UNITS: Attack Chopper & Air Transport w/New Animations

BlueO of Apolyton's forums agreed to let me post his work here. The first (that I know of) complete new units made with FLICster.

From BlueO's readme:

Attack Chopper - I think Civ3 is missing this vital modern unit. If the tank can be say to be modern era swordsman, then the chopper is modern era horseman. The chopper should be classified as a land unit with the ability to treat all terrain as roads. Its attack value should be 24 - same as modern tank, but the defense value is only 12 - slightly lower then the modern tank. Its movment speed is 3, so it doesn't move faster than a modern tank on the road. It so sweet, to fly through 9 tiles of rough terrains. Its too bad, the chopper can't fly across water, but on the other hand, the chopper can't realistically end its turn in water...

Air Transport - Another missing vital unit, the air transport. The air transport is a helicopter upgrade that has the maximum opertional range (eight). In addition, the air transport can carry more units... two, as well as vehicle units. I had hope to increase the range to 12, but 8 is the limit.

Click to expand...

I've viewed the animations and they look great. I haven't tried them in a game yet... still hard at work on the next version of FLICster. For more info on FLICster and the issues involved with creating unit animations, or to download flicster, read this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=10208

To download the new units:

d00d. How do I install it? o.o All the Civ 3 units have this amb extention on them and your units don't. I would REALLY love to use these units, 'cause from what I see from the icons, they look as if they were in Civ 3 all the long! But yeah. The units won't show up for me.

Yeah, these are the units that I am trying to install. Im struggling.

I think that the "/Art/Units/Planes.pcx" , "/Art/Units/s_Planes.pcx" , and especially the "/Art/Units/units_32.pcx" need to be changed to make them useable.

Please let me know if anyone has any more success...

RoY

I'll try to work up something detailed later, but for now, take a look at Zippo's instructions for his Stormtrooper unit on this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10762.
HTH

Yes... that is informative... however, the other two pcx files need to be fixed as well...

Frankly speaking those pcx files are not that important. You really do not need to fix them to get new units to work in the game. All you need to do is to assign one of the current available icon to the unit (after using the hacked Civ3Edit to add the unit of course ) and the unit will appear in the build menu just fine. And if you read the readme file in the zip file, this is suppose to be a land unit so editing the plane.pcx will not help.

As to the ambient files (file with a .amb extention), I notice that not all unit have that (I have been busy making my own mod as well ) and when there is one, it also have a few more files related to it. I never did try to open up the .amb file to take a look, but from my observation it always relates to those file that has the same name. Take rifleman for example :

I believe you have a RiflemanRun.amb. It relates to a few files such as RiflemanRunPack.wav, RiflemanRunxxx.wav etc. (Basically, a RiflemanRun.amb is linked to all the RiflemanRunxxx.wav files and I believe the program somehow choose the wav files in random). So, for the case of this Attack Copter, I don't think you need a .amb file (Please note that not all units has .amb as mentioned above. For those without a .amb file, the sound file is usually just a .wav file). And I believe the original helicopter unit also do not have an ambient file but it does has a HelicopterRun.wav or HelicopterDefault.wav file which give a nice heli sound anyway.

Actually I am typing this on another computer that do not have Civ3 installed so I cannot post a detailed line by line entry of how the sound file works. If someone is willing to post a copy of the workers.ini file here I will try to post a more detailed instruction on how to configure sound and what not as a separate thread using the file as an example.

Alright, looks like no one bother to post the ini

Anyway, since I am such a nice guy, I have compiled a complete zip file for the Attack Chopper unit (including the two Civilopedia pcx file which should be unzipped to CivilizationIII/Art/Civilopedia/Icon/Units folder) that includes an ini file and all the necessary sound files. For those of you who don't understand (or choose not to understand ) how the sound files and ini file for the unit works, you can download the zip file at the link below and unzipped all files except the two 66AttackChopperxxx.pcx file to the directory CivilizationIII/Art/Unit/AttackChopper (or whatever name you choose to call the unit, I called it gunship )

ThunderFall : If you think it is useful you might want to put it up in the CFC download section. I have to put it on my own domain server (on SimpleNet) as the file size is just slightly above 500k.

http://www.dweller.com/downloads/AttackChopper.zip

Finally reached Advanced Flight in my current game and see the Attack Chopper unit in game. Great stuff!!

Whoever have not downloaded the files yet I would strongly recommend them!!

What does the gunship look like?
I don't have the game yet so i can't see for myself.

Hmmm....lets see, I haven't look at modern helicopter images for a while now

It looks like the helicopter in the Airwolf TV series (you know, squary rather than round body shape, no landing gear after take off) with two extended wing on the side (hmmm...those wings make it looks like Apache ). I believe the image is based on some modern helicopter or at least some design idea as I think I seen it before somewhere but just can't recall.

Only thing the original designer claim wrong was having the blade rotating the wrong way but hey, its wonderful animation all in all considering that you need to spend a few hours just to crank out this 8 direction animation flc files for a unit

This is it...

It would have been cool with a Hind.

Ok,

I unzipped all those files into appropriate folders but what do I next? How to link those files to new unit in Civ Edit?

Originally posted by Crist2000
Ok,

I unzipped all those files into appropriate folders but what do I next? How to link those files to new unit in Civ Edit?

Click to expand...

Hmmm...didn't read Zippo's post on how to add a new unit eh?

Anyway, all you need to do is to download the hacked Civ3Edit which is available under the utility section. Under the unit tab in the editor just select add then name the unit as AttackChopper as the unit name has to be the same as the folder name you unzip the files into. Also the ini file must also have the same name. If you want to call the unit another name just remember to rename the folder and ini files.

After all that is done, just assign the unit attack/def/movement and make the unit either a land unit or air unit and you are done!!

I zee. Seems that I have missed something. But anyway, it doesnt make my lify easier either. How do I create the unit icon to make it visible in build list? Should I modify units32.pcx?

Originally posted by Crist2000
I zee. Seems that I have missed something. But anyway, it doesnt make my lify easier either. How do I create the unit icon to make it visible in build list? Should I modify units32.pcx?

Click to expand...

Yup, just refer my post on Creation & Customization under Img pasting

Hey this unit sounds pretty good so far but I havent tried it yet. Are there any crashes or probs yet?
Im already using the LWC mod so would it still work ok with both installed? Sorry for all the questions just dont wanna run into any problems.

Dark Sheer, pleeezz, be more specific! Where

Moreover, I cant apply AI strattegy to this goddamn new unit. These checkboxes are just greyed out. When I'm trying to load some previously saved game with edited civ3mod.bic I'm startting to recieve wierd error message:

DataIO operation error:CNSL

what actually i did:

1. Created new folder in ...\unit\gunship
2. renamed ixxxxx.ini fail to gunship.ini
3. Downloaded hacked civedit
4. creeated new unit with name "gunship"
5. make new unit as land unit
5. applied cost,moves,att,def and req.res.
6. added abilities : all terran as roads.
7. Put two files to civilopeadia folders.

What I'm doing wrong?!

KALIROB2k2 :
Adding new unit to any mod doesn't really affect the mod. However, making changes to the Civ3mod.bic file will result in an old savegame unplayable. So if you have a game in progress, finish it before installing any new unit Also, the new unit looks great and work with no crash. I am having a modern war in my current game and already lost a few of the gunship


Crist2000 :
I don't think you have done anything wrong. The game will not load a savegame as it realise you have change the rules by adding new unit thats all. Starting a new game should be fine