City Flavor Graphics

Right now we have city flavor graphics for European, Classical, and Asian civilizations. For whatever reason, Firaxis chose not to complete the set. We could really use, at minimum, a Middle Eastern/African set and a Native American set.

Has anyone dug into these files to see how easy they'd be to change? There are usefull bits and peices floating around. The Native set, for example, could use the teepee file that's released for the some of the buildings in the earliest era, and recycle shrunken and reskined versions of the some of the Mesoamerican wonders for later ages.

Anyone else interested in talking about this or already working on it? Seems like one of those neat little flavor packs that almost everyone would use.

Of course, on the other hand, Firaxis may well include the missing sets in the next XP (or if they're nice patch) and render this moot.

I believe Prestigidator is working on a Mesopotamian cityset, which I assume would be usable for at the very least the early middle-east.

The thing with the native americans is that the ancient Inca and Aztec didn't live in tents (as far as I know). A pueblo-alike set would be more convenient, especially for the middle ages.
Of course, the tipi's could be good for a starting "hamlet" for those civs.

As for the africans, Woodelf/C.Roland have created and textured a few mud huts and such. Might be usable, if not for the africans, then for the Mongols. Or else a reskinned version of the round ancient eurohuts for those same africans.

As for feasability, it's a combination of creating the graphics and putting the right graphic on the right 'leaf' in the City4LSystem (or something like that) XML-file.

Yes I agree, this is to me the most pressing the problem. It shocked me alittle when I saw they only did chinese and mediterranean city art but not middle east or anything else for that matter. I personally would like indian city art, and middle east.

I've never done city art before, but I would like to do.

I will create oriental city art. But I'm unsure about the color. It seem that they have a lot of adobe or clay buildings which are just ocre. Any ideas about this?

Chamaedrys said:

I've never done city art before, but I would like to do.

I will create oriental city art. But I'm unsure about the color. It seem that they have a lot of adobe or clay buildings which are just ocre. Any ideas about this?

Click to expand...

Good, but asian and oriental is the same, so are you really planning on creating a second asian cityset?
Nm, just teasing.
A quick google gave this: the first looks like a good candidate for ancient-classic buildings, the second for the medieval-renaissance style.
http://www.fotosearch.com/comp/corbis/dgt140/WTR0063.jpg
http://static.flickr.com/9/12577961_22f69aeef9.jpg

Those links you provided look more tibetan and maybe indian not east asian like chinese/ japanese. I also think it would be a good idea to differentiate the eras for the current asian city art, as the current one looks medieval.

GeoModder said:

Good, but asian and oriental is the same, so are you really planning on creating a second asian cityset?

Click to expand...

Well, the Asian city set is East Asian. It doesn't fit for Saladin or Asoka. So I wanted to make a set in their city style, the oriental style.

ohcrapitsnico said:

Those links you provided look more tibetan and maybe indian not east asian like chinese/ japanese. I also think it would be a good idea to differentiate the eras for the current asian city art, as the current one looks medieval.

Click to expand...

The first pic is shot in Morocco, the second one somewhere in Jemen I believe.

Now that makes sense. I think though that the first pic could be used for ancient indian cities combined with hindu style buildings. Now I think that would make a great ancient indian city set.

Fintilgin said:

Anyone else interested in talking about this or already working on it? Seems like one of those neat little flavor packs that almost everyone would use.

Click to expand...

This thread should be in Main C&C, sub-forums are for completed files.

Edit: This thread now contains completed files, hooray.

...Having said that, making a pool of generic buildings for different cultures would be nice. I think that, ideally, one would need:

European (as they are, perhaps with minor reskins for the last 3 eras to differentiate between civs)
East Asian (As it is)
Adobe (somewhat Generic, perhaps a 'primitive' set for ancient/classical and a 'developed' set for middle ages onward)
Mediterranean (As it is)
Oriental/Middle Eastern (onion domes, minarets, etc...small set)
Monolithic (Stone buildings, primarily for Inca and Aztec)

Then, a mixture of the above (along with the last 3 eras' buildings) could be set up for each individual civ by era. Say, for instance:
Ancient Carthage (70% Adobe, 10% Mediterranean, 20% European)
Classical Carthage (40% Mediterranean, 50% Adobe, 10% European)
Middle Ages India (60% Middle Eastern, 10% East Asian, 10% European, 20% Monolithic)
Ancient Egypt (80% Adobe, 10% Monolithic, 10% European)
Classical Egypt (60% Adobe, 20% Mediterranean, 10% Monolithic, 10% European)
Renaissance Turkey (40% Middle Eastern, 10% Adobe, 50% European)
Industrial Turkey (20% Middle Eastern, 10% Adobe, 70% European)

It sounds pretty arduous and complex to me, but I can dream.

Ok, now I have some Ideas for it.

can i say modern north american?? that would be interesting as the current ones just dont quite fit

GarretSidzaka said:

can i say modern north american?? that would be interesting as the current ones just dont quite fit

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You could say modern European as well cause it doesn't fit, too. There are too much skyscrapers for European (at least for German) cities.

btw: Did anybody know where the xml-tags for the city and town art are? I didn't find it in the artdef files. :-(

i agree. frankfurt only has a small cluster of really really high one only in the very middle

I would also like to see a few medieval buildings hanging around in modern times to better differentiate city graphics. I think that in the modern era all the cities look the same.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The game has a very cryptic way to use city art:



there are textures for all buildings. And the texture works in the nifeditor, but not in game. Only one building has the right texture.

I have also noticed that some medivial buildings appear together with ancient buildings

Chamaedrys said:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The game has a very cryptic way to use city art:
[picture deleted]
there are textures for all buildings. And the texture works in the nifeditor, but not in game. Only one building has the right texture.

I have also noticed that some medivial buildings appear together with ancient buildings

Click to expand...

Wow that looks quite good Chamaedrys . I don't know why the textures aren't working properly, but perhaps you need to set a value in an XML file?

EDIT: perhaps if you send me a file with textures I can look into it?

Chamaedrys said:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The game has a very cryptic way to use city art:

there are textures for all buildings. And the texture works in the nifeditor, but not in game. Only one building has the right texture.

I have also noticed that some medivial buildings appear together with ancient buildings

Click to expand...

I have already tried to modify city graphic and I had the same texture problem.

He he he, this one looks better:



My theory about this:

It seems that the game just use one texture file for city graphics. So when there different texture files for the buildings, one is picked and used for all.
I have my doubts about this cause units and improvements with several textures work fine.

I just put all texture in a big file and get that result, there are still things to do.

@ C.Roland: Do you know what xml work must be done for adding new city art? I just replaced med_eu with my art to get a fast result.

@Prestidigitator: It seems that we have allready found a solution. But I will release the old single buildings, soon.

The old models can be downloaded as single buildings here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=2920