How to add resources to C3C - A guide

[Ginger_Ale]

This is a guide I made for adding resources. There seems to be a lot of questions about adding resources recently, so I figured the least I could do was to solve all those problems (hopefully) at once. If you have any comments, questions, concerns, post in this thread. I'd be glad to help.

Useful Links:
C3C Resources All in One
By Colonel Kraken
A Compiled List of Resources (Over 900 Resources!)
By Casus Belli

1. Go to your C:/Program Files/Infogrames Interactive/Civilization III/Conquests/Art folder. Inside, you will see a resources.pcx file. Right click it, and copy it.

2. Go to your C:/Program Files/Infogrames Interactive/Civilization III/Conquests/Scenarios folder. Make a new folder, and name it “MyResources”. Inside, make a folder named “Art”. Paste the resources.pcx file in there.

3. In your …/Conquests/ folder, double click the “Civ3ConquestsEdit” icon. This will open the editor. For now, once it opens, just save it, as “MyResources.biq” in the Conquests/Scenario folder. We will do some work in this later.

4. Back in your MyResources/Art folder, open up your resources.pcx image file. Make sure to open in a program that can save .pcxs (warning: MS Paint can not save .pcxs) For a good, free image editing program, try Paint Shop Pro.

5. From the resource file that you downloaded that you want to add to Conquests, copy it. (ie: In Adobe Photoshop, use the wand tool to drag around the resource). Paste this in your resources.pcx file. Make sure the ‘new’ resource is centered in the next unused pink box after the standard C3C ones.

6. Click save. Make sure it is in ‘indexed’ format. (256 Colors – that’s what Conquests needs to be able to view the resources).

7. Now you can open up your MyResources.biq editor file. First things first: Click Scenario, then “Custom Rules”. Say yes to the warning that appears. Navigate to the “Natural Resources” tab. Click “Add”, and the name of the resource you want it to be called. Give it all the options you want, like food, shields, commerce, etc. For the civilopedia entry: for now, just link to some other one (like GOOD_Horses. You can change that later).

8. Before we see if the icon works, go to Scenario, then Scenario Properties. In the “Scenario Search Folders” line, enter “MyResources” (that’s the folder you created earlier!)

9. Now, we test out if you icon you added really will work. Open up the “Natural Resources” tab again. Go to your resource. In the little box named “Icon”, enter the number 26 (if you have not added a resource before, this will be the resource icon after Tobacco). Your newly added icon should appear.

10. Now go to the “Terrain” tab. Go to the different types of terrain you want your resource to appear in. Control and click your resource’s name in the list of “Possible Resources” for the terrain you want it to appear in.

11. Save your .biq file. When you load up Conquests, go to “Civ-Content”, and choose MyResources.biq. When you play, you should see your resource.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to post in the thread or contact me. I hope you enjoy this tutorial and I hope it works, as well. Happy resource modding!!

 

[Ilium]

When I use the magic wand tool in Photoshop, it only selects the background of the resource. How can I select the whole box, including the resource itself? Thanks.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

I believe you press "shift" or "control" to enlarge the 'magic wand' area. If that doesn't work, I'll check it out. By the way, you could use a rectangle tool (like the one in Paint) to select the area around the resource. Photoshop isn't on this computer, so I'll check when I can.

 

[Tearor]

try going to select all on the edit pull down on the menu. can can also press control+A for select all as well.

 

[Tomoyo]

Holding shift with the Magic Wand will let you select the whole thing. You can also turn the tolerance level up a lot and get a smiliar effect, I guess...

 

[bkmail]

I'm having trouble with the icons. My icons in the editor have the purple box around on the terrain, and when I play conquest, the icon a black box. All the resources' icons are just black boxes in the game itself. What did I do wrong?

 

[Hassenpfeffer]

bkmail, you probably did your icons in paint... switch to Photoshop and save them as .pcx (and under options make sure that ( Image - Mode = Indexed)

 

[gibaut]

Is there a Resources equivalent of the excellent ZULU Unit_32 file ?

Im a dumbo and cant work out how to use the GIMP or INFANVIEW properly to cut and paste the little purple squares onto a new resources sheet.

Without the ZULU Unit_32 download I wouldnt have hundreds of lovely new units in my mods

Colonel Krakens contribution "C3C Resources all in one" is very helpful and thank you to him for doing this for us , but I would really like something a bit more extensive

 

[Blue Monkey]

Look for contributions by Casus Belli and Amesjustin.

 

[Gojira54]

Look for contributions by Casus Belli and Amesjustin.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=190098

About half of these are originals by me, the rest are a "best of" other resource artists here. 377 total. Enjoy.

 

[empireme]

i did everything you said but when i try to play, all the recources appear in black boxes and i cant see the recources can you help me

 

[flamescreen]

^This is usually a colors issue.
Your palette should consist of 256 colors not more, the last two(if you're using PSP) or the first two(if you using Photoshop) should be civ green(0,255,0) and magenta(255,0,255).

 

[annoyed grrr]

I've done everything correctly. I can add the resources in the C3C editor... but if I click "redistribute natural resources", it never adds any of my added resources?

 

[MamathinksImsxy]

Can somebody tell what type of moding resources you're using? Paint shop pro wants your email and all that, so I don't bother with installing, however can you please post pograms necessary so I know what to download, I will be thankfull, yes I will.

 

[joelwest]

Can somebody tell what type of modding resources you're using? Paint shop pro wants your email and all that, so I don't bother with installing, however can you please post programs necessary so I know what to download, I will be thankful, yes I will.

the free graphics manipulation program Irfanview can be used for creating or updating pcx files such as the resources.pcx file that contains the resource icons

the key is to take an already working Civ 3 resource.pcx file (palette of 256 colors with the last color magenta) and save (export) the pcx palette. the default resources.pcx can be used to create this export palette file as can any of the mods for this file that had their palette reduced to 256 colors with the last color magenta (presumably the mod poster has already done this before posting the file but this can be verified by using the file in a test game with the whole map visible from the start)

while using the Irfanview program to create a new or updated resources.pcx file it is likely that the file will no longer will work correctly for Civ 3 (Irfanview upates the image to 24 bit rather than 8 bit, see file description at bottom of Irfanview panel). consequently the file no longer has an associated 256 color (8 bit) palette file. so after icons for the new or updated resources.pcx file look good on your computer import the previously saved Irfanview palette file to reduce the colors from 24 bit to 8 bit with magenta color last, a palette format that will work for Civ 3

when the pcx image is reduced to 256 colors the file size goes down. this conversion may degrade the colors a bit but the result will work fine for Civ 3 resoure icons -- no color distortions such as purple as black blotches

the default construction of the resources.pcx file has a tiny yellow border between the magenta blocked images. if your in game resource icons have a tiny yellow line on their borders (some of mine had them) the easiest solution is to just replace the color of the offending yellow borders in the resources.pcx file with magenta. some have already posted resource.pcx files with no yellow borders for just this reason. the downside is icon boundaries are no longer visible so I suggest only replacing yellow borders as needed

the new resource icon bitmap can be created using MS Paint or similar bmp graphics program. if the bitmap color palette has not already been reduced to 256 colors (8 bit) Irfanview can do this heavy lifting almost instantaneously. the resulting bmp conversion does NOT force magenta to be the last color in the palette so the next step after using Irfanview to convert the bmp file to pcx format is for Irfanview to import the already mentioned Irfanview color palette that does have magenta as the last color

I saw a post where someone wrote a program to force the MS Paint palette to reduce a bmp file to 256 colors by iteratively selecting palette color based upon contrast from the last picked palette color. the poster noted this graphic conversion took a long time to perform. dunno if the end result looks better than the Irfanview convert, but then again the resource icons are so small it would be hard to detect

joelwest

note -- I updated this post in 2018 after creating my first new resources.pcx file since 2009. the original post did not have as detailed instructions as this update

 

[Starryager]

it says error that i can't save the resource on gimp2. I tried to add new resources but it says permission denied.

 

[tom2050]

it says error that i can't save the resource on gimp2. I tried to add new resources but it says permission denied.

It's not GIMP, it's your OS.

If it's something like this:
http://gimpforums.com/archive/index.php/thread-630.html

then you can search the internet and find the specific answer to fix the problem; or follow along with what that forum said to do.

 

[JustLuthor]

I am using Paint Shop Pro, saved the file as a pcx, and still get the purple block background. I'm not entirely sure how to set up the pcx pallet.

 

[joelwest]

I updated post 15 to make the Irfanview instructions more detailed

 

[EngSteve]

Hello, everyone!
Well, I don't know what happened. Tried many times and can't say why it doesn't work. I'm using GIMP, by the way. Even copying the resources.pcx file from someone else (with only 36 images) and putting it in my resources test folder those images don't show to me in the editor.