Using unit icon "collections" in the unit editor....

[Fast_Eddie]

Whoops, been gone a few days so...

ZTA_Vector -

Good to know that those helped!

valmont -

Well, the editor wasn't really upgraded for MGE. So they didn't change anything except that you get a few more lines of text for your events. And MGE wasn't an entirely new package, just FW with some scenarios from CIC and a multiplayer capability added. I wish it were better.

Geronimo -

I've heard a lot of that, but the game has never crashed on me just for putting in new units icons. Did you change the rules.txt too?

It's good to see that you're cutting and pasting! If this program isn't working, try using Microsoft Paint, the program that comes with windows. I kinda wrote out an explanation of this in the SLeague forums here: New update in WW1979 ALL NEW ART!!!

I think that the main problem is that program. Many people have had problems with it, and my guess is that it won't remap the colors to the Civ2 palette. I don't know why that would make it crash. Anywaym just try to MS Paint for now, and if that doesn't work, ask Cam. He'll know, he's answered that a lot. I'll work on finding some past threads that may hold the answer....
[This message has been edited by Fast_Eddie (edited September 08, 1999).]

[Geronimo]

it just gets stranger and stranger!

I managed to get one of my unit cut and pastes to work by saving it as bmp, opening with ms paint, then resaving while specifying 256 color, then using micrographx picture publisher to resave as .gif . The results were satisfying and it didn't crash. Now I've done a much more thorough job, cutting and pasting in about a dozen units to replace the ugly civ2 originals. But this time its really wierd. when I loaded the game it was still using all the original unit pictures except for my first customized addition that i mentioned earlier! I checked to make sure I had properly saved the changes to the file and they were still there. I used netscape (since like paint it wont do screwy things to a file if it opens it) to view the units.gif file in my civ2 directory and sure enough the changes were all there! I cut out the units.gif file and on a whim tried running civ without it and it was *still* there! This even though civ2 no longer had any units.gif file in its main directory any more! I did a find units.gif search on all my drives and the only ones on my system were in the civ scenario directories! Where else can civ2 grab the unit pictures other than the units.gif file? can it grab it out of saved games or something???

[Prince_Pixie]

That's... unusual. I know for sure civ can't grab graphics files from saved games, so unless your accvidentally loading a saved game from a scenario folder, I can only deduce that your computer is haunted by the phantom units.gif you edited. Strange but true.

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"A strong people do not need a strong leader."
-Emiliano Zapata.

[Fast_Eddie]

Try just using .bmp instead of the .gif. .bmp's are easier to use because the game will use a .bmp over a .gif anyday. Try it.

[Geronimo]

that was it!! i had stored a backed up units.bmp in the civ2 directory for editing purposes thinking that civ only used .gif files. Changing its name to units.bak from units.bmp caused civ2 to load up my new units.gif file.

[Stefan Härtel]

Back to the editors: I like using them, because they're the quickest way. I don't like the icons editor, but the events editor is very good (I never had it necessary to create barbarian units, and if, I would do that with notepad, but the editor is the quickest). The units editor is also allright, and so is the tech tree editor. OK, it sometimes messes up the rules.txt/.ger, but then I save the game, quit, go back in again et voila! it works again! Sure, it's anoying, but I'm kinda lazy. But for details, I ALWAYS go into rules.txt