New commerce icon

Some people may have noticed that the in-game icon for "commerce" and "gold" are, by default, identical.

This leads to some confusion - does a Market modify commerce or gold, for instance? Since the game communicates with icons instead of with actual text, it is a bit clunky.

Oddly enough, in the font files, there really are two separate spaces, one for commerce and one for gold, both with the identical icon. Annoying! Why have the same icon meaning two things?

Then I remembered a previous version of civ (Civ1?) used little arrows to indicate commerce. So I made a mod to change the icons in Civ4 from coins to little arrows.

And here it is!

The screenshot shows the city screen, but notice that the symbols on the main map have changed too.

Also notice that I have installed Stuporstar's new gold icon as well. My mod doesn't come with it by default, but you can get font files that have both the new commerce icon and new gold icon from here.

Installation: unzip the file into your customassets directory. Alternately, create a new directory in your "My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\MODS" directory and unzip the files there (you'll have to select the mod from the Mods menu after you start up the game if you do it that way).

Download the newcommerce mod here: LINK

Known issues:
1. For some reason, to get it to work, I had to completely move the original font files out of the "C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\res\Fonts" directory. Even renaming them didn't work - it insisted on loading them instead of the new font files in CustomAssets.

2. If you have the 1.09 patch, try holding down shift as you start up the game to make sure the new files load.

MerakSpielman said:

Known issues:
1. For some reason, to get it to work, I had to completely move the original font files out of the "C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\res\Fonts" directory. Even renaming them didn't work - it insisted on loading them instead of the new font files in CustomAssets.

Click to expand...

Nice! One thing I was looking for done.

I actually just opened it up into my "My Games" folder and it worked perfectly (except I don't know about the map drawn commerce since that and the shields don't work for me and I'm too scared to download 1.09 ).

Req

Only problem is that the new icon is hard to see on the map. Is there any way to lighten it up or maybe place something behind it?

Thanks.

Please... would it be possible to put the awesome Double-arrow symbol in (or in front of) a gold coin?

... and perhaps but the number "1" in the other coins, dark enough to easily tell the difference between gold and smilies?

Grimshok said:

Please... would it be possible to put the awesome Double-arrow symbol in (or in front of) a gold coin?

... and perhaps but the number "1" in the other coins, dark enough to easily tell the difference between gold and smilies?

Click to expand...

I have a concept that would involve a disk of some color and a cool, swirly arrow symbol with one blue arrow spiraling into the center and one red arrow spiraling out like a galaxy.

But I have virtually no artistic talent and this might take a little while.

As far as the difference between gold and smilies... that's why I downloaded stuperstar's new gold icon, which you can see in the screenshot above.

Edit: Just in case anybody's curious, the full version of whatever icon you want needs to be 25x25 pixels. This is the one that shows up on the main map screen, and allows room for 4 of the icons to be stacked diagonally.

Eh, what the hell. I was bored. Here's the new version, with screenshot. It's more geometric than the one I just described, but like I said, I'm not that artistic... This one is a green diamond with red and blue arrows on it. The idea is for it to be instantly and easily distinguishable from all the other symbols.

stuperstar's gold icon is included by default.

Hey Merak, I just happened to be feeling artistic, so I made you the icon you described. The file inside the zip is a pdf file with all the layers intact so that you can tweak it until you like it.

oooo pretty. I'll stick that in tonight. Now that I know what I'm doing it goes pretty quick (once I have an image that is).

Good job, guys!

Stuporstar said:

Hey Merak, I just happened to be feeling artistic, so I made you the icon you described. The file inside the zip is a pdf file with all the layers intact so that you can tweak it until you like it.

Click to expand...

Done! I think I'm going to call this the Final Version, and use it in all my games.

MerakSpielman said:

Done! I think I'm going to call this the Final Version, and use it in all my games.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, Doesn't work for the Yield View (CTRL-Y). Seems to be there for the other ones, though. Once that's fixed, good job .

Nice job on the graphics, Stuporstar!

Req

Odd, it seems to work fine in my yield view. See here...



Are you sure you put them in all the right folders? I think Merak, you might want to add a text file telling people what folder each file needs to go into.

Oh, and I cleaned up the icons in your gamefont files a bit. My original pdf didn't resize very well, so I used one of the smileys as a base and just resized the arrows to fit. Check out the new ones: this file contains just the gamefont files as well as seperate images for the new icon.

Stuporstar said:

Odd, it seems to work fine in my yield view. See here...



Are you sure you put them in all the right folders? I think Merak, you might want to add a text file telling people what folder each file needs to go into.

Oh, and I cleaned up the icons in your gamefont files a bit. My original pdf didn't resize very well, so I used one of the smileys as a base and just resized the arrows to fit. Check out the new ones: this file contains just the gamefont files as well as seperate images for the new icon.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, looked at it again and saw it....

I guess my cache hadn't been cleared yet, or something like that (though I did it twice and it still hadn't shown) .

Sorry about jumping the gun.

Req

Stuporstar said:

Oh, and I cleaned up the icons in your gamefont files a bit. My original pdf didn't resize very well, so I used one of the smileys as a base and just resized the arrows to fit. Check out the new ones: this file contains just the gamefont files as well as seperate images for the new icon.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

requies said:

Hmmm, looked at it again and saw it....

I guess my cache hadn't been cleared yet, or something like that (though I did it twice and it still hadn't shown) .

Sorry about jumping the gun.

Req

Click to expand...

No problem... things like this were why I took so long getting the first version out. I couldn't figure out how, even after removing the graphics from the official folder, it was still displaying coins on the map. That cache is a tricky bugger...

Not trying to sound too negative here, but I think the swirly arrows on green background are just a bit over-complicated; I really liked the straight red/blue arrows in the first post. The only complaint was that they were hard to see on the minimap, but you could get around that by putting a 1-pixel dark border around the arrows (similar to how the hammers have a thin grey border, or the bread has a thin brown border). Making them a bit thicker might help, too; in fact, if you could fatten them such that there was no empty space between the two arrows, that'd almost be enough on its own.

But anyway, thanks for the icons, the whole gold-vs-commerce thing was always a HUGE headache when looking at Wonders and improvements.

Coulad you use the original arrows that you created, with a border like spatzimaus describes, as the 1 commerce symbol, and then the swirly symbol for 5 commerce?

kandalf said:

Coulad you use the original arrows that you created, with a border like spatzimaus describes, as the 1 commerce symbol, and then the swirly symbol for 5 commerce?

Click to expand...

It could be done, but I'll leave that for somebody else. I was trying to distance the Commerce symbol from looking like money or coins though, myself.

I downloaded the second commerce icon [the geometric one] and it works no problem. I absolutely love the change -- it makes commerce easier to understand. Good work. =D

Thanks for the mod guys!

Why would mine only show in the city screen and not on the map? I have the new commerce icon in the trade data area of the city screen, but not on the map area in the city screen or on the map itself.