Tom's Unit Factory

[Supa]

My very first attempt at creating an Civ3 unit was a conversion from Zoo Tycoon. My main problem was the shadows: I think they're plain black and part of the unit sprites. I may be mistaken: it has been at least 6 years since that attempt.

 

[tom2050]

Ok, I decided to give your tutorial a serious try tonight Tom. If I can make it work I might start helping you get all these units done. Though I think it will take quite a long time to understand as I am pretty dense about these kinda things. Thanks again for the very clear tutorial.

Hold off on that... I'm putting up an easier-quicker-simpler version very soon. It will give the same result, but not require so many programs and steps.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

Sailor (unit conversion)

Men of the sea are usually found on or near open waters. If encountered inland, sailors may be ferrymen on streams or rivers. Sailors may be armed with knives, short swords, cutlasses, or belaying pins but seem to enjoy nothing more than a good old drunken bar room brawl.

No Civ Colours. A future version will be made with Civ Colours.



Download here... Sailor.rar

Unit32, Large/Small pcx, and Sound Files included. Is a Bioware/Interplay unit.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

My very first attempt at creating an Civ3 unit was a conversion from Zoo Tycoon. My main problem was the shadows: I think they're plain black and part of the unit sprites. I may be mistaken: it has been at least 6 years since that attempt.

From the link Balthasar left, it said that the units use the NIF format and then another format for the skins. With this in mind, they could be converted through 3ds Max. Did you get the sprites out of the game? Or somewhere else? It looks like there are some downloads available on various sites, but I don't know yet what formats they may be in.

Tom

 

[nick0515]

Cool, I'll wait for the simpler process. I'm all in favour of simpler.

 

[tom2050]

The Easy as possible tuturial has been put up. It saves me tons of time.

Thanks to Supa for his help with the better easier way to do conversions. If there is any easier way to do any of it, please let me know. If any clarification needs to be made on any of it, please let me know as well.

The Shadow Thief unit will be uploaded shortly. EDIT: Fileplanet now seems to have all the Infinitum files set up as being ADULT rated files.. so nothing can be downloaded from there. I'll have to wait until they fix this problem as well to finish the unit. This has happened before in the past, and it took them a day or so to fix it last time.

Also, just so all know... units which are already completed and will also be uploaded are:
FireElemental
IceGolem
Golem
Tanar'ri, Marilith
Shadow/Greater Shadow (IWD version)
WaterElemental
Imp



Tom

 

[PredatorFett]

Re: Zoo Tycoon

Found a website called Zoo Tycoon Unleashed which might answer some questions about it for you.

This was on my favorites tab back when I still had the game.

 

[Supa]

From the link Balthasar left, it said that the units use the NIF format and then another format for the skins. With this in mind, they could be converted through 3ds Max. Did you get the sprites out of the game? Or somewhere else? It looks like there are some downloads available on various sites, but I don't know yet what formats they may be in.

Tom

It's possible we aren't talking of the same game. I was referring to the first Zoo Tycoon, a 2D game. [looking at the link] Yes, I thought it was an old website for new 2D animals for ZT1.

 

[nick0515]

Thanks for getting that easier tutorial up so quick Tom. It certainly uses less programmes than the first version of the tutorial. I'll start working on it as much as I can this weekend, if I can download some of the units.

EDIT: Having no trouble downloading units from the site. However, the first unit I tried only had two different animations. Walk and Neutral. Have you had this problem with other units? It was the Elminster unit. A pitty as he looks really cool. Found another unit to work on Salabesh the Onyx which seems to have all the differet animation sets needed.

 

[tom2050]

Looks like they fixed it already. For Gif's I think the first one I tried to do was missing animations, so I went the DCC route. The DCC files have all animations for every single one, but they are more difficult to convert. I will go ahead and do the Elminster, since I already took the DCC tuturial down.

Hopefully most Gif's have all animations.

Tom

 

[nick0515]

Thanks Tom. That would be super if you did the Elminster unit! I think I actually came across other units missing gifs animations before so it might be a bit of a problem but hopefully it's only a small percentage of the units.

 

[Delta_Strife]

Hey Tom, Great effort here for the civ community. A question for you and other civ modders are there other sites like this out there were we could convert other units? I would be willing to take a stab at them if there is.

 

[nick0515]

About half way through the tutorial Tom. One small problem. In JASC Animation Shop when I recoloured the background to pink it also recoloued some grey areas on the unit. Just a design on the units chest and parts of it's belt. I'm not going to worry about it now as I just want to try and complete the unit and see how it comes out. But for future reference what would be the best way to fix this? Will I have to mannually correct every frame in the storyboards or is there a quicker way?

Cheers

Nick

 

[tom2050]

About half way through the tutorial Tom. One small problem. In JASC Animation Shop when I recoloured the background to pink it also recoloued some grey areas on the unit. Just a design on the units chest and parts of it's belt. I'm not going to worry about it now as I just want to try and complete the unit and see how it comes out. But for future reference what would be the best way to fix this? Will I have to mannually correct every frame in the storyboards or is there a quicker way?

Cheers

Nick

Is the Tolerance on 0 under the Replace menu? If it is not it will select other colors as well that are close to the transparent color. EDIT: Apologies, it looks like I forgot to add that into the tuturial page, I went ahead and put it in there... I think JASC has tolerance set to 30 or something until it is changed, let me know if this fixes it.

In the case the belt color is exactly the same as the background... I would have to check it out, if the tolerance to 0 does not work, let me know what unit it is so I can check it out.

A question for you and other civ modders are there other sites like this out there were we could convert other units? I would be willing to take a stab at them if there is.

I haven't found any other sites like the Infinitum Site. There probably are other units around in GIF format (or other formats) that are capable of being converted, but probably not a list like this one. Infinitum converted many units out of actual games... I have done this as well, but it takes much longer. I found a site where a few NWN were converted, but only a few, and I have already mostly converted those to post up.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

Important regarding the tuturial...!

To avoid the Flicster bug, which smears unit graphics if a pixel gets too close to the right edge, and is a pain to correct... I have added how to avoid this in the tuturial by using the free common program Irfanview!

Instructions have been added to the tuturial showing exactly what needs to be done.

In a few minutes time, you can have Irfanview add a small border to all images so the Flicster bug cannot occur. I highly recommend doing this if converting any unit!

Tom

 

[nick0515]

Thanks Tom. I just got home so will resume my work. I'll try setting the tolerance to 0. I suspect that will fix it. Also I'll use Irfanview to avoid the flicster bug. I'm having to use only GIMP so I can't do that batch canvas resize thing in Photoshop. I did get an oldish copy of photoshop off a friend but turns out the disk is buggered so can't use it. I might still try and buy it, but if I can get GIMP to do everything needed for this and your terrain stuff I might not bother. I'll have to start investigating plugins.

Cheers

Nick

EDIT: By the way I'm working on Salabesh the Onyx. Just letting you know to avoid the possiblility of us working on the same unit, however unlikely that may be given the large number of available units to choose from.

EDIT 2: Tolerance 0 fixed the pink belt problem.

EDIT 3: It may be my imagination but 'smart resize' seems to give a slightly smoother result than 'bicubic' resample' when resizing the frams in Animation Shop.

 

[tom2050]

Shadow Thief (unit conversion)

Renal Bloodscalp is the head of the Shadow Thief guild in the docks district of Athkatla, capital city of Amn. The Shadow Thieves are amongst the most deadly assassins with the tendrils of their network spreading far and wide throughout the realms.

No Civ Colours. A future version will be made with Civ Colours.



Download here... ShadowThief.rar

Unit32, Large/Small pcx, and Sound Files included. Is a Bioware/Interplay unit.

Tom

 

[tom2050]

Thanks Tom. I just got home so will resume my work. I'll try setting the tolerance to 0. I suspect that will fix it. Also I'll use Irfanview to avoid the flicster bug. I'm having to use only GIMP so I can't do that batch canvas resize thing in Photoshop. I did get an oldish copy of photoshop off a friend but turns out the disk is buggered so can't use it. I might still try and buy it, but if I can get GIMP to do everything needed for this and your terrain stuff I might not bother. I'll have to start investigating plugins.

EDIT: By the way I'm working on Salabesh the Onyx. Just letting you know to avoid the possiblility of us working on the same unit, however unlikely that may be given the large number of available units to choose from.

EDIT 2: Tolerance 0 fixed the pink belt problem.

EDIT 3: It may be my imagination but 'smart resize' seems to give a slightly smoother result than 'bicubic' resample' when resizing the frams in Animation Shop.

Good to hear.. Gimp can do everything required now... so no need for Photoshop. From what Blue Monkey said, Gimp can open up PSP or PSD files, so I will find a plugin for Gimp when I start working on the PSP/Gimp Templates.

I haven't checked yet the results of the different resample options. The Shadow Thief above used the bicubic method. Whatever method leaves a smoother border is what is wanted, and Shadow Thief border is not quite as smooth as when I did resizes in Photoshop. So Smart resize is probably the way to go, I will update the tuturial.

EDIT: BAD & GOOD news about Elminster - I downloaded the DCC file and that contained only 2 files as well... the Walk and Default. Per the Readme file, it stated this unit was Intended for townfolk replacement for Diablo2/LOD. Baulders Gate was were it came from, so to get the other sequences, the unit would have to be converted directly from Baulders Gate, which is possible to do though.


Tom

 

[nick0515]

I can live without Elminster for now. Perhaps in the future I'll look into it. I think I can use Salabesh the Onyx instead. I just liked Elminster but it's not escential.

Having palete issues which are preventing me from finishing my conversion. I always have palete issues. Its stems from a fundamental lack of understanding of how paletes work. So I have made my story boards and I can't use your .act file in GIMP. I assume this file is an automated process for photoshop. So I tried other methods for getting the palete right on the bmp file then pasting it onto the pcx file created by Flicster. But even though the palete seems to be right, 256 colours and the right green and pink in the last two slots, when I try to create the flic in flictser it just makes it crash.

Anyway will try again tomorrow. Rest of the tutorial work beautifully for me though. Very well set out Tom.

Have attached the AttackA.pcx I was working on. Perhaps you can take a look at it when you have some spare time, tell me what's wrong with it.

In the mean time I really need to read more about paletes because my lack of understanding is really holding me back. I keep having these same problems with units and terrain, though I don't seem to have any problems when I worked on my terrain buildings and improvement graphics.

View attachment AttackA.pcx

 

[tom2050]

Palettes are really not that difficult of things to work with, but I initially got massively confused when trying to work with palettes in GIMP also.

From what I can see, GIMP uses a special palette file with a .gpl extension. GIMP can use ACT files, by importing them; but it can only import ACT files that use 256 colors... it cannot import an ACT file that uses less colors than that. Also, it sometimes has problems importing files that have 256 colors, it seems because if some of the colors are the same, it cannot read them, or they are not in quite the right format. This goes for Paletted PCX files as well (which GIMP can read).

I'm going to write a few .gpl palette files for you so that you can use them. I'll try to upload them soon once I test them myself in GIMP to ensure they work.

EDIT: Unless I am missing something here with GIMP, it seems that it is unable to load a preset palette with 32 colors (e.g.) and then automatically fill in the rest of the colors with what is in the picture itself. I can load a palette, but it only loads those colors, and allows none others. I created a sample gpl palette, but it doesn't make sense to use it, since I cant do anything with it. ??? Am I missing something here? Do the colors need to be added each time to every pic?

I think for palettes, everyone would be better off using a different program that is easier to use palette wise. And use Gimp for the rest. Many free programs are available that are far easier and much more compatible with all types of formats and options.

Tom