Flags and Designations on Units.

[Patroklos]

Hey all,

I remember that when I played Civ II senarios and there were units bieng used by one specific Civ (a UU in a sense I guess), most would have the countries flag on the unit graphic out to the side in the unit shield.

I always thought this was a good idea because it added some bells and wistles to the maps. I also liked seeing the traditional flags, and bieng a little bad with seeing colors it makes it easy to quickly see units and who they beloned to (I am not color blind though, I don't need too drastic a feature).

I really decided to ask this when I saw the Liebenstrum scenario by Field Marshal Klesh on the Civ II sight, and his Gernman units looked great. The thing that I liked most is that he had seveal different infantry units such as SS, with the "SS" logo on a black shield next to the unit. Looked good and there were some other examples like the Soviet Red Guards with a red star and the Paraptroops having a little airborn pin.

Now I realize that to do this in Civ III with the animated untis might be hard, but how hard would it be to add some emblems to the units when they are just sitting still unused in their stationary/fortified positions?

[Willem]

You'd have to take apart the animations then put them back together again with your flags. Not exactly a simple thing.

[Patroklos]

I'm not that worried about when the units move, since the flags and such would block the action. What I really want to do is have the default flc use it when the units are just sitting there. Would this interfere with anything?

[Willem]

You'd have to build it into the graphic that's used when the unit is at rest and they're all combined together I believe. Meaning the action while the unit goes into rest mode. So you'd have to tear it apart in order to add it.

It's not impossible by any means, but it would require some work. A program like Flicster would probably let you do it, and some sort of graphic program. Though I'm not sure if Flicster would allow you to disassemble an animation, I've never used it myself.

[Patroklos]

Thanks Willem, I appreciate your help. I agree that it would be a pain to tear apart all of the animations. The emblems would be for special units like "SS" only though, so I would only have to do a few.

[Adc]

Flicster makes it quite simple, if you also have a decent graphics program. Each unit has several animations, including the fortify and rest animations. With flicster you can export these as .pcx image files, add the flags (cut & paste with a graphics prog.) and import back.

[Patroklos]

Hey all,

since two of you took the time to respond, thought I'd let you know how things went.

I ended up using animation shop and PSP3 (PSP7 just kept pissing me off so I went to a program I know like the back of my hand ). I used AS to open the flc, and then PSP to make the flags. Pasted the PSP image as a new animation in AS, and then copied that new animation and pasted it into the original animation frames as a new selection. Looked fine in the AS. However, I haven't been able to test it in game because it crahes everytime I open it, which I think is a gameplay issue from other aspects of my mod. However, I'm curious if anything I siad up there raises alarms in anyones mind, or if I did something incredibly ignorant that my inexperiance didn't alow me to catch.

Also, the idea is to have the unit display its flag only when it is not bieng used, so I edited the Default and Fortify animations. However, I am not sure if I will need to do the Fidget one too. I don't want the flag active only do disapear when a unit sneezes or coughs and then reapear, but is this what will happen?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Patroklos
However, I haven't been able to test it in game because it crahes everytime I open it, which I think is a gameplay issue from other aspects of my mod.

Check your paths. I've discovered that at least 90% of the time if the game crashes, it's because it can't find the graphics that it's looking for.

However, I am not sure if I will need to do the Fidget one too. I don't want the flag active only do disapear when a unit sneezes or coughs and then reapear, but is this what will happen?

You don't really need a Fidget, those are there more as a "flavour" thing than anything else.

[Patroklos]

Your right, figets are not really nessessary.

However, there must be something wrong with the graphics because everytime I try and use one the game freezes once I try and use a unit poccessing one. I think it may be the colors I used, as the pic in the lower right of the screen is all distorted when it freezes. Units work fine without my edited animations.

anyone have any idea why this would be so?