Test of Time Sprites

[Harry Tuttle]

Well I was in the mood for some Civ this weekend so I sat down and started looking at my converted Romamini scenario for ToT.

I thought I could add some nice eye candy so I've started working on some nice resource sprites. Right now I have a boat that moves around. Pretty cool. It fits right in with the other boats in the Med and is not distracting at all, just peaceful. I'm going to try out some moving sheep next.

[Arthedain]

That sounds pretty impressing. Also, it's great news that you're working on Roma mini again.

I remember one thing from playing earlier versions though. Once I captured Chartage and.. was it Athens? Anyways, I got all this goods, that was supposed to be transported to Roma (or any other city for that matter) to be disbanded. I got like 2-3 EVERY turn. I think that's pretty much, and it made med kinda invinsible, since I bought a couple of ships that transported them to Roma every turn.

[curtsibling]

Rather interested in this development!
How tricky was it to implement, Harry?

PS
Sounds like the supply thing could be solved with a 1/2 random turn trigger in events.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Arthedain
I remember one thing from playing earlier versions though. Once I captured Chartage and.. was it Athens? Anyways, I got all this goods, that was supposed to be transported to Roma (or any other city for that matter) to be disbanded. I got like 2-3 EVERY turn. I think that's pretty much, and it made med kinda invinsible, since I bought a couple of ships that transported them to Roma every turn.

Yeah, I had it set up to produce the economic units really quick. It was the whole idea that the Empire thrived because of the riches it gained. I think I'll try something like Curt said.

How tricky was it to implement, Harry?

Easy really. Mercator has a nice utility on his site called CivSprite. All you need to do is edit the individual frames in the animation with your typical paint program. The only hard part is making the animations look nice and completing the 10-20 or so frames for the animated resource tiles.

I figure animated tiles for a scenario could be quite easy, especially if the animated frames are just lights flashing on and off. I found the process to be fun. Of course the more complex you go then the more time consuming it becomes.

[Harry Tuttle]

Actually, make that an average of 6 frames. Very easy. Today I made sheep move.

[Harry Tuttle]

...and I made fish move.

Take a look. Put the files into a folder under scenarios in ToT. Make sure sprites are on. Load the saved game.

[Patine]

Say, Harry, where can I find RomaMini itself?

[Harry Tuttle]

Well the last beta for MGE was located in post #165 here:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=143065&perpage=75&pagenumber=3

It was never finished for MGE. My last step was to convert it.

[Harry Tuttle]

Maybe Catfish or Tech or Mercator could answer this question.

What determines how the sprites are displayed between the original and fantasy games? In the original I can see sprites for a mountain tile whereas on the fantasy game I do not. Is there anyway to change the relationships in such a way as to get mountain sprites for the fantasy game?

[techumseh]

I think Catfish might be able to help. I'm not. Sorry.

[Mercator]

For the mountain resources you mean?
The fantasy game doesn't use resources for those, I guess. I know that some of the games don't have animations for all resources, at least.

You could edit the Original game's Resource.spr instead, which does have them. Then again, I don't think the original game has resources for maps 3 and 4, if that's a problem. Does the Sci-fi game have animations for all resources you need?

That's the only way to do it without resorting to hex-editing anyway.

The headers in the sprite file determine how sprites are displayed. But CivSprite is only capable of exporting/importing the list of images in a sprite file, not editing the animation header that decides which resources have animations and how the images are stitched together into an animation.

You should be able to do it by hex-editing, but I think that's going to be rather tricky. You'd probably have to create your resource file from scratch. Probably not something you want to do unless you're desperate. You'll have to wait for CivSprite 2.0 for that, but that ain't coming this year.

Here's the file format anyway:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3149769#post3149769

(a little outdated though, I should post an updated version)

[Mercator]

Here's the updated Test of Time sprite file format description for good measure...

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Mercator
For the mountain resources you mean?
The fantasy game doesn't use resources for those, I guess. I know that some of the games don't have animations for all resources, at least.

You could edit the Original game's Resource.spr instead, which does have them. Then again, I don't think the original game has resources for maps 3 and 4, if that's a problem. Does the Sci-fi game have animations for all resources you need?

I think I'll try to figure out the differences and see if they can run in a Fantasy based scenario. I'll just have one map for this one, unless I do something astounding and try to complete a Roman underworld.

The headers in the sprite file determine how sprites are displayed. But CivSprite is only capable of exporting/importing the list of images in a sprite file, not editing the animation header that decides which resources have animations and how the images are stitched together into an animation.

Yeah I read that. That's not too much of a bother really. I just have to make sure it all looks good in game.

You should be able to do it by hex-editing, but I think that's going to be rather tricky. You'd probably have to create your resource file from scratch. Probably not something you want to do unless you're desperate. You'll have to wait for CivSprite 2.0 for that, but that ain't coming this year.

Well we can always hope. I suppose an all around resource sprite file with all the animations would be cool, but that seems to be a major hurdle, something I can't do since my hex editing skills are nil.

Thanks for your help.

[techumseh]

CivSprite 2.0! CivSprite 2.0! We want CivSprite 2.0!

[fairline]

This seems interesting Harry; have you tried your hand at any unit animations as well?