MGE/ToT you should use Resource Hacker rather than GifX. With ResHacker your images don't need to be smaller than the original.

Yeah, unfortunately I stopped using GIF Xtractor for that very reason. I noticed Rune made an appearance in these forums a few months back. If he ever decides to update his utility, he should consider removing those file size limits.

Originally posted by Stefan Härtel
There's no way I can adapt the colour table of the original leader pics to work with the pics I want to use (try changing Indira Gandhi's picture with GifX and you'll know what I mean).

Most backgrounds use the standard Civ2 palette - unfortunately the leader pics are even poorer for colours. There are a number of methods, described in the Graphics Workshop thread, to load palettes. You could try using different resampling methods - if you've got the right software, of course - but there's probably not much you can do with those palettes.

I've also had difficulty producing satisfactory backgrounds, particularly with coloured images – so I tried greyscaling most of mine prior to loading the Civ2 palette. Dropping the brightness and contrast levels of the background image can also help improve the readability of the overlying text and icons – but at the expense of the background (see attached).

[Stefan Härtel]

I've also had difficulty producing satisfactory backgrounds, particularly with coloured images – so I tried greyscaling most of mine prior to loading the Civ2 palette. Dropping the brightness and contrast levels of the background image can also help improve the readability of the overlying text and icons – but at the expense of the background (see attached).

That's pretty much what I always do, and after a little (in fact, a LOT sometimes) trial and error it works, at least on a satisfactory level.