I'm making a Tornado unit for Grandraem. I've finished the default/run/attack flic, in fact. However, the unit won't work in game when I tested it. When I tried to place it on the map in Debug mode (which I usually use for testing units), nothing appeared and the game locked up. On the status screen in the lower right corner the unit showed up surrounded by a large box. Unfortunately, I didn't get a screenshot.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Some other tests with from-scratch storyboards also had the same thing happen. I think that it might have something to do with the pink background, because when I look at the animation in Flicster it works fine, except that when I check the "alpha bend" box nothing happens.

The storyboard was generated with Steph's storyboard builder, converted to PCX with a program called Irfanview, and is 256 colors. The flic was created with, of course, Flicster.

Help, anyone? :) Thanks in advance.

Take a look at the total animation time in Flicster and see if it makes sense (check the attachment on this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=881548#post881548) for an example.) A lot of unit crashes I've seen involve some problem with the FLiC where this is somehow off. The proper number should be number of frames * frame delay.

Other than that, post the default FLC and myself or someone else will take a look.

Here's the flc (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/Tornado.zip). Thanks! :)

OK, you had 3 problems.

1) The timing was screwy. FLiCster complained as soon as I opened it and fixed it initially, but I wound up generating a new FLC anyhow because...

2) The palette was even screwier. Despite wading through one forced reboot because of PEdit, I gave it a proper one, but it's still not perfect because....

3) It was way off-center. I tried using the INI trick but PTW just hated that, so I resorted to just shifting the entire storyboard up about 48 pixels. It's still off a bit horizontally, but it's your unit so you can fix that :p

Here's a new FLC for you (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/pdescobar_Tornado.zip)

And here's a screenshot from my test of it:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/pdescobar_Tornado.gif

Thanks guys. Sorry it took me so long to respond. I wasn't at home for a while.:cool:

I really appreciate this.:)

Thanks a lot for the help! I know this comes a little late, but I've been away from my computer for the past few days.

It seems the timing is what crashed my game, and the palette is what caused the pink to show up. The question is, how do I fix these two problems in the future? I just tried creating a from-scratch defaut flic, but the timing was off and locked the game up. I wound up having to edit the flic you provided. The palette of all units I make is also off, but I can't figure out how to chang it in MS Paint.

So, I hate to bug you some more, but can you or somebody else tell me how to fix these two issues so I can do it myself?

I appreciate all the help again. :) My finished unit will be posted in the completed units forum shortly.

For the timing, make sure you have the last version of Flicster (1.0.1.18) and create your unit with that. If you still have a problem, try exporting it out to a storyboard and then immediately exporting it back to a FLC which once worked for me clearing up a timing problem with a multi-unit.

For the palette, uhhh, find something better than MS Paint ;) Seriously, I have no idea how/if you can get a proper palette with that program. If you have PSP or something else which understands .pal files, you can export the storyboard from the FLC I messed with which will give you a good palette and then apply that palette to the other storyboards. You would also then be able to make a custom palette with PEdit to apply to any new unit you make since that is able to save .pal files too; that's what I used to make the palette for the FLC I posted.

Well, my version of Flicster is 1.0.0.17, so that's the problem with the timing.

I checked, and it seems that Irfanview has a palette import ability, so I'll experiment with that. I'm afraid PSP is way too big for me to downoad using my modem connection (not if I'd like to get it in this lifetime).

Thanks again for all the help!