Finding Leaderhead Art

[Iluwen]

Nice work there. Thanks for the mod.

[Could you tell me where to find the leaderhead .dds files in the Dune Wars folder?

I would like to add a leader to my personal copy, a character from a Dune RPG I played, as a leader for the Bene Gesserit, but I cannot seem to find where to put the .dds file, as it does not seem to follow the same file structure as the main BTS folder.]

Oh, right, FPK file. Sorry, I just walked right by that.

 

[Deliverator]

Hi Iluwen and welcome to Dune Wars.

To add your own leaderhead all you need to do is create the directory tree Dune Wars/assets/art/leaderheads within the mod directory. Then you can add your new DDS files and reference them in CIV4ArtDefines_Leaderhead.xml

Any changed art within the Dune Wars art folder will override the files within the PAK file dune-wars-1.8.FPK so there is no need to make a new PAK file if you want to add or change art.

 

[Iluwen]

Thanks for the info.

One more question: what type of DDS file is it? I used DXT1, and while my picture shows up, and looks OK, there is a slight vertical distortion.

 

[Deliverator]

To make a leaderhead:

1. Make your leaderhead so that the height is 1.28 times the width. In other words, the aspect ration is 1.28 height to width.
2. Resize the image so that it is 512x512 (The leaderhead will look stretched horizontally, but it will look alright in the game)
3. Saving as DTX1 is fine for leaderheads as there is no transparency (alpha) involved.

 

[Iluwen]

Ahh, so that's the problem.

That looks much better now. Thank you.

 

[Crighton]

i know I'm bumping an old thread, but I'm doing so as to not just throw another thread into the forum because I don't expect there to be to many replies to this question I have on a similar subject as this thread is, but anyway . . .

Is there any particular reason why Dune Wars has static leaderheads?

 

[Ahriman]

Because they're stills from movies with real actors.
[The David Lynch movie, and the Children of Dune miniseries in most cases.]

It would be incredibly hard to animate them.

I much prefer the high-quality stills than low-quality cartoony animations.

 

[Crighton]

Makes sense.

I don't think the animations part would be all that difficult to change, but getting the models to look like the stills would probably be a major hurdle (says the guy with less than zero for animation and modeling skills).

 

[Deliverator]

One thing it would be good to find is another photographic leaderhead for Ix. The current Rhombur (although quite cool) looks out of place at the moment. If anyone has suggestions for a not-distractingly-well-known, techno-aristocrat then let us know...

 

[davidlallen]

One thing it would be good to find is another photographic leaderhead for Ix. The current Rhombur (although quite cool) looks out of place at the moment. If anyone has suggestions for a not-distractingly-well-known, techno-aristocrat then let us know...

You still don't like the Seven of Nine I posted last year, eh?

 

[Crighton]

i'll volunteer to try and come with something this week

 

[Ahriman]

That'd be awesome.

In the prequel books he gets cyborg-ized, so anything either pre- or post-cyborg extras could work.

I wonder if there's something Steam-punk which might work? There is a general Victorian-era feel to most of the costumes and uniforms.

 

[Deliverator]

You still don't like the Seven of Nine I posted last year, eh?

Well, she is pretty well-known... plus that would only work if we brought back Hwi Noree as leader. She wasn't really a leader in the books as far as I know - I've not actually read God Emperor of Dune - it seemed too long.

 

[Crighton]

Personally I was always reminded of the Austro-Hungarian empire for some reason. I'll try to find a description of him in the book post cyborging and go from there.

 

[Jester Fool]

I've not actually read God Emperor of Dune - it seemed too long.

You should. The writing style is noticably better and more refined. Actually, one of the better (IMHO) books of the series. It is long though...but well worth the time it takes to read. Long live Leto II - God Emperor of Dune!

 

[Crighton]

I am of the opinion that after the first Dune, the plotlines and writting quality pretty much go downhill after that.

As a side note I picked up The White Plague also by Herbet, not bad I'm about halfway through.

 

[Ahriman]

I am of the opinion that after the first Dune, the plotlines and writting quality pretty much go downhill after that.

Absolutely. Dune is a masterpiece. Some of the others are still very good, but I don't think they come close.

I really disliked the ones after God-Emperor. Honored Matres and Siona-descendent-immunity were boring, as were the endless Idahos.

But I think G-E is still interesting in part from the sheer enormity of Leto's plan, and his sacrifice to achieve it.

 

[Crighton]

The real problem are the books that lead up to God - Emporer, Dune Messiah may have been closest to the original in quality but made up for it in brevity. It felt like it was one chapter instead of a whole book. Probably why the SciFi channel just lumped it into the first part of their Children of Dune.

I did find the endless Idahos a bit amusing though.

 

[Downstream]

I had the same problem of Iluwen but not with leaderheads;
I was searching for the Mech nif' s and dds but without results...
(In fact, except for the recent modified soldiers arts, I wasn' t able to locate any unit art...)

I was wandering of creating a new civilization completely based on androids-like units, and having a basic start of those 4 mech in dune wars (plus the assault mech of "Next War" and some others ftom the "star wars" Mod) could be pretty usefull ^^''

Could you help me locate them? I' ve gone mad searching them...
Thanks ^^

P.S.: by the way, I've found a bug i think in the 1.9 version of the MOD: the normal "Force Shield" (the blue-one) seem to vanish if the town grow too big but the problem does not seem to append with the Red "House Shield"; don' t know why...
And more, still about the Blue "Force Shield" it can' t be created in a town that had the "House Shield" even if that town has been conquered and the "House Shield" is destroyed as a national wonder...
Don' t know if you fixed those problems with the 1.9.01 patch, i didn' t had the time to play already..

bye ^^

Downstream.

 

[davidlallen]

(In fact, except for the recent modified soldiers arts, I wasn' t able to locate any unit art...)

Welcome to civfanatics and welcome to Dune Wars! For most mods, the new art and graphics files are kept in one big archive file called a "pak" file. Please search for the program "unpak" and you will find instructions on how to download it and use it. Once you have unpacked the art, you will be able to find all the files you need.