This concept is very easy, once you have the image you want to use for the stars background just convert it to stars.dds, just remember the image size is 512x512.

Unpack and place the stars.dds file to:

...\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CustomAssets\art\Interface\Main Menu

Oooh, this could be fun to play with.

I'm thinking of some Escher-esque tessellation in the background... imagine a backdrop of abstractly layered fish and waterfowl panning by. Very majestic, no?

More seriously, maybe someone could drum up an archaic-styled map of the heavens; lots of grids, old illustrations of constellations. Might look nice coupled with some sort of ancient world scenario...

Alright, so it's a pretty small change overall and the size of the canvas limits it considerably, but I still like the idea of it.

http://img345.imageshack.us/img345/5615/untitled1copy2ra.th.jpg (http://img345.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled1copy2ra.jpg)

Excellent, but how did you get your blue writing "Civilization 4" on the top? It looks better with the new background than the original yellow one. I'd like to remove the "Blue Marble terrain" sig also.

In the same documents folder where the stars file goes into:

...\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CustomAssets\art\Interface\Main Menu

Edit the file that reads: Civtitle.dds

Cool! I think I'll take a picture of my face looking down on the globe like a mad scientist with evil eyes for my startup...

Cool! I think I'll take a picture of my face looking down on the globe like a mad scientist with evil eyes for my startup...

lol

Nice one! :p

Cool! I think I'll take a picture of my face looking down on the globe like a mad scientist with evil eyes for my startup...

Mwahahaha, good idea.

I was inspired, so I made a quick and ugly hack to that effect with artwork from another game...

http://img452.imageshack.us/img452/2994/berugaciv6nr.th.jpg (http://img452.imageshack.us/my.php?image=berugaciv6nr.jpg)

How sinister.

Very nice, Spindrift :goodjob: We may be on to something here :D

Thanks for the advice, this is really cool. I just created my own space-background from different wallpapers. This is what my screen looks like now:

http://www.stefanfriedrichs.com/stuff/civ4/civ4_mod001.jpg

For anyone interested in using this background: Here's a zip of that dds-file. (http://www.stefanfriedrichs.com/stuff/civ4/stars.zip) Enjoy. ;)

I love it! I feel like this is the equivelent of putting spinning rims on your copy of Civ IV! :D

Can you animate the background at all? Even something along the lines of an animated GIF? I have ideas floating in my head.

ideas?... Comets rushing in for a destructive blow?

How about a plethora of dancing planets !:lol: :lol: :lol: :scan:

That's not a bad idea. I've actually forgotten what mine was. It was pretty late and I was half asleep.

I'm having a bit of trouble doing this, how exactly do you convert you pictures into .dds?

Just changing the extension results in a cyan background, not quite intended.

*EDIT*
Ok, got it working somehow now using this http://modiki.apolyton.net/index.php?title=How_To_Modify_DDS_Files.

Unfortunately, when the picture flies by, all that's left is a wiped out trace of the picture. The picture itself has also been turned about 30 degrees counter-clockwise.

This is pretty cool. I'm gonna try changing the Earth and the title itself.

When I made a 512 x 512 dds of my picture, it ended up tiling and scrolling diagonally, not looking anything like my original picture. How do I make the image strectched or centered so that this doesn't happen?

Can you post a pic?

Sure, here it is.

Btw, after downloading Alvesang's pic, I noticed that his tiles and srolls like mine (although it looks much more cohesive when tiled than mine did). I also noticed that Alvesang's pic was the only non-blue marble one posted.
So, does this mean that you need Blue Marble to have a large, stationary picture?

Also, I tried just changing the size to 1024x1024, but that had no effect at all. It looked just like the 512x512 one.

i love you

This is going to help so much in my star wars mod

I just discovered something really wierd when I came back to read the updates to this thread. It seems I no longer have a stars.dds file in my directory. It still shows the stars background on the menu, but the file isn't there! Can anyone upload the original file?

Thanks

Mwahahaha, good idea.

I was inspired, so I made a quick and ugly hack to that effect with artwork from another game...

http://img452.imageshack.us/img452/2994/berugaciv6nr.th.jpg (http://img452.imageshack.us/my.php?image=berugaciv6nr.jpg)

How sinister.
Hilarious! :lol: