Anyone understand this? (Flag issue)

[King Flevance]

I recently moved Civ 4 and my mods onto a new hard drive. So Civ 4 and BTS is installed on my F: drive. Of course, My Docs/My Games is on my C: drive. Anyways, since the shift of hard drives, some custom flags have turned the solid color of their civ's secondary color and others haven't.

Byzantine's flag is one of the flags that are not showing up. Their primary color is yellow and their secondary color is black. Their flag is all black. France is blue and white(secondary) and have an all white flag. Rome is purple and dark yellow with a yellow flag.

Now for the weird part:
The Celts are dark green and brown(secondary) and their flag is fine. If I go in and change the XML/Art/Civ4ArtDefines_Civilization.xml line of byzantine, rome, france, etc. to this:

<Path>Art/Interface/TeamColor/Celts.dds</Path>

instead of Rome.dds or byzantine.dds, the Celts flag shows up fine. All custom flags have white flag value set to 1. (I have tried 0 and nothing happens) They all use white alpha. I can post the dds files along with the celts if someone wants me to but I can't find a difference. I am assuming their is something wrong with the dds files but I can find no differences. I can post screenshots, or the dds files or whatever.

I am stumped and hoping someone can give me something to look at or even double check if I have already done it. I have done a full instigation and am at a loss and am willing to go back through things even just to see or whatever. Throw ideas at me or something please.

Thanks.

 

[cool3a2]

A strange problem indeed... What do you mean by "moved"? Did you copy it by copy'n'paste from one hard drive to another or did you uninstall your game and reinstall it on the new hard drive? I suggest doing it the second way...

However, I had this effect as well with mod flags, but not after moving civ4 to another directory / hard drive. Did you actually have problems with a mod (I think there are mods adding new flags only) or with original flags? If you are speaking about a mod you could try to remove the alpha channel of the buggy flags (for example with dds converter).

Did you actually change something in you system (did you buy a new graphics card for example? If so, which?)?

Well, I am actually just thinking loudly. These things could help, but I can't see why they should cause problems if you only moved your civ4...

 

[King Flevance]

A strange problem indeed... What do you mean by "moved"? Did you copy it by copy'n'paste from one hard drive to another or did you uninstall your game and reinstall it on the new hard drive? I suggest doing it the second way...

However, I had this effect as well with mod flags, but not after moving civ4 to another directory / hard drive. Did you actually have problems with a mod (I think there are mods adding new flags only) or with original flags? If you are speaking about a mod you could try to remove the alpha channel of the buggy flags (for example with dds converter).

Did you actually change something in you system (did you buy a new graphics card for example? If so, which?)?

Well, I am actually just thinking loudly. These things could help, but I can't see why they should cause problems if you only moved your civ4...

I did an actual uninstall from the C: drive and full install on the F: drive. My mod is actually a mix of Bad Ronald's flag mod mixed in with my own. I have came across similar problems before when going from one system to another.(Although those were all due to different video cards) But this is the first time I ever placed one on a drive other than the C: drive. I have had a similar problem where the secondary color would overlap (transparent) the flag distorting the color. And I set all secondary colors to white and problem was solved. But this is the flag not even showing up but instead the secondary is. What I find strange is Americas flag and the Celtic flag will show up when byzantine pulls from them or rome, etc.
Right now I have the dds files in the F:/Program Files directory as well as C:/My Docs because I once actually had the game not want to pull the dds files from the My Docs directory.

My hardware is still the same as before the switch. I am not home atm but when I get home I will post the dds files for the celts and the byzantines.

EDIT: Here are the dds files. If anyone has time and doesnt mind checking them out.

 

[strategyonly]

Do you really care if the secondary colors are used or not and just use what you have there, if not, its probably easy to figure out the problem?

 

[King Flevance]

No, the time I assign everyone's secondary color to white, it was for a different video card. I was stating that issue to simply stress how much custom flags have always managed to come up with new ways to not work for me.

The Celts flag shows up no matter who I assign it to. And regardless of secondary color as does Americas.

 

[cool3a2]

I took a look at your dds-files. The byzantine flag has an alpha channel whereas the celts flag has none. This might be the reason for your problem. You can now try to add an alpha channel via dds-converter (buggy), dxtbmp (unhandy), gimp or Photoshop (both with the dds-plugin) and give it a go. However, I have always problems with this alpha channel. On my desktop pc it works only without alpha, on my laptop it works only with alpha. I don't know if there are machines that can handle both versions. AFAIK there is no way to create one file that works for all machines. All you can do if you up,oad a mod is providing both flags. If anyone gets problems with the default flag, he can replace it with the other one. So, take it serious and give it a go.

 

[King Flevance]

Thanks for pointing that out cool3a2.
Well, at least now I have a difference found. How do you see this though? I have GIMP and dxtbmp and as far as I could tell they both had alphas. I obviously don't know much about alphas. I don't know too much about graphic modding actually. Alpha is just a word that, to me, sort of means 'invisible'. I haven't found a good definition of this online as most tutorials assume you know how the alpha works. Any other information would be helpful but at least now I know where the brick wall I was running into is and I can begin to figure out how to go around or through it. Thanks again, I wasn't sure if anyone was even going to be able to give me that much.

 

[cool3a2]

Well, I am sure there is no alpha in the celts flag. I don't use gimp, but I am sure it allows you to display channels. The alpha channel is one of them, the others should be RGB, green, blue and red (for the colours). I can't tell you much about this alpha channel thing, but I also think it has something to do with transparency. Maybe it is also used for the civs colour in bicolour flags. I don't know, sorry.
However, I think you can't see the alpha of a freshly loaded dds in DXTBMP, but you can add one. I think there is a tutorial about this. Somewhere hidden in a "how to create a new civ". I tried DXTBMP out, but I don't like it. I suggest doing it by GIMP. If the flag gets blurry after adding alpha, it might be because you have added mipmaps. BTW: mipmaps can also be annoying, but it can't cause problems like you have described it. Mostly the picture gets tiny or blurry. So, if you see this effect on a button, you know what to do now.

If nothing helps I'll add the alpha channel and post it here, but it would be better if you'd learn how to do that.

 

[King Flevance]

I am going to give it a whirl over the next couple days. I actually want to get better at graphical modding. I thought I had this stuff down but seems I still have more ground to cover. I think I know how this problem may have originated but I find it weird that these flags with the alpha channel were working before the hard drive swap. (These are the exact same files)
I actually swapped hard drives so I have 60 gigs devoted entirely to Civ 4 modding, because I am about to attempt to step up my graphical prowess. And learning more about alphas will most definatley be beneficial later on. I will post what I get figured out in a few days.