Wonder Graphics: Noah's Arc

[Ukas]

This one is for Pesoloco's and Computerdude's very interesting sounding mod called Noah's Arc.

The pic is made from scratch for a change, based on the image I saw in some illustrated bible long time ago. Noah's Arc is often portrayed as this fat, round shaped (probably easy to turn around) ship.

Well, hopefully the Boys will like it.

ukas

Here is the file:

[Ukas]

Here's the preview. Report anything strange since I haven't tested it yet.

[computerdude113]

YES!
Thank You!

I will try and see if I can convince the game to have it show up in the Arial view...

[computerdude113]

Could you do me a BIG favor? Can you go into your
City View->Buildings folder and open up the Pyrimadfiles? They are WON-Pyramid_(Sh, D,G,P,T). Sh is Shadow, D is desert, G is grassland, P looks like Plains, and T is Tundra. Can you delete the pyramid from each of these and instead put in a higher-resolution version of Noah's Arc? This is the main wonder in the game and I would do it with what you gave me, but the resolution of the picture isn't good enough for me to resize it so much. THis would be a HUGE help to me (Or, you can send me a very good resolution copy and I will do it). For Noah's Arc we will be changing the buildings themselves and this is how we need to do it.

Also, if you could do this with some of your other graphics that would be great. This way we can physically add in all of your great creations!

[Ukas]

Doing it as we speak. But can you send me the original Won-Pyramid-D.pcx since I managed to save my work on it? Where is the man-is-all-thumbs smiley?

When I had ten or eleven new buildings I cropped the building I had been doing to send it here and then saved it as buildings-large.pcx to my \City Screen. The back up I had was the original without any additions. Of course I had the zip-files I've been sending so I was saved but it took a lot of copying and pasting let me tell ya.

[pdescobar]

Originally posted by Ukas
Doing it as we speak. But can you send me the original Won-Pyramid-D.pcx since I managed to save my work on it? Where is the man-is-all-thumbs smiley?

Ask and ye shall receive

[tpasmall]

Originally posted by Ukas
The pic is made from scratch for a change, based on the image I saw in some illustrated bible long time ago. Noah's Arc is often portrayed as this fat, round shaped (probably easy to turn around) ship.

Not to nit-pick, but those renditions arent correct. The ark was actually a perfect rectangle......

[pesoloco]

Very nice!
Thank you, Ukas.
Much better than my ark.

[Ukas]

You had an ark ready? dang!

Anyway it's you the unit guys I admire.

I made this bigger ark for city view as computerdude asked, but when tested it as "desert pyramid" doesn't show right - the magenta background is also included. If you guys can resolve that?

Here's he preview:

[Ukas]

Here's it as pcx

[pdescobar]

You need to make the magenta background the last color in the palette. Attached is a fixed version. Below is a half-size screenshot of it on grassland, although I forgot to delete or modify the original pyramid shadow file first...

[Ukas]

Thanks for help.

The ark looks kind of funny. I'll do something about that.

[computerdude113]

THAT LOOKS GREAT!
My only thoughts on it are:
Can you move it over a bit to the left?
Can you make a new shadow for it so it doesn't use the shadows for the Pyrimad?

Thanks

[Ukas]

Don't worry I'm not going to ruin it, perhaps blur it a bit or something so it doesn't create strong contrast compared to background.

Haven't worked with them shadows before but I guess it's doable.

By the way, how do I set up a color palette in Photoshop 7.0 to work with civ3 correctly. I mean Photoshop's instructions are complicated, uses different terms I've used with some other programs and I have a licensed copy w/o manual. By this I mean how to make that magenta as the last color of my palette?

Thanks in advance

[pesoloco]

thats beautiful!!!!

[computerdude113]

Ok, I messed around with it a bit and this is what I've come up with, it looks good with the Pyramid shadow, but that should be changed.
And YES, this is an actual screen shot from the actual scenerio.


P.S., Ukas, it's spelt Noah's Ark (I know I spelt it wrong, no worries though)

[Ukas]

Right, Ark it is. But you can find lots of stuff about Noah's Arc if you type it with c in google so I guess it's a common mistake.

Anyway, I've managed to solve the 'palette problem' or in photoshop 7.0 language 'color table' problem. One thing which confused me was that the program uses different terms than many other programs.

Alas, the solution give birth to another problem:

photoshop wants the magenta to be indexed as number 0. But if I have a pic where magenta is number 30 and black (r0,g0,b0) is number 0 and I change them with each other - then everything in pic which was black changes to magenta and vice versa. So, how do I point the program to follow black from index number 0 to index number 30 etc. ?

[pdescobar]

First off, does magenta really have to be index zero? I know sometimes programs use palette position zero for transparency, but the image does not have to be transparent as far as photoshop is concerned; it can just be a simple 8-bit image with a really ugly color hogging most of the screen

In terms of switching the two colors, it's not necessarily an easy process, and I don't know a darn thing about photoshop so I'd be no help there.

[Ukas]

I guess magenta has to be 0 since that's how it is with original civ3 pics when you look at their color tables in photoshop. Changing it to last color makes no difference except perhaps some unwanted result.

I feel like this was different even in some older versions of photoshop.

[pdescobar]

hmm. are there any different ways to display the color table? PSP for instance can sort a palette "by hue", "by luminance" and "by palette order." The last, obviously, is the one I normally use.

If zero is the way the standard civ3 images display, then maybe it shows the list backwards and thus you need it to be in that spot. All the palette-swapping tricks I know are probably too PSP-specific, though. I have no idea what the appropriate commands would be for photoshop or even if there are similar commands. The simplest way involves changing the last color from X to magenta, then changing some unused color in the image to X, saving the palette, then applying the palette to the original image using the "nearest matching color" method.