An old discovery i had stumbled upon regarding city gfx

Hurm, weasel, could you spoiler that image? :)
This's some find on city sizes. Now, a different question... what happens if you put in unconnected graphics, i.e. magenta transparency separating different blocks?
 
CastleImage.jpg

You can see how absolutely small a regular sized city is compared to this huge thing... I even placed archers on the walls and castle towers of it.

It seems the whole city does 'disappear' when your viewscreen leaves the edge of the city center itself... so in this case the whole castle vanishes from sight as soon as the city (called Kings Chamber here) hits the north, south, east, or west side of the screen.

So with that in mind, the whole concept of using huge graphics to display overlays across the map can be scrapped... no Age of Empires huge castle sieges are possible using the larger city graphic concept.

Now, a different question... what happens if you put in unconnected graphics, i.e. magenta transparency separating different blocks?

Anything will show up that is not transparent, regardless of where it is at on the city PCX. It will just show up in it's appropriate city graphic section (1 out of the 12 in each city PCX). You could have 4 cities surrounding each other, seperated by magenta, and they will show up that way, and they will show up exactly where you place them.

Tom
 
Nope, but ONE city of Constantinople across both sides of the strait in the regular Middle Ages conquest is feasible, still.
And the castle/city siege will be accomplished with terrain gfx like in EFZI.
 
Nope, but ONE city of Constantinople across both sides of the strait in the regular Middle Ages conquest is feasible, still.
And the castle/city siege will be accomplished with terrain gfx like in EFZI.

Well, it's sad that a city graphic cannot be used, it's much easier to do than terrain graphic modificiations... and would have given way more options also.

But terrain graphics will have to suffice :)

Tom
 
Yes. I'll start conscription asking people to join in some time soon in the brotherhood forum.
 
So with that in mind, the whole concept of using huge graphics to display overlays across the map can be scrapped... no Age of Empires huge castle sieges are possible using the larger city graphic concept.

That's only mostly true. You could have 3 separate cities, each of which contain the same image, but centered differently. If you line it up correctly, you would have 3 different parts of the map that need to be in view instead of 1. I'm also assuming you leave 1 blank for extra cities. It's tricky, but it's better than 1 city that needs to be in view. You would also need to make sure those 3 cities are perfectly static in their population.

But hey, perhaps that's too much work.
 
View attachment 245047

So with that in mind, the whole concept of using huge graphics to display overlays across the map can be scrapped... no Age of Empires huge castle sieges are possible using the larger city graphic concept.

Tom

Well that well and truely sucks! :cry:
 
Well, trying to have graphics that huge was a nice idea for a Castle but at least the city files can be enlarged to an extent and that will continue to offer many possibilities :)

...as for using several cities all together as one, cycling through cities may be a problem there and each city would show its center label.
 
Tom - is that castle from Baldur's Gate? I though I recognised it from somewhere.

Yes. I'll start conscription asking people to join in some time soon in the brotherhood forum.
Ooh, conscript me.

That's only mostly true. You could have 3 separate cities, each of which contain the same image, but centered differently. If you line it up correctly, you would have 3 different parts of the map that need to be in view instead of 1. I'm also assuming you leave 1 blank for extra cities. It's tricky, but it's better than 1 city that needs to be in view. You would also need to make sure those 3 cities are perfectly static in their population.

But hey, perhaps that's too much work.
That, my friend, is brilliant. But very complicated.

It looks like we've got to the bottom of Blue Monkey's question about centering - thanks to all. I think a modest increase to city size will be great for most cities. Varwnos was talking about 1.5 times larger, and given how coastlines work I should think for general use anything larger than double regular size will start to cause problems.
 
As for Constantinople, if there was a scenario about it i could mod my Empire of Thessalonike set so as to have on a custom game part of the city appear in the other side of the Bosporos. I could even create the sea chain.
 
But there is no mod of it around, and i think yoda is not interested in altering the city gfx, which he modded from other people's work anyway :)

Now if someone had a project of modding twillight of Byzantium, i could help. I am still sad that no crusader state scenario ever appeared; my armenian cities would find a home as well there.
 
I've seen a lot of informed speculation and one or two tests with a single smaller city. Since the speculators have acknowledged that the definitive answer must come empirically I call again for a test with a full complement of cities. That would include changing eras to see what happens to the other rows in the pcx. There are actually more permutations to consider, but a test of a pcx with 1 out of 12 cities enlarged would be sufficient to assure those of us interested in creating new city graphics that our work would not be superfluous.

There are other applications than a huge castle. Many that would have some spillover, but would reasonably be invisible until a close approach. For example, the equivalent of a dominating peak with a mountain range for the capital of a dwarven culture. A haunted city whose outlying cemeteries, etc. only appear when the city does. Similarly for Kôr (She's capitol under a dormant volcano). A Sidhe (Fairy Mound), Brigadoon or Tanelorn that suddenly appear. A more realistic "lost" civilization such as Dilmun or a surviving Mayan city - the explorers wouldn't notice how there are other temples & monuments in the surrounding terrain until they stumble upon the city. One of the hidden cities in Tibet that were the model for Shangri-la also comes to mind. Or take it the other way. An oversized city experiences a plague or changes governments which reduces the population & you go from the larger graphic back to a standard size. Like Rome during the Dark Ages.
 
I've seen a lot of informed speculation and one or two tests with a single smaller city. Since the speculators have acknowledged that the definitive answer must come empirically I call again for a test with a full complement of cities. That would include changing eras to see what happens to the other rows in the pcx.
Um, Blue... ;)
for Blue Monkey:

Rome: both city files scaled 2x, ancient era
America: both city files scaled 2x vertically, medieval era
Germany: both city files scaled 2x horizontally, industrial era
Persia: walled file scaled 2x, other file not scaled, modern era

It works for the whole file. You can make it any size you want.
 
It works for the whole file. You can make it any size you want.
:goodjob: That's what i'm talkin' 'bout! You da man! It looks like it's the proportion algorithm (thirds across fourths down). So we've got another degree of freedom in graphics creation.

The question that now arises is whether or not the case is similar for terrain graphics. That would be fairly straight forward to test. Maybe we can have the Himalayas (LM Mountains) at last.
 
A quick test shows that it does not work for terrain or for resources. I scaled up the snow-capped mountains & the resource pcx. If they followed the same pattern as the cities pcx then we should see large pixelated versions.

The straight edges show where the graphics are cut off. The circled tile is also one where I placed the snow-capped mountains. I suspect the program is grabbing a piece of the pcx where there is only the reserved magenta because the underlying terrain changed to grassland when I placed the mts.
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There should be dyes in the circled tile. The dark pixels scattered around are parts of the pcx where resources were placed in other tiles.
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I have no idea why the program would handle the pcxs differently, but it clearly does.
 
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