Improving Unit Colour Visibility

[Daftpanzer]

Hi, well i found out that the units.bmp can be altered so instead of the little dot of dark colour, you can get a big bar across the top, above the health bar, which makes it much easier to see whos on whos side...

Just wondering if you all know about this already? I found this useful because i dont usually use animated units with their in-built team colours...

[techumseh]

I'm not sure if you mean simply adding a coloured line to the non-animated unit graphic which would be the same no matter who owned the unit, or actually increasing the size of the box which shows the civ colour of the civ which owns the unit? Can you send us a screen shot?

[Boco]

At the other end of the spectrum

Interesting. Expanding the pink region works to make the civ color larger.

I've been playing with the opposite idea - making the unit key small, with a light 'shield' for better contrast of the status letter (e.g. F, m, i, etc.). Then, I use a flag in the unit icon itself to show the civ (Alex/Nemo-style).

In the attachment:

Left - Bedouins using a unit key with a larger pink area
Middle - Bedouins with a minimalist unit key
Right - example unit keys
Top - original
2nd - brighter, less shadowing
3rd - expanded civ color (a la Daftpanzer, I think)
bottom - shadowless healthbar, neutralized civ color

These images are on the rough side (don't look at the camel's foot), but hopefully they show the concept.

Anyone else have ideas?

[Boco]

After looking at this a little further, I think I can see a few rules for colors in the unit key box of the units.bmp.

1) The top left pixel in the unit key box defines the transparent color. I don't fully understand this yet, but if a pixel in any other location is either the 'purple' transparent color of the units.bmp, or the color in the top left pixel, it becomes transparent on the civ screen.

2) The hitpoint bar appears to be hard coded as a 20x2 rectangle starting at column 11, row 5. Anything in this rectangle will be overwritten, regardless of the unit's hp status.

3) If you use the 'pink' transparent color of the units.bmp file almost anywhere in the unit key box (excepting 1 & 2 above), that pixel gets translated as the civ color (the city.bmp color mixed with gray[?]). Stacked units show 'staggered stacked' of unit keys with the 'one in the back' having a darker civ color (offset = ~4 pixels).

4) Within the limitations above, other colors are used without any adjustment by ToT.

A template for a large unit key should be attached (3x and 1x scale). I wouldn't recommend it for games with high unit density.

Now let's see what the artists create!

[Mercator]

I think this one's (attached) very stylish (perhaps more suitable for the more modern scenarios)...

A little side note: The sprites allow you to assign the civ color to any pixel (in the desired shade as well), so technically, that would allow us to create shields like in earlier Civ2. The only two problems then are the healthbar and the command-letter (or what do you call it?), both seem to be fixed in place...

[Boco]

Hard coding the location of the unit key bugs me. Right now, it's fixed at a upper central position in the square above. Any game with high unit density begins to look muddled.

Merc, nice touch with the built-in meter surrounding the health bar.

A (somewhat) related question. Is there a color in Cities.bmp that translates to the 'civ color' in the game? Case sent me some nice occupied airfield icons that contained flags. In MGE, they were the color of the occupying civ. In ToT, bright red.

[William Keenan]

Bright red may have been because it was not owned by a civ, thus a barbarian (red) air field. Try moving a unit into it to see if it changes.

[Daftpanzer]

Thanks for the replies on this...

What i meant was, i had changed that top right corner of the units.bmp that defines how the dot of colour and health bar will look. I copied the same bright pink colour from the little blob of colour thats normally to the left of the health bar and painted over the dark purple area above the health bar. I ended up with something similar to boco's pic.

So in game, the civ colour is shown all across the top of the health bar. You can put in a grey border with black shadow to make it look nice... ill try and post a pic.

I just found it useful for my scenario, cos im using some different civ colours etc. which would make the units difficult to make out otherwise.

/edit i found my old site with some screenshots:

pic1

pic2

pic3

[Boco]

DP, you've opened a whole new area of unit editing for ToT. Thanks.

WK, unfortunately, the red in the attached icons stays red in ToT, even when occupied with a non-red civ.

In MGE, the red tents and flags immediately change color when placed on the map via shift-F8. Takes the color of the current civ's turn. Changes color when occupied by another civ.

(In case someone uses these icons, remember to credit Case.)

[Mercator]

I noticed that too... I guess that's the downside of not having 256 paletted colors.

[Daftpanzer]

DP, you've opened a whole new area of unit editing for ToT. Thanks.

anytime!

(did i acutally contribute something useful for once? )

[Boco]

Command Letters in Unit Keys

Just a slight update. Those command letters signifying 'fortify', 'mine', and 'go to' take up a lot of real estate. In the left of the figure, there are 3 keys at regular scale:

1) A key that makes the command letter more visible at the cost of real estate given to the civ color.

2) Merc's slick straight edge 'metered' key.

3) A minimal key with no civ color (relies on flags in the unit icons).

On the right, the panels show how Civ2 places command letters on the 'shield'. It's an edited screen dump of units with orders caught in a max zoom view, then recolored with the colors from the unitkey section in my units.bmp.

The letters are centered on the shield, and as you change zoom, they get recentered. This can offset their position in the shield a 'half pixel' relative to the original units.bmp scale.

[DarthVeda]

damn that's awesome! I'll have to throw that into Kyokujitsu right away!