Modding Civ I - custom Civ colors !

darkpanda · Jul 1, 2013

I guess that this hack may get more than a few Civ 1 fanatics as happy as it made me: hereunder is a step-by-step guide to modify your CIV.EXE and change the default colors for any and all Civilizations !

As you may have noticed already, each Civ possesses a pair of color: the light/foreground color and the dark/background color.

The default colors are as below:

When studying the Civ color palettes, especially the color palette from SP257.PIC/.PAL, where the unit icons are stored, we can actually match the default Civ colors with the initial 16 colors in the palette:

You can see that each Civ's colors translate into a pair of color IDs, and quite fortunately, those color IDs are also stored together in an array inside CIV.EXE (offsets below from CIV EN 474.01):

Code:

00026193h: [B]0C[/B] 00 [B]0F [/B]00 [B]0A [/B]00 [B]09 [/B]00 [B]0E [/B]00 [B]0B [/B]00 [B]0D [/B]00 [B]07 [/B]00
000261a3h: [B]04 [/B]00 [B]07 [/B]00 [B]02 [/B]00 [B]01 [/B]00 [B]0A [/B]00 [B]03 [/B]00 [B]04 [/B]00 [B]08 [/B]00

As you can see above, the color IDs are arranged as 16 words (2-byte integers):

first 8 words for light/foreground colors, next 8 words for dark/background colors
in each of the 8-word arrays, the order of colors is same as the order of Civs: 0 = Reds (barbarians), 1 = whites, 2 = greens, etc...

I wanted to play with them a little, so I look at what colors are available in SP257.PIC's color palette:

Then I changed the values as follows:

Code:

00026193h: 0C 00 [B][COLOR="Blue"]35 [/COLOR][/B]00 [B][COLOR="Blue"]48 [/COLOR][/B]00 [B][COLOR="Blue"]03 [/COLOR][/B]00 0E 00 0B 00 0D 00 07 00
000261a3h: 04 00 [B][COLOR="Blue"]3D [/COLOR][/B]00 [B][COLOR="Blue"]4D [/COLOR][/B]00 [B][COLOR="Blue"]0C [/COLOR][/B]00 0A 00 03 00 04 00 08 00

And the magic worked, as you can see below, giving the Romans an orange flavour, the babylonians a kind of mustard-yellow flavour, and the German a warholesque dark teal/red look:

darkpanda · Jul 1, 2013

Just a word to notify that I updated the top thread with details about the data structure for color IDs in CIV.EXE, as well as the full SP257.PIC color palette...

Bach · Jul 12, 2013

Holy cow darkpanda, you're a genius!
Please continue sharing the knowledge.

I need to get my hands on a hex editor.

kirkham7 · Jul 12, 2013

Here's a free hex editor..
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

Leovardia · Jul 12, 2013

Great work darkpanda!
Thanks for the hex editor-link kirkham7!

C1v1l1z@t10n · Jul 12, 2013

wow so cool! thanks for sharing!

Jaimstastud · Jul 20, 2013

I always wanted different colours, thanks!

Nesretnik · Aug 5, 2013

Yay! Now I don't have to live with that bright pink...

Thanks, darkpanda.

But the palette is a bit limited, as it stands. Is there a painless way of editing the .PAL to contain other colours that we can then choose for the civs?

darkpanda · Aug 5, 2013

I don't know any painless way *yet* but it could be added to JCivED... Obviously the risk of changing the color of other Civ items unexpectedly. I'll think about it...

darkpanda · Aug 6, 2013

darkpanda said:
I don't know any painless way *yet* but it could be added to JCivED... Obviously the risk of changing the color of other Civ items unexpectedly. I'll think about it...

Actually, the current dev version of JCivED already supports basic palette edition, I had completely forgotten about this as I implemented it just before going on vacation...

So this means palette edition will be available in the next release of JCivED (0.0.12a), in the coming days or weeks.

Tomee12 · Aug 8, 2013

This seems like an amazing mod, something that I've been looking for. Thanks for the tutorial, although, I'm unable to find the 00026193h and 000261a3h lines.
I think I'm doing something wrong. Could you, please, help me?

darkpanda · Aug 8, 2013

Tomee12 said:
This seems like an amazing mod, something that I've been looking for. Thanks for the tutorial, although, I'm unable to find the 00026193h and 000261a3h lines.
I think I'm doing something wrong. Could you, please, help me?

I don't know what your problem is, but I believe that any Hex editor will actually show you the lines ending with a '0', so what you would be looking for is rather something like below:

Code:

00026180h: 00 00 00 FF FF FE FF FD FF FD FF 03 00 FD FF 03 ; ...ÿÿþÿýÿýÿ..ýÿ.
[B]00026190h[/B]: 00 FD FF [B][COLOR="Blue"]0C 00 0F 00 0A 00 09 00 0E 00 0B 00 0D[/COLOR][/B] ; .ýÿ.............
[B]000261a0h[/B]: [B][COLOR="Blue"]00 07 00 04 00 07 00 02 00 01 00 0A 00 03 00 04[/COLOR][/B] ; ................
[B]000261b0h[/B]: [B][COLOR="Blue"]00 08 00[/COLOR][/B] AC 00 B4 00 BE 00 C7 00 D1 00 DA 00 E5 ; ...¬.´.¾.Ç.Ñ.Ú.å

Does this help ?

Tomee12 · Aug 8, 2013

darkpanda said:
I don't know what your problem is, but I believe that any Hex editor will actually show you the lines ending with a '0', so what you would be looking for is rather something like below:

Code:

00026180h: 00 00 00 FF FF FE FF FD FF FD FF 03 00 FD FF 03 ; ...ÿÿþÿýÿýÿ..ýÿ. [B]00026190h[/B]: 00 FD FF [B][COLOR="Blue"]0C 00 0F 00 0A 00 09 00 0E 00 0B 00 0D[/COLOR][/B] ; .ýÿ............. [B]000261a0h[/B]: [B][COLOR="Blue"]00 07 00 04 00 07 00 02 00 01 00 0A 00 03 00 04[/COLOR][/B] ; ................ [B]000261b0h[/B]: [B][COLOR="Blue"]00 08 00[/COLOR][/B] AC 00 B4 00 BE 00 C7 00 D1 00 DA 00 E5 ; ...¬.´.¾.Ç.Ñ.Ú.å

Does this help ?

What editor are you using, if I may ask?

darkpanda · Aug 8, 2013

Tomee12 said:
What editor are you using, if I may ask?

Personally I'm using an old copy of UltraEdit32 (with license), but I've read others recommend this free hex editor: http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

Tomee12 · Aug 8, 2013

darkpanda said:
Personally I'm using an old copy of UltraEdit32 (with license), but I've read others recommend this free hex editor: http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

Thanks a lot, I'll give that a try, I still haven't succeeded for some reason, though.

Moderator Action:
Here is a highly recommended Freeware Hex Editor XVI32
http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm

Dack · Aug 8, 2013

In CIV version .05 the string can be found here

Code:

26050 : FF FE FF FD FF FD FF 03 00 FD FF 03 00 FD FF [COLOR="Blue"]0C [/COLOR]
26060 : [COLOR="Blue"]00 0F 00 0A 00 09 00 0E 00 0B 00 0D 00 07 00 04 [/COLOR]
26070 : [COLOR="Blue"]00 07 00 02 00 01 00 0A 00 03 00 04 00 08 00[/COLOR] AC

The Freeware Hex Editor XVI32 has a search future the will simplify finding the string you want. That is if it exists in your version of CIV

Theov · Dec 2, 2013

This is so cool.
I've finally given England and Greece an orange color. England was orange in Civ3 too.
The Egyptians are more yellow now, which looks better.

I've given the Mongols/Indians a dirty-green brown color.
Obviously they look the same... so this needs fine tuning

The problem however is that there is no purple and brown doesn't look good with the pictures. So there's only so many colors to go by.

Has anyone found good looking playable color combinations?

Kundi · Jan 27, 2014

I'm having a hard time finding these strings to change them. I downloaded the program that kirkham suggested and have version 3; not sure if this has anything to do with why I can't find them.

Any suggestions on where to look or search methods?

I've searched by string and by code and nothing

darkpanda · Jan 27, 2014

Kundi said:
I'm having a hard time finding these strings to change them. I downloaded the program that kirkham suggested and have version 3; not sure if this has anything to do with why I can't find them.

Any suggestions on where to look or search methods?

I've searched by string and by code and nothing

I recommend you use JCivED to patch your CIV.EXE: since the patch above was posted, it has been implemented into JCivED for ease of use.

After you downloaded and launched JCivED, here is how to proceed:
- Open menu Patch
- Select Open CIV executable...
- Select your CIV.EXE
- In the patch list, select CIV1_CUSTOM_CIV_COLORS
- Then press Configure button at the bottom-right of the panel
- Then select your Civ colors
- When finished, press OK
- Finally, press Apply for your changes to be applied to your CIV.EXE

Note that JCivED will not create a backup copy for you, so be careful and create/keep your own backup copies accordingly.

Enjoy!

Kundi · Jan 28, 2014

darkpanda said:
I recommend you use JCivED to patch your CIV.EXE: since the patch above was posted, it has been implemented into JCivED for ease of use.

After you downloaded and launched JCivED, here is how to proceed:
- Open menu Patch
- Select Open CIV executable...
- Select your CIV.EXE
- In the patch list, select CIV1_CUSTOM_CIV_COLORS
- Then press Configure button at the bottom-right of the panel
- Then select your Civ colors
- When finished, press OK
- Finally, press Apply for your changes to be applied to your CIV.EXE

Note that JCivED will not create a backup copy for you, so be careful and create/keep your own backup copies accordingly.

Enjoy!

ill try to redownload jcived then. the copy i have on my computer the 'civ colors patch' is 'greyed out' for my civ.exe file. not sure if it's because it's a version 3 copy of the game or what.

so when home, i'll retry and post a screen shot if i can't get it to work.

thanks for the help panda

Modding Civ I - custom Civ colors !

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