One of the features of the editor is the ability to add your improvements an wonders. This will allow you to build the buildings; however, they will not show up in the city aerial view. Many people on this forum have questioned how to do this. I have discovered a way.

Please see the attached picture showing a World Trade Center Wonder
(please do not critique the graphic. I just drew it up real fast to test this out)

WHAT YOU WILL NEED
For this tutorial, you will need a PCX graphics editor.
You will also need the Hacked Civ Editor

MAKING THE BUILDING

Although there is a graphics file for "Additional Buildings" I have found that adding images to it does not automatically cause them to show up in the game.

The workaround I propose is to take an existing wonder or improvement and rename it as your new improvement or wonder. Then you can edit the file that contains that improvement's graphics.

For the tutorial we will replace Shakespeare's Theater with the World Trade Center wonder.

USING THE CIV EDITOR

Use the Civ Editor to create a new scenario.

From the tools menu, uncheck "Use Default Rules" and click OK.

Then go to the Edit menu and click on "Edit Rules"

Switch to the Improvements/Wonders tab.

Find Shakespeare's Theater

Hit Rename and type "World Trade Center"

Then set the stats for the new wonder:

cost: 150
requirement: corporation
req. improvement: bank
(add whatever stats you think are appropriate)

click Close and save your scenario.

exit CivEdit

FINDING THE GRAPHICS
Now that you have changed Shakespeare's Theater to World Trade Center in the bic file. It's time to change the graphics. This is done outside the editor. The editor is only for changing stats and names.

All of the building graphics are located in this subfolder:

\art\City View\Buildings

Wonders start with "WON -"
Small Wonders start with "SWON - "
Improvements start with "IMP - "
Files that end with "_sh" are the shadows of the graphics with the same name (but without _sh )

Each image has a suffix that tells what kind of terrain the building is on in the graphic
"-G" (Grassland)
"-P (Plains)
"-D" (Desert)
"-T" (Tundra)

The Palace improvement is one exception:
The suffix corresponds to the building style:
"-A" (American)
"-C" (Cave - no palace upgrades)
"-E" (European)
"-FE" (Far East)
"-MEA" (Mediterranean)
"-R" (Greco-Roman)

Some files hold the graphics for several buildings.

Find the file that corresponds to the improvement that you renamed.

MAKING THE GRAPHICS
The Shakespeare's Theater Wonder is located in the file:
WON-Culture4.pcx

I have attached my version of this file below.

(You may want to make a backup of this file before making changes to it)

Use a PCX editor, such as Paint Shop Pro, to open the image.

Erase the old wonder by selecting it with the Selection tool and pressing the Delete key.

Now draw your wonder. In the case of the example I drew the World Trade Center.

For images that have "cultures" in their name:
There are five slots. Each corresponds to a certain culture.
1st - American
2nd - European
3rd - Roman
4th - Mediterranean
5th - Far Eastern

The other images (except for palace) have four image slots. These image slots correspond to the different ages of time.
The first image is how the building looks in Ancient Times
The second image is how the building looks in Middle Ages
The third image is how the building looks in Industrial Age
The fourth image is how the building looks in Modern Times


When you have drawn your image. Save the file over the previous version.

EDIT THE BUILDING ICONS
There are two pcx files located in the \art\City Screen folder called buildings-large.pcx and buildings-small.pcx. These files include the icons for the build queue. Buildings-small.pcx contains the icons that appear in the Build menu and Buildings-large.pcx contains the icons that appear in the build selection button.

These files contain a grid. Buildings that change by era have four slots in the following order: ancient, middle ages, industrial. and modern. Buildings that differ by culture have five slots in the following order: American, European, Roman, Mediterranean, and Far Eastern.

Load these two files and find the icon that corresponds to the improvement you are editing. Erase the current icon(s), draw new icon(s), and save.

Close your image editor

PLAY THE GAME
Now when you are playing the game and build your new wonder or improvement, you will see your new artwork in the city aerial view. Enjoy! :)

SUMMARY
[list=1]
Use the editor to rename an existing improvement
Set new stats
Find the image file that corresponds to that improvement
Draw the new improvement and save
Edit the large and small build queue icons and save
[/list=1]

I will be investigating the "Additional_Buildings" file to see if I can get it figured out. It seems that there are slots for ten new buildings. For now we'll just have to replace existing ones.

In my next post I will include a chart showing what improvements are in what file so you can find the file you need to change easier.

** To keep the list cleaner - prefixes and suffixes have been ommitted

Building File

Improvements (IMP)
Recycling Center Ages1.pcx
Factory Ages1.pcx
Granary Ages1.pcx
Courthouse Ages1.pcx
Library Ages1.pcx
Bank Ages1.pcx
Hospital Ages1.pcx
Police Station Ages1.pcx
Coal Plant Ages1.pcx
Manufacturing Plant Ages1.pcx
Mass Transit Ages1.pcx
Research Lab Ages1.pcx
SAM Batteries Ages1.pcx
Barracks Ages2-UP.pcx
MarketPlace Ages2-UP.pcx
Colesseum Ages4.pcx
University Ages4.pcx
Airport (Industrial) Airport-IND
Airport (Modern) Airport-MOD
Aqueduct (Ancient) Aqueduct-ANC
Aqueduct (Modern) Aqueduct-MOD
Temple Cultures1.pcx
Cathedral Cultures1.pcx
Harbor (Ancient) Harbor - ANC.pcx
Harbor (Middle Age) Harbor - REN.pcx
Harbor (Industrial) Harbor- IND.pcx
Harbor (Modern) Harbor - MOD.pcx
Offshore Platform Offshore.pcx
Palace Palace.pcx
Hydro plant PlantHydro.pcx
Nuke Plant PlantNuke.pcx
Solar Plant PlantSolar.pcx

Small Wonders (SWON)
IronWorks Ages2.pcx
Wall Street Ages2.pcx
Intelligence Ctr. Ages2-UP.pcx
Military Acad. Ages2-UP.pcx
Forbidden Palace Cultures4.pcx
Heroic Epic Monuments.pcx
Manhattan Proj. Monuments.pcx
Battlefield Medicine Monuments.pcx
Pentagon Pentagon.pcx
SDI SDI.pcx

WONDERS (WON)
Great Library Ages3.pcx
Great University Ages4.pcx
Leo's Workshop Ages4.pcx
Apollo Project Apollo.pcx
Colossus Colossus.pcx
Magellan's Exp. Cultures1.pcx
UN Cultures2-DOWN.pcx
Sistene Chapel Cultures2-UP.pcx
JS Bach Cathedral Cultures4.pcx
Shakespeare's Theater Cultures4.pcx
Hoover Dam Dam.pcx
Hanging Gardens Gardens.pcx
Great Wall GreatWall.pcx
Lighthouse LHAlex.pcx
Art of War Monuments1.pcx
Longevity Monuments1.pcx
Evolution Monuments1.pcx
Universal Suffrage Monuments1.pcx
Cure for Cancer Monuments1.pcx
Oracle Oracle.pcx
Pyramids Pyramid.pcx
SETI program SETI.pcx
Copernicus Obs. SolarSys.pcx
Smith's Trading Co. TradingCo.pcx

HERE IS THE TUTORIAL IN A WORD FILE:

OOPS. FORGOT TO ATTACH IT. HERE IS THE WORD FILE:

If you have any wonder/building graphics, please post them here.

Thunderfall, if you are reading this, maybe you could add a "building graphics" section?

Here is an "Easter Island" Wonder that i made

and "Easter Island" Splash screen
Remember to Adjust PediaIcons.txt to reflect the new splash picture file.

Here is a "Stonehenge" wonder that I made:

and here is the 'stonehenge' wonder splash screen

here is a Sydney Opera House wonder

I borrowed the graphic from http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/Sydney_Opera_mod.html and changed it so it would work with Civ 3.

here is the wonder splash

Here is a Spirit of St. Louis wonder.
(I got the idea from Kal-el's mod : Get it here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17481&highlight=wonders

Kal-el has a very nice collection of Wonder Splashes (including Spirit of St. Louis)
see it here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17806&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

(removed. sorry)

(removed.sorry,)

This idea came from Kal-El: the Circus Maximus
The graphic was made by me, pesoloco

Well if you find a way to do the graphics for additional buildings/wonders that would be great.

Dear Elucidus,
I have asked Firaxis about that and they are going to look into it for me.

Hey bud,

That is good to know. Thanks for the info.

Now I wonder what "looking into it" really means.

:D

pesoloco,

This is splendid work, you have the skills, sir! Can I ask your advice?

I am currently working on a mod that will replace the tech-graphics with some that I hope will look better. I've saved the finished articles to the .PCX format and to the right pixel size, but I can't get them to work in the game. Is it possible that the .PCX format I've used has too many colours? The original tech pictures are a lot smaller in terms of the amount of disk space they take up.

Damn, I tried to upload an image so's you could have a look at the format, but I don't know how to. But can anyone here think what I could be doing wrong?

Many thanks,

Josef

Originally posted by josefgiven
pesoloco,

This is splendid work, you have the skills, sir! Can I ask your advice?

I am currently working on a mod that will replace the tech-graphics with some that I hope will look better. I've saved the finished articles to the .PCX format and to the right pixel size, but I can't get them to work in the game. Is it possible that the .PCX format I've used has too many colours? The original tech pictures are a lot smaller in terms of the amount of disk space they take up.

Damn, I tried to upload an image so's you could have a look at the format, but I don't know how to. But can anyone here think what I could be doing wrong?

Many thanks,

Josef

If your files are signifcantly larger it is possible that when you saved them the editor used a different format. This happened to me a few weeks ago when working on some graphics. I just found a better image editor.

Probably the easiest way to get your graphics to work is to do what I did:

Load the original graphic and draw your new graphic (or paste it) over the old one then save.
In most editors this will keep the original format but with the new picture.

I will post my wonder pictures in PCX format soon.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Peso :)

Originally posted by pesoloco
If your files are signifcantly larger it is possible that when you saved them the editor used a different format. This happened to me a few weeks ago when working on some graphics. I just found a better image editor.Hmm, I checked the new images, and unless something I don't understand has gone wrong, I can pretty much 100% say that they are the PCX format (they have the correct .PCX suffix, for instance).

Probably the easiest way to get your graphics to work is to do what I did:

Load the original graphic and draw your new graphic (or paste it) over the old one then save.
In most editors this will keep the original format but with the new picture.Sure, I'll give it a go, but do you think that my problem could be that I haven't tried to syncronise the images' palettes with the one Civ III uses? I notice in the Art directory, there is a .PCX image called 'palette'... Perhaps I should spend some time seeing if I could export the colours from that into the tech-tree icons...

I will post my wonder pictures in PCX format soon.Cool, man; looking forward to seeing them. :)

Josef

PS: D'oh! Sorry, I misunderstood what you said... Great idea!

Josef ;)

dear Josef,
If you load an image and then change it, the pallette should still remain the same.

Good luck with your pictures! :)

peso,

Your idea worked fine. In fact, after I had arsed about with the files for a bit, I found that all I needed to do was to change the colour mode from RGB to Indexed which I think is Photoshop's unnecessarily fancy way of altering an image's palatte from 16 million colours to 256. Interestingly, this change was all it took to get any of the images to work in Civ III, whether or not I syncronised them with the original palatte or not.

But still no joy for me; now that I can see the new images in Civ III, it's become clear that the images use the (two?) masking colours, which I think are pure black (#000000) and pure white (#FFFFFF) although I'm not sure. Wherever the images use either colour, it shows up as that pink colour that Civ uses as a transparency.

Given the fact that it is very hard to see pitch black amongst very, very dark grey (which isn't masked in Civ III) in Photoshop, could you please give me some advice on how you managed to eliminate the colours in your graphics that 'show up wrong' in Civ III?

Thanks for your help

Josef

so far, no word from firaxis except "I'll see if I can find out anything about the
'Additional_Buildings.pcx' file. "

Perhaps in the next patch we will be able to use this file. Right now it seems this file was an idea that got scratched.

Originally posted by josefgiven
peso,

Your idea worked fine. In fact, after I had arsed about with the files for a bit, I found that all I needed to do was to change the colour mode from RGB to Indexed which I think is Photoshop's unnecessarily fancy way of altering an image's palatte from 16 million colours to 256. Interestingly, this change was all it took to get any of the images to work in Civ III, whether or not I syncronised them with the original palatte or not.

But still no joy for me; now that I can see the new images in Civ III, it's become clear that the images use the (two?) masking colours, which I think are pure black (#000000) and pure white (#FFFFFF) although I'm not sure. Wherever the images use either colour, it shows up as that pink colour that Civ uses as a transparency.

Given the fact that it is very hard to see pitch black amongst very, very dark grey (which isn't masked in Civ III) in Photoshop, could you please give me some advice on how you managed to eliminate the colours in your graphics that 'show up wrong' in Civ III?

Thanks for your help

Josef


You can use PhotoShop to edit the pallette. For many of the graphics in Civ, there are extra colors (the default pink color) that can be changed to whatever color you need. Use the Edit Pallette command in PhotoShop to change those colors. Most of the time, the last two colors are the two that need to be left alone

You can use PhotoShop to edit the pallette. For many of the graphics in Civ, there are extra colors (the default pink color) that can be changed to whatever color you need. Use the Edit Pallette command in PhotoShop to change those colors. Most of the time, the last two colors are the two that need to be left aloneNice one, peso,

That's done the trick perfectly, although I found that it was the first two colours in the palette that were the mask colours in the end. Perhaps that's just the way Photoshop does things.

Still, thanks very much for your help with this project. If it wasn't for your advice, I imagine I would have given up by now.

One last thing, could you please tell me how to attach images to a post so I can show off a few tasters? I can't seem to get them to upload at all.

Thanks again,

Josef

Noah's Ark Wonder:

more buildings:
oasis, stables, arena, public meeting place (forum)


Oasis:

stables:

arena:

public meeting place:

Can you do a world trade center and statue of liberty?

I already have a picture done for the statue of liberty. I will post it later today.

I will make a graphic for the WTC ASAP

Thank you. I had been experimenting with this a couple months or so ago but I'm very bad at anything graphics so I stopped.:)

statue of liberty
(carefully taken from Civ II)

and in case anybody's interested,
here is the eiffel tower
(also from Civ II)

World Trade Center

WOW
whas it hard to do all this pictures???
how did you did them???
you learned to draw???

For some of the pictures like stonehenge and spirit of st. louis I just took a photograph into a paint program and "traced" around it. I cut out the background and then added some shading.

For some of the other buildings, like the WTC I used a 3D modeling program.

That's great. Too bad my CD drive broke. It's happened maybe 5 times.:(

Peso:

Has there been any word from Firaxis since their last message?

The DyP players are dying to see all these new buildings in city view (and so am I, btw) :)

Originally posted by Isak
Peso:

Has there been any word from Firaxis since their last message?

The DyP players are dying to see all these new buildings in city view (and so am I, btw) :)

Unfortunately no
I think I will e-mail them again.

just e-mailed them. waiting for their response...

mmm... nice of them to get back to you ;)

Originally posted by zulu9812
mmm... nice of them to get back to you ;)

Yeah. They must be too busy for me or maybe they just forgot. :cry: :cry: :cry:

try 'em again

When I get my civ3 to work again I'll try converting some building from simcity3 (or 4? When does that come out?).

I've taken in everything that's on this post but I really want to add my own new building to the game, does anyone know how to do this yet?

Originally posted by computerdude113
I've taken in everything that's on this post but I really want to add my own new building to the game, does anyone know how to do this yet?

firaxis never wrote back about it. From what I can tell the additional_buildings.pcx was originally planned to be implemented in the game, but never made it to the release. Kind of like the play the world.txt file that comes with Civ III. It includes text for multi-player options but these were never implemented in Civ III. I guess we'll have to wait till PtW comes out before trying to edit additional_buildings.pcx again.

firaxis never wrote back about it. From what I can tell the additional_buildings.pcx was originally planned to be implemented in the game, but never made it to the release. Kind of like the play the world.txt file that comes with Civ III. It includes text for multi-player options but these were never implemented in Civ III. I guess we'll have to wait till PtW comes out before trying to edit additional_buildings.pcx again.

Ok, thanks. I'll try and mess around with it and if I can find out how to, i'll get bk to everyone instead of waiting for Firaxis to get bk to u. They'll probably never do that

firaxis never wrote back about it. From what I can tell the additional_buildings.pcx was originally planned to be implemented in the game, but never made it to the release. Kind of like the play the world.txt file that comes with Civ III. It includes text for multi-player options but these were never implemented in Civ III. I guess we'll have to wait till PtW comes out before trying to edit additional_buildings.pcx again.

Ok, thanks. I'll try and mess around with it and if I can find out how to, i'll get bk to everyone instead of waiting for Firaxis to get bk to u. They'll probably never do that:D

I have a wonder but not managed to test it in the city view yet... so maybe I'll come back and change the image later :p

Crystal Palace/Great Exhibition

wow, that is HUGE, but very nicely done .:goodjob:

I cannot take credit for the rendering :(

Sorry if that was implied, but I only manipulated someone elses work. Like taking a photo of a building... sure, the photo is mine but the building is not :p