[Civ2] Graphic Editing Questions

[KevinLancaster]

1. Do you necessarily need to convert to Gif87a? I noticed that my terrain2.gif wasn't in that format but still worked fine.

2. How exactly do you change the index of a colour in a palette? The problem is that I know that the last three colours of the palette are transparent in game, but whenever I apply the 256 colour palette onto an image with grey in it the background transparent grey is always defined as the "135, 135, 135" grey at index 16 instead of 256. I solved this by changing the colour at index 16, but I'm afraid that made the other grey areas in the image transparent.

3. This question is more for Catfish; I was trying to convert the cities in your ToT graphics pack to MGE; did I do it properly?

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by KevinLancaster

1. Do you necessarily need to convert to Gif87a? I noticed that my terrain2.gif wasn't in that format but still worked fine.

Are you sure? Using 89a, I get graphical glitches with various files. Even if you don't have a hex editor on hand, you can still open the GIF file with a text editor and view the version number: it's the first 6 bytes. FW and MGE can also read indexed BMPs, but, being uncompressed, file size is larger.

Originally Posted by KevinLancaster

2. How exactly do you change the index of a colour in a palette? The problem is that I know that the last three colours of the palette are transparent in game, but whenever I apply the 256 colour palette onto an image with grey in it the background transparent grey is always defined as the "135, 135, 135" grey at index 16 instead of 256. I solved this by changing the colour at index 16, but I'm afraid that made the other grey areas in the image transparent.

Take the palette from units.gif. It uses purple (#875387) instead of grey (#878787) for index 255. That more closely matches ToT's transparent colours and also doesn't conflict with index 16 (also #878787). I use PSP for graphics editing and that includes a 'maintain indexes' option in the load palette function. I'd load the units palette into cities.gif by this method before I started (attached). Index 255 can be any colour you like really. Simply edit the palette. Make sure it's unique.

Originally Posted by KevinLancaster

3. This question is more for Catfish; I was trying to convert the cities in your ToT graphics pack to MGE; did I do it properly?

Any issues would be minor. You're already aware of the 'holes' in some of the icons caused by the problem above. Check the positions of the flags and city size boxes in the game. Flag height markers are not read by ToT, so they're absent in my ToT file. The city size position markers may use a different palette index to the one you're using (I'm too lazy to check).

[KevinLancaster]

Well I'm using the default flags, since your ToT flags don't convert well to 256 colours.
What do you mean by city size boxes and city size position markers?

EDIT: This is what I came up with.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by KevinLancaster

What do you mean by city size boxes and city size position markers?

I meant their position relative to the city tile as determined by the markers along the top and left borders of the city icons. That's also what I meant when I referred to flag position. Like this.

Originally Posted by KevinLancaster

EDIT: This is what I came up with.

If it works and you're happy with it...