tot viewing questions

[Tuttle_77]

Hey this has no doubt been answered somewhere else, but a cursury glance and i was unable to find it.

I'm trying to get into tot as there are a lot of tot specific scenarios, but I just can't, the unit display thing at the top and the white arrows underneath the unit instead of the unit flashing like in MGE, it's just too off putting. Is they're anyone to make it look like an MGE game, layout wise and flashing unit wise?

I just can't get into it, would like to but as it is now i cannot.

[techumseh]

You can modify the cursors to make them less intrusive, but I have to say it's a pretty lame excuse.

[Tuttle_77]

Is there a way to modify it to get your units to flash?

I'm very much used to the layout of mge. i might give tot another shot in a bit, but it's just graphically very obtrusive.

not like i'm trying to find a reason to not play the great tot scenarios but it's just an annoance

[AGRICOLA]

I don't think that you can make TOT units blink off and on. That is hard wired in the .exe .

By all means play TOT again. I'm so used to both TOT and MGE that I actually has to try both to convince myself that the "live" units are differently indicated.

[McMonkey]

I also find it annoying that ToT did away with the flashing units (when it is ready to move). I would imagine that it is not possible to make ToT units flash though. Its a shame they felt the need to change things like that. I suppose it has something to do with the animated units! I also dislike the sluggish way the units move but what can you do? Nothing!

You can revert the ugly city screen layout to the MGE version and rearrange the main windows to the MGE layout (IE Map to left, mini map top right and units screen bottom right).

In MGE games where the cursor has been modified I always change it back to the plain white diamond.

Its definitely worth persevering with the ToT scenarios as they are generally very good and very challenging! Just takes a little while to get used to but when you are in the thick of the action in a game of Frederick the Great you will soon forget these minor cosmetic differences!

[Jerec]

Originally posted by McMonkey
You can revert the ugly city screen layout to the MGE version and rearrange the main windows to the MGE layout (IE Map to left, mini map top right and units screen bottom right).

Didn't know that. Changing that alone will definitely help it look more like MGE. I just have a more comfortable feeling with MGE than ToT, I suppose.

The real bug for me in ToT is no battle simulation (no explosion gfx). All I can do is tensely wait while I watch both health bars go down.

[AGRICOLA]

With MS Paint one can make TOT look almost exactly like MGE.

The attached zip of a screenshot is my version of MacGalleo's conversion of Red Front 1.4 MGE to TOT, currently in progress.
Although this is a TOT scen, terrain and units are those of the original MGE scen.

I standardly use MS Paint to import or alter bits and pieces of graphics in scens to suit my preferences.

[Blue Lion]

In my eyes the flickering white corners of the quadrangle around the unit that has to move is a much better solution than the flickering unit itself.

If this solution is not satisfying, the cursor in the icons graphics can be easily transformed to something other.

Even such a flickering unit as in MGE should be possible in ToT. But you must start to use Mercator´s genial tool CivSprite to have any success here. In my thread about animated ToT units I couldn´t take screenshots of firing or exploding units in the game. But with a little trick I was able to do these screenes from a firing Ironclad and a firing KV2 tank.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...9&pagenumber=1 (posts 14,22,23)

Each sprite contains its own additional "fidget" images (I took this term from Civ 3 modding for an action of a unit standing at the place, that is neither an attack nor a move or death animation). It seems the game uses these animations when a unit is activated or if you have a pause while moving that unit. So with modifying these images you should get your flickering units when they are activated for their turn.

To add a simple death explosion animation to your units is not complicated, too. But again, you must use sprites and say goodbye to your old single imaged bmp-units. You can still use these bmp-units but as core of your sprite for that unit. For the death animation may be you add the 8 imaged death explosion of MGE or a cut out of the 4 imaged arty fire explosion of Civ 2 ToT (or something other).

[Blue Lion]

Here I attache the old unit 22 sprite of the original Civ 2 ToT game for the screene with the firing KV 2 tank where the "fidget" and the attack animations were changed. So everybody can test my statements above by changing the unit 22 sprite for the tank with the attached unit 22 sprite. Before changing this file please make a backup of your old unit 22 sprite. In the cheat mod simply add one (or more) armour units (tanks) with the nationality of your civ. When it´s the turn for this tank unit the firing animation appears (changed animations here). Instead of a firing animation you can give your unit darker and brighter colours and can cause so a "flickering" effect.

This sprite with the changed animations was only done for the attack-in-game-screenes. Only the fidget images are changed. The other images of that unit are still the old ugly Civ2 ToT images.