Mouse, Mouse2, and Palettes

[St Leo]

I'm trying to mess around with palettes and I need to know everything there is to know about Mouse and Mouse2 squares in Terrain1.gif. For which colours does the palette index matter?

I can work around "All of Them", but I'd rather not.

Allard's The Palette Explained doesn't got into enough detail.

[St Leo]

Changing them all to defaults fixed all my problems, though I could have probably fixed them by just changing the fills to the new colours that I wanted. I'm not redoing it, though.

[Boco]

Okay, I'm curious but utterly ignorant.

Uh, what does he mean?

The icon marked 'mouse' next to the dither icon modifies the left-click mouse behavior however to little practical effect.

Next uh, what nifty trick are you after?

Signed, 'Mind numbed by too much snow digging'.

[St Leo]

I wanted to restore the normal behaviour.

Should I release the demo scenario that I'm working on, you'll see what I mean.

[Paradox]

Im keen on modding or adding my own graphics to .gif files....problem is Allard's The Palette Explained http://sleague.apolyton.net/Guides/sldt_palette.shtml doesnt work anymore....is this due to recent Apoly outage?

Can anyone else give me a quick crash course in adding / modifying gifs for CIVII. I tried to edit myself but game now crashes with exception error.....

[Boco]

The crash may be caused by an incompatible GIF file. Is this your first attempt to make one with your Gfx program? I've failed to make a viable GIF with MS Photo Editor. Needs to be GIF87a, noninterlaced.

PM me with your email, and I can send you Allard's tip file (on Sunday).

[Paradox]

I tried using Paintbrush.....guess it doesnt have any a colour palette editor...just seemed so much easier.

Also i have picture publisher but that didnt work either cause i wasnt sure after copying new gif image into units.gif how to edit the palette or what to save as?

Dont think it have a noninterlaced87a option to save

[Boco]

If you copy images into an existing UNITS.GIF (e.g. a copy of the original), you can maintain the palette without editing it.

What I can't recall are the circumstances under which you can use an UNITS.BMP instead of a GIF. I used to do that before I got an editor capable of making a compatible GIF file (and before I went ToT). IIRC, it works fine as long as a UNITS.GIF is someplace nearby (same directory?). Anyone remember?

[Stefan Härtel]

If you have FW, using the graphics editor is propably the best sollution. Alternately, I don't know how you do it yourself, but I guess if you just open the gif files from the Explorer, or My Computer, you can edit them with the graphic program it opens and save it just the way it is. Usually, this works... Paintbrush is propably not the best of options, unless you have more than the standart 16 (or so) colours...

[Paradox]

OK now im getting just a little peeved....

Downloaded psp3 trial version, opened up units.gif, made a small change to the settler graphic, ensuring the color i was using was from the original palette...saved as gif and once again CIV II crashes?

What am i doing wrong? Is it the timestamp now of the file that civ2.exe looks at? or is it because im using MGE?

Any help appreciated from you graphics modders out there

[Boco]

PSP v3 makes a modified GIF file that Civ2 often can't handle. I used it to make a Title.GIF and modified GIF's for Tiles.DLL. It failed miserably. Mercator discovered that it adds a few extra bytes at the end of the file. So much for a uniform GIF 87a noninterlaced standard.

P****d me off a lot. Try it with PSP v7 - that should work.

Or...what if you leave the unmodified Civ2 gif in the directory. Open, modify, and save as UNITS.BMP in that directory. Which UNITS file does Civ2 use? Sorry I don't remember better myself, but it's an easy test.

[Paradox]

Finally after spending the afternoon downloading first psp 3 which doesnt save the gifs in correct format, then psp 7 trial (30 bloody megs twice!! argghh ) corrupted on www.jasc.com BTW , managed to download psp 6 which after editing my unit.gif and saving as gif non-interlaced 87a format everything works fine

So WARNING: If you want to edit gifs in MGE dont use MSPAINT or PAINT SHOP PRO v3. Neither works!At least not with MGE or 278......

Heres the download url for psp v6 eval....http://www.5star-shareware.com/Graph...-download.html

Enjoy!

[Mercator]

PSP4 also does the job well (you can find it here: http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=...ftype=8&q=psp4)...

And the sleague guide IS available... Since the server change the hosted sites haven't (yet?) moved to their original URL's though. So the SLeague isn't at http://sleague.apolyton.net, but at http://apolyton.net/sleague (it seems to be the old Sleague again though)... Anyway just change the URLs accordingly, that is...

http://apolyton.net/sleague/Guides/sldt_palette.shtml

[Mercator]

O, and a little belated answer to the original question... I tried a little while ago, but I really don't think those mouse icons have anything to do with the mouse behaviour... Any if they do, it is the palette index number that matters, not the actual colour that palette index has. So unless you want to change those icons there's really nothing to worry about.