Barter: Units for Proofreading

[Erebras]

If you have the knowledge and inclination to resize existing units -- something I have found impossible to do after endless hours of fruitless attempts -- can we work out a deal? If you are a modder or scenario-maker that ends up with an incomplete end-product because you cannot bring yourself to update your Civilopedia entries and Labels.txt files, can we trade our time and talent so we both end up with something we want?

If you need a sample of my work, look at the Civilopedia for my MagePunk scenario, and I also worked on the Civilopedia for the Steampunk Worlds work-in-progress. Unit creators on the forums assure me that resizing only takes a few clicks, and I am not requesting the creation of new units -- only modifications of existing ones -- so hopefully the task of making the units I need won't be as time-consuming as composing Civilopedia entries from scratch and cutting-and-pasting selections from wikipedia while cross-referencing the BIQ file would be.

Any takers?

 

[Ozymandias]

It might be helpful to list a few examples of the units you'd like help with


Best,

Oz

 

[T-mun]

I second what Oz said, for I have made a few resizing lately for my own use, and some of them might be in that list. I'm not taking any request here, but these units might be useful to others.

 

[Erebras]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=513910 Look at the attached thumbnail in Post #2.

The Mannikins need a resized landsknecht, colonist (from Age of Discovery), musketeer, rifleman, etc.

The Dwarrow need a resized German flamethrower (from WWII PTW Extras), German machinegunner, etc.

The Mannikin units merely need a standard 55% reduction in size. The Dwarves need to remain at 100% width but 60% height. And the palettes and coloration need to remain intact, including shadows; this is the issue that has me throwing up my hands and begging to the sky for help.

 

[Erebras]

Should I just start a thread making a general call for people to announce what units they have been resizing over the years? The only resized units on the forums have been corsair, fanatic with torch, and viking swordsman, so I know it's being done. Wouldn't it be great if someone perusing the threads just said, "Why, yes, Erebras, as a matter of fact I do happen to have all of Civ III's and the Warhammer mod's units reduced in size. I was bored one day and just did it as a lark. Here you go. I'll just upload those pesky units right now as one big RAR file...."

But, alas, Reality does not work that way.

(And what'd you do, T-mun, change your name to an acronym of The Man U Need?)

 

[T-mun]

One can keep dreaming

Well, I hadn't understood you needed Dwarven units. I thought you wanted to get big units brought to a standard size. So I guess you don't need the units I have resized.

One thing though: units resized by 55% will probably be totally mixed up and the original colors will be severely modified. You can't change the size of a pixel and there are very few of them in a Civ3 unit... so less pixels = less definition, less colors, less everything. You won't be able to tell an archer from a rifleman after that kind of treatment.

 

[Erebras]

Don't be too hasty, T-Mun. What large units did you reduce to standard size? I have several projects in the works. Dwarven units do work, because only their height is reduced. You keep their width the same, so you end up with stubby-legged standard units. I did a rough cut-and-paste job with a Russian rifleman by just cutting the unit off at the waist and moving the torso down to where the kneecaps would be, and it looked nice. But the graphics programs I use want to re-render the green colors, which causes the unit to have messed-up shadows and smoke. I've even tried importing just a shadow or smoke-puff, to no avail. It still comes out with charcoal-gray shadow-puddles that look nothing like the standard units'.

 

[T-mun]

What about pasting them back on the original file in order to keep the palette ?
The units I have resized so far are Aaglo's Minoan Galley (I use it as a Curragh replacement) and Imperator's Medieval Western Trebuchet (in order to give it the same size as the one by Firaxis). I also plan to do the same with Balam's Indian Elephant and Aaglo's "DeBange" canon.

 

[Erebras]

Those sound like good units. (I'm not going to waste any more time on resizing. Believe me, I've done everything I can do, and it simply won't work. I'm not new to editing graphic files; I've certainly done the steps suggested by others, and at a certain point, I cannot proceed. I'd rather someone else who really knows what they're doing do the resizing for me, and I'll do the other grunt-work they don't feel like doing, such as proofreading, spellchecking, and whatever else. It'd be a win-win, provided someone wants their stuff corrected for errors. Otherwise, I'm out of luck.)