Unable to run some utility programs; Win 8.1 x64

PlutonianEmpire · May 8, 2014

I've attempted a few times to run certain utility programs to be able to tweak my games some, but each time I try, I get the "This app can't run on your pc" error. The utility programs I'm trying to run are civtweak, civcity, and bmp2map.

Any way to fix this?

Catfish · May 27, 2014

CivTweak and CivCity are written in VB3, which is 16-bit. You won't be able to run those on a 64-bit operating system. Because this is the same problem that affects classic (16-bit) Civ2, virtualisation solutions can be found in this subforum. BMP2MAP, on the other hand, is written in VB4, and although I don't have Win8, I expect it'll work if you install the 32-bit VB4 run-time library. Put the attached DLL in the same folder as BMP2MAP.exe.

PlutonianEmpire · May 27, 2014

Got bmp2map to work. Thanks.

I bookmarked the virtualization thread for later. Thanks again

Catfish · May 27, 2014

One more thing to note is that CivCity is incompatible with multiple-map ToT games - since you're discussing those in your other thread.

PlutonianEmpire · May 27, 2014

Good to know, since each modification is saved as as a new, separate .sav file, so I still have the original conversion.

Also, for the color list defined by the readme, how do I figure out which color codes to use for bmp2map? A lot of the lists I can find on Google searches only give me some, but not all of the colors defined by the readme.

Catfish · May 28, 2014

I don't recall ever having used BMP2MAP. I had to consult the readme myself. The colours aren't all that important, it's the palette index that's key. But never mind that, Mercator's MapEdit will do the same thing, only better. He provides his own 8-bit palette file, MapEdit.pal, which you should be able to load into any BMP file - with a decent graphics editor, eg, GIMP, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro. Or you can use your own colour schemes, which you can load to MapEdit via its palette editor.

PlutonianEmpire · May 28, 2014

I don't think I'm doing it right. :lol:

Map one is just islands. Maps 2, 3, and 4 have way too many river tiles, 1 and 2 from bmp2map, 3 and 4 from MapEdit.

Any tutorials around that might be useful?

(I'm using Gimp for image manipulation, if it helps to know)

Catfish · Jun 4, 2014

None that I'm aware of. I'd start by using a paintbrush and/or colour replacer (in GIMP, I believe that's Select by Color/Fuzzy Select + Bucket Fill) tool to convert the source map to the colours from the MapEdit palette (RGB values are listed in MapEdit's palette editor). Then I'd load the MapEdit palette to the image. This will assign indices to those colours. In GIMP, that means Import Palette (MapEdit.pal), then Convert Image to Indexed Colors. Resize the image to Civ2 dimensions (1 pixel = 1 map tile) and save as a BMP. Load into MapEdit.

PlutonianEmpire · Jun 4, 2014

So it would be best to convert the image to the palette before resizing the image rather than after?

Catfish · Jun 4, 2014

IMO it's less time consuming to load the palette first. Think about what happens at the boundaries between colours when the image is reduced. Make sure you select None as the Interpolation method under Scale Image. In most other down-scaling situations, you'd do the opposite, ie, use interpolation on a 24-bit colour image. Do both and compare the results.

Unable to run some utility programs; Win 8.1 x64

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