ToT Graphics for Bonaparte II

[typhoon]

Using Gareth's epic Napoleonic Wars units compilation, I've cobbled together a small graphics update for Catfish's ToT conversion of John Ellis' classic Bonaparte II.

Here's Catfish's conversion:

Bonaparte II for ToT (410 kB)

Sounds (570 kB)

Apologies for the terrible screenshot; it really doesn't do justice to the excellent work by the artists.

[typhoon]

Here are the files. Credit rightfully goes to:

Units - fairline, curtsibling and Allard Höfelt
Terrain and icons - fairline, curtsibling, Catfish and Favored Flight
Cities - curtsibling

Bonaparte II Gfx for ToT (642kb)

[AGRICOLA]

WHAT IS GOING ON ??

I downloaded the Bonaparte TOT files and set about to making my usual ??IMPROVEMENTS??

Nice straight white roads that can be seen from space, map grid without dumb city influence grids, simplified resource items, vanilla MGE displays, lighter terrain and so forth. Everything went swimmingly until I tried to color code the backgrounds in the PEOPLE file; happy=green, content=yellow, unhappy=red, anarchy=dark brown, specialists=white. To make sure that there would be no compatibility problems I picked colors present in the various portraits and used them to flood the backgrounds. Absolutely standard procedure for me, done it dozens of times for both MGE and TOT.

Surprise of surprises when I opened the start save and found no color coded background. Messed around a bit more before importing the PEOPLE file from my last TOT scen, AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, as the most suitable replacement. As expected, it worked fine.

As I know less than zip about palettes - 16 bit, 256 bit or any other kind - could some kind soul explain the problem, preferably in words of one syllable or less?

[typhoon]

The obvious conclusion is that your copy of Civ has wearied of your IMPROVEMENTS and taken the appropriate measures.

On a more serious note, try adding a transparent (magenta) pixel to the top left corner of the box. Like so:

[fairline]

I'm not sure I should be encouraging you're 'white roads that can be seen from space' antics John, but anyway, here goes

As Catfish has pointed out in the past, the stock ToT people are offset by 1 pixel to the right (as well as up IIRC, but that's less important). The game looks at the top left pixel in each people picture and uses the colour of this pixel as a transparency colour. With the original people icons, because of the offset, the game mistakenly uses the green border colour surrounding each person as a transparency; hence any background colour will appear in game. If the people gfx are moved to their correct position 1 pixel to the left, the game picks up the transparency colour from the background colour, and it consequently becomes transparent in game.

I've attached a file with the people pics in the correct location and with a single pixel of the pink transparency colour added top left in each people icon. This will allow the background colour to appear in-game (bar a single pixel top left if you're eagle-eyed)

[fairline]

Cross-post!

Good work btw Typhie

[McMonkey]

Between the three of you (John Ellis, Fairline and Typhoon) you have done an excellent job! I look forward to playing this classic scenario once again. I might try it as the Austrians this time. Thanks

[AGRICOLA]

@typhoon & fairline

Thanks to your excellent, short, sweet, monosyllabic replies and the magical magenta pixel all is well in Nappy's empire.


@McM

As I've already hijacked typhoon's thread, I figure that I might as well keep going and kidnap it.

When you played the scen, did you use the Mv values that came with the scen? How well did they work?

I'm bothered by the fact that Bony crossed the Niemen at Kovno on June 23, fought a major battle at Borodino, and was in Moscow by September 14. In the game, the same ~1000 km march takes 5 turns/10 months for infantry and 10 turns/20 months for artillery. Seems to me that, if Bony's horsedrawn arty could keep up with the footsloggers why not in the game? After giving proper consideration to this extremely vexing problem, I upped the arty Mv to match the footsloggers' and increased the road multiplier to 3.

Comments, suggestions?

[techumseh]

Beautiful work! Kudos to the artists (Curt and Fairline)! And to the Director - Typhoon! And of course, the author, the great John Ellis!

I just noticed the date on the Title page - 1998! That's over TEN years ago! I think of this scenario as one of the newer ones.

[techumseh]

I just noticed, there are a number of units without national flags. This causes some confusion.

[fairline]

Some units like French infantry and Brit lt dragoons are used by more than one nation, so they can't have national flags..

[AGRICOLA]

There is an apparent problem in this scen.

I would appreciate if someone would check my finding that the French should be able to but CANNOT build Invasion Barges. This makes any invasion of Britain almost impossible.

The units table looks like this, with Invasion Barges in slot 9

Labourers, nil, 0, 2.,0, 0a,1d, 2h,1f, 3,0, 5, nil, 000000000000000
Farmers, nil, 0, 1.,0, 0a,1d, 2h,1f, 7,0, 5, Alp, 000000000000000
Musketeers, X5, 0, 2.,0, 4a,4d, 4h,2f, 3,0, 1, Rec, 000000001000000
Grenadiers, X5, 0, 2.,0, 6a,4d, 4h,2f, 5,0, 0, Rec, 000000001000000
Imperial Guard, X5, 0, 2.,0, 8a,5d, 5h,3f, 5,0, 1, Env, 000000001000000
Landwehr, U3, 0, 2.,0, 4a,4d, 2h,3f, 2,0, 1, Mag, 000000001000000
Garde zu Fuss, X4, 0, 2.,0, 7a,5d, 5h,3f, 5,0, 1, Env, 000000001000000
DONT USE!, nil, 2, 5.,0, 0a,0d, 2h,3f, 4,0, 3, no, 100000000101000
Invasion Barges,nil, 2, 1.,0, 0a,5d, 1h,1f, 2,2, 4, Feu, 00000000010000
Partisans, X6, 0, 2.,0, 0a,3d, 4h,1f, 1,0, 0, Env, 000011000001011
Musketeers, X3, 0, 2.,0, 4a,4d, 4h,2f, 3,0, 1, Ato, 000000001000000

The French have other units with Feu as a prerequisite and all are buildable. There is nothing in @UNITS_ADVANCED to prevent building barges.

The only thing remotely anomalous in RULES is the DONT USE! unit that precedes the barges. Interchanging the positions of the two units in RULES and UNITS makes the barges appear on the city can build list. Unless someone knows how to fix the problem with DONT USE! and because there are French barges at the start of the scen, the only workaround that I could find is to put barges in both slots 8 and 9 in RULES and in UNITS.


EDIT: OOPS, I REALLY BLEW THIS ONE

Misread the Players' Notes which state, somewhat ambiguously, that "Useful for invading Britain, they are raised automatically by events, for the French only." Realized my mistake when I downloaded John Ellis' original MGE scen and found the unusual way he uses to make barges unbuildable. I suspect that it was the only way he could do it in MGE. I was looking at @UNITS_ADVANCED where it can be done much more elegantly in TOT.

Fortunately in my game there are no unwanted consequences because there were no built barges on Turn 3 when Bony triumphantly rode into Dover at the head of a large army.

[civ2units]

Sorry for threadjacking this thread , I´ve a question.
Does anyone have a good and maybe detailled map of Central Europe, mainly with complete Germany, and parts of their border states?

[AGRICOLA]

Here is the link to my recommendations on how to make Bonaparte more playable. I see little point in wasting forum space to repeat a previous post.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showpost.php?p=5598016&postcount=347

Without the mods, the scen is very slow and ponderous to play. With the mods, unit movement is more like that of the fast moving armies of Napoleon's time where generals tried to outmaneouver and outmarch the enemy in order to cut its supply lines.