The Great Mystery

[Lucius]

Oh great and wise sages of the Scenario League, I ask you to reveal to me the secret of this unsolved Riddle of the Ages -

How the freaking hairy hell do you change the appearance of the barbarian leader!??!?!?!?!?!

It's been done in scenarios so I KNOW that it CAN be done. I'm told the image is locked in a DLL file instead of in the units.gif with all the other unit images (adding yet another WHAT WERE THEY THINKING OF? question to the long list I will ask if I ever get Mr. Meier or any of his worthy colleagues pinned to a wall....) but the scenarios with a different barbarian leader do not, as far as I can tell, carry alternative dll files. So how is it done???

Lucius Alexander

[Allard HS]

Why. That's not too hard a thing to do. It is the very last unit in UNITS.GIF, the one in the lower right corner. It's nothing hard.

And in case you're going to ask, how do I create a barbarian leader into the game, easy as well. It's nothing else than a barbarian diplomat (or was it a spy?). Just press shift-F1 (with the cheat menu activated), create a diplomat (spy?) and set the nationality to barbarian.

[klesh]

Yup, thats correct. For the record, I use the diplo slot. Lucius, don't forget to change the Barb-Leader-captured pop-up in the game.txt. This will also display the barbleader unit gfx in the window itself.

-FMK.

[Henrik]

Also if you make a barb diplomat with move 0 that isnt in the diplomat slot, the popup will still show up with the icon in the barb leader slot.

This is usefull when for exampel you have a barbarian village unit (0 move) which when killed emits a popup with a burning village icon and gifts the player some money (plunderings)...

[Lucius]

* deep sigh*

Okay guys, please listen.

Allard said
Why. That's not too hard a thing to do. It is the very last unit in UNITS.GIF, the one in the lower right corner. It's nothing hard.

No. It. Is. Not.


Not in MGE it's not. Give me a LITTLE credit at least. If it were that easy, I wouldn't be asking here.

The frustrating thing is, the game CAME with scenarios like Mars Now that use a variant barbarian leader. I open up the .gif file for the scenario, and that barbarian leader image IS NOT THERE ANYWHERE. So where is the game pulling the image from? And how do I effect it? Someone else on here said it was in a dll file, but that is not very helpful.

Am I just going to have to break down and buy a completely different version of the game if I want to create scenarios with a different barbarian leader????

Lucius Alexander

Palindromedary Enterprises

[klesh]

Originally posted by Lucius
* deep sigh*

Okay guys, please listen.

Allard said
Why. That's not too hard a thing to do. It is the very last unit in UNITS.GIF, the one in the lower right corner. It's nothing hard.

No. It. Is. Not.


Not in MGE it's not. Give me a LITTLE credit at least. If it were that easy, I wouldn't be asking here.

Actually yes it is. I have done it myself. Allard knows his stuff.

The frustrating thing is, the game CAME with scenarios like Mars Now that use a variant barbarian leader. I open up the .gif file for the scenario, and that barbarian leader image IS NOT THERE ANYWHERE. So where is the game pulling the image from? And how do I effect it? Someone else on here said it was in a dll file, but that is not very helpful.

I dont play that scen, but here is the tail end of my units file. Yes in fact there is a unit in the barbking slot.

Am I just going to have to break down and buy a completely different version of the game if I want to create scenarios with a different barbarian leader????

No, calm down. We'll fix ya up. We have all mentioned the correct way to do it. Are you sure you are doing it correctly? You have to create a unit in the diplo slot (and it must be toggled to be an actual diplomat) and then gicve it to the barbs. This is simply how it is done. Give us some more and we can try to help further.

-FMK.

[Lucius]

Thanks everyone. I THINK I have it solved now. Apparently, I was putting too much trust in what my artist tells me. That's no excuse, I know - I should have checked everything thoroughly myself before hollering for help. If it turns out I have NOT got it figured out yet, I'll be back.

Lucius Alexander

[klesh]

Eh, no problem. Hope it works out! When all is said and done you'll recieve a nice pretty pop up that lets you get a little text in to explain things nicely. This was brought up by Darth Veda in a thread awhile back Creating them via events). I posted this as an example of the barbking as used in my Stalingrad scenario.

http://apolyton.net/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=797563

Lets us know how it turns out!

-FMK.

[Lucius]

Okay, this is absolutely bizarre. It seems when Windsong told me she could not get the barbarain leader to change no matter what she did to which of the units in the file, she was telling the truth - for her computer. But it works on MY computer.
?

Lucius Alexander

[Lucius]

Field Marshall - we're planning to use 0 move barb diplos as "ruins" that reward players who successfully "explore" the ruins. But the ruins are dangerous, so they'll have a high defense.

Also, I have found that I get the same pop up when attacking a barbarian settler. No money, but that was in a scenario with no "natural" barbarians.

Lucius Alexander

Palindromedary Enterprises

[Exile]

There's another way.

But it's a little more work.

The way that I change unit graphics is this;

1.) Convert the gif to a bmp file. Do this by "saving it as" a bmp.

2.) Next, I put both the bmp file and the file with the new image that I want to put in the unit slot/square in the same folder and work with them there. The new unit graphic should be in a bmp file too. MGE is good w/bmps.

3.) Next, "cut" the graphic that you're going to use (I even crop it first), and minimize it after it's cut.

4.) Next, pull up the units bmp file.

5.) Paste in the "cut" graphic into the 64 x 48 (IIRC) slot/square of the unit you want to replace. When the popup asks you if you wanna save the changes, answer yes. That pretty much does it (for me).

6.) Clean it up by replacing the little blue squares around the edges of the slot/square so that the shield will show (or not, as you prefer).

This is the procedure using my graphics program, but most people around here use PaintshipPro graphics program. The point is; cut and paste the image you want into the square you want it to be in. I don't work well with gifs, but bmps are much easier to handle, and MGE does fine with bmps.

Hope this helps.

[Lucius]

I'm not sure what will help. I'm just scratching my head wondering why on Windsong's computer she can just bring in a .gif or .bmp file for units into a given scenario we are working on, all the units will show up fine playing the scenario, EXCEPT for the barbarian leader, for whom the program wants to go right outside the scenario folder and grab the standard image from somewhere or other (?) and use it.

LA
&p