Comments on new graphics.

[geofelt]

John P., you can always undo what has been done. Programmers do what is convenient, not necessarily what is best. Your one problem(this issue) is matched by the continuing problem of (hopefully) many of us trying to play and enjoy this game. If microprose is a quality company, it will not let this issue fester, it will fix it right. It is false economy to try to sweep this under the table. Sales and satisfaction will suffer.

[gambler]

Dracon, I have a Matrox Millenium II, last night I tried the same setting you are using (1024 x 768, 24 bit colours) but it doesn't seem to work.
But playing the SciFi game I discovered that some units HAVE THE RIGHT COLOUR.
I try to explain it: I was playing as the Engineers, I think they are supposed to be pink, but the units looks "dark red" to me .
Then when I built an Interceptor (I'm not sure of the name, it's one of the first flying unit you can built) I discovered it was PINK.
The same appened with the unit equivalent to a freight (I can't remember its name).
That seems very strange.
Well, tonight I'll try the patch.

[Dracon]

The settings work on mine...wierd

[John Possidente]

The color in the overhead key is almost always darker than the color of the corresponding flags and city names. That's partly an illusion created by the small size of the spot and its dark border, but it's also a result of the way the colors are handled by the program. (I'd be more specific, but I don't actually understand it completely myself.)

I think that a lot of this problem, as some of the posts here suggest, has to do with the fact that we made the colored portions of each unit (the color masks) too small in many cases, especially in the Original Game.

[gambler]

I spoke with a colleague of mine that is an expert of image encoding.
According to him, the problem is related to 16 bit colour bitmap.
I try to explain:
In 24 bit RGB encoding, you have 8 bit for every components (R, G and B).
In 16 bit RGB encoding, you have 5 bit for every components and the 16th bit usually is unused but it may be used for special effects, such as tranparency.
As an example, if two bitmap are overlapping and one of them has the 16th bit set to 1 and the other to 0, the video renderer may decide that one of them covers the other.
On the other hand if the bit are set to the same value they can be mixed together and the colour is different.
John, did you mean something like that when you mentioned that the program uses of the colours in a special way?

[John Possidente]

I'm not sure, but my knowledge of this sort of thing is lacking. (We have talented artists and programmers who take care of this sort of stuff; I just designed part of the game.) I know that the color masks we used on many of the units are not completely transparent; areas might be cross-hatched or shaded to create subtler coloring than just a big spot of the tribe color. That and the small size of some of the color areas are, I think, a big part of this unit owner identification problem. An example of one that works is the Interceptor in the SF game--it's almost entirely colored. An example of one that doesn't work so well is the Repeller in the same game--its little colored collar is easy to miss.

[yh30264]

Hello John,
Is it difficult to revert back to the 'less subtle' effect of applying a large spot of colour to the units.

Is that something that could be included in the (next) patch?

regards,

Glenn

[John Possidente]

I'm afraid that that would require re-working lots of unit art, which is pretty unlikely now that the artists are all working on future games.

[Wizard]

ToT is great! It is civ2 with improvements.
1. Units ARE easy to recognize, unless you have been beaten over the head repeatedly you would notice that the actual color of the UNIT ITSELF is the color of the tribe it is from.
2. Who really cares about the Wonder Movies, anyway?
3. New scenario building improvements. Obscene amounts of cache for events, as well as being able to essentially have 2 IF statements, and many others. The Only Thing I would like to see is a ToT Scen editor patch.
3. "My screen is dark... I'm a dumbass." Turn your color settings, you loonies.
4. My only concern is the price. $50 for an addon? Try $30.
5.ToT is cooler than your dog.

[Dracon]

The only problem I have is recognising the location of cities on the minimap

[lev]

My biggest confusion is, how do you create a 16-bit bmp? Photoshop 5 (PC) can't even open them. It can save as 8 bit or 24 bit, but not 16. The only thing I have that can even view the files is ACDSee, so I can copy them into a Photoshop file, but then my modified file is 24-bit and slows down the game.

The blurriness of the graphics is the biggest issue for me; I couldn't figure out what the units were until I took them into Photoshop and sharpened them considerably.

[Carolus Rex]

lev,

How do you do that (sharpen the units)?

Wizard,

1) Or have less than perfect colour sight, but I guess we're not important.

2) Who's whining about the wonder movies? Learn to read, then read the name of this thread and the first post. Nothing about wonder movies there...

4) Learn to count. Repeat after me: "After three comes four." One more time, "After three comes four." Then use your newly aquired reading ability and check the thread. Screen resolution and different settings haven't improved a thing.

5) I like ToT, it's a great game. I don't regret buying it, I don't even think it was over priced. But the lousy, blurry graphics reduce gameplay for me. If I hadn't cared about the game it would have been on a shelf collecting dust right now. It's not. I'm looking for ways to improve things and I don't have to take sh*t from you for it.

Carolus

[lev]

How I Sharpened The Graphics:

Once I got the units into Photoshop, I did a "select by color" to select all the pink & grey transparent areas, then inverted the selection so I had the units themselves selected. The box borders were also still selected, so I just used the rectangular marquee to subtract those from the selection.

So, with just the units themselves selected, I simply did an Unsharp Mask, amount=140, radius=2 pixels. Then I saved it (as a 24-bit bmp, since I couldn't figure out how to make it a 16-bit).

To make it work, I had to remove all the .spr files (to a .zip archive, to be safe), and then it was fine. I could actually see what the units were, but of course, no more animations.

[Carolus Rex]

Thanks for your reply, lev.

Is it by any chance possible to download those units somewhere?

Carolus

[lev]

I'll upload the file, units_sharpened.zip. To use it, you'll need to put it in the "Original" folder, unzip it, rename the "units.bmp" file to something else (e.g., "units_old.bmp") and rename the "units_sharpened.bmp" to "units.bmp".

Back up all the .spr files then delete them from the directory. Then the new unit graphics will work.

One thing I've noticed: the unit sprites as shipped have a nice feature of some areas bearing the nation's color (sails on triremes, for example). Once you remove the .spr files and use the .bmp file instead, you lose that feature.

Hey, is there any chance we can get a sprite-creation tool and the source graphics?