City Bar Icons

[Ambreville]

Hope this is the right place to ask this.

I'm trying to change the graphic icons for some of the corporations in a BtS mod. I managed to get my new icons to show up correctly in the tech tree, the atlas, and inside the city screens underneath the religions. However, I can't find how to make the new corporation icons to show up on the city bars, on the map. Anyone?? Thanks.

 

[Ekmek]

you need to modifiy the gamefont.tga. if you added the corp your icons should be all screwed up right now? am I right? I'll to you right now gamefont.tga is not fun to mess with

 

[Ambreville]

you need to modifiy the gamefont.tga. if you added the corp your icons should be all screwed up right now? am I right? I'll to you right now gamefont.tga is not fun to mess with

I know, but I'd like to have a look at the thing. Where is that darn tga file though? I can't find it anywhere. Is it stored in the fpk format?

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Edit -- no the corporation logos that do show up are fine.

 

[ripple01]

It's in Assets/res/fonts, I believe. I'm not at my home computer right now...

Cheers,
ripple01

 

[Ambreville]

Thank you, yes. That's where it was. I'll see if I can do anything with that...

 

[Ekmek]

get DXTBmp it helps a lot and do a frum search there are a lot of tips and talk betwen snipper, me, and others that toiled with it

 

[Ambreville]

I have DXTbmp. I've been using that for my buttons. I'm not too sure how to handle the tga file though. The biggest problem I have is reducing the scale of the original icon graphics to fit the tga file's spaces. I really don't have good enough graphic software to redo the icons at such a small size that they would look like anything recognizable.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

I do it with Paint.Net at large scale then resize to 20x20 (even if it is 21x20) for the Gamefonts, then to 16x16 for the Gamefonts 75. I take the opportunity to make the alpha mask at the large scale in another layer for it to follow the movement.

 

[Ambreville]

I don't have Paint.net (won't work on Windows 2000).

By the way, why are there two tga files?

 

[Ekmek]

i think one is 75% the size of the other. I have no idea why they have two. i wish they just stuck to resizing the dds like they did in the city window. if anyone knows sdk and can find where to change the code i think johny smith volunteered to fix it.


try getting gimp it should let you resize. getting paint shop pro 8 which is free somewhere online is another option

 

[Ambreville]

I do have Gimp, but I'm at a loss as to how to use it.

 

[Ekmek]

just copy an icon one is 16x16 and the other 21x20 and resize your dds to those sizes and paste in there and then add it to the bmp.

 

[Ambreville]

OK, I kinda figured out how to make this work. At least I've got an icon on the city bar. It's a start... a very fuzzy blob-like start, but it's definitely on the city bar!

 

[Shiggs713]

ekmek is right, use either photoshop or GIMP to scale your images. GIMP is very excellent for this purpose. Have both GIMP and DXTbmp open, and use copy/paste methods. For the alpha, you should just copy a similar looking alpha, and paste it where it should be....

Theres a good tutorial on "how to modify gamefonts for free" in the tutorials section. Its a good simple method.

 

[Ambreville]

ekmek is right, use either photoshop or GIMP to scale your images. GIMP is very excellent for this purpose. Have both GIMP and DXTbmp open, and use copy/paste methods. For the alpha, you should just copy a similar looking alpha, and paste it where it should be....

Theres a good tutorial on "how to modify gamefonts for free" in the tutorials section. Its a good simple method.

Yes, I think I figured this out. I now understand how to rescale images on GIMP. As it stands now, I open the DXTbmp image with its Paint editor, and then paste on the Paint editor screen the new image previously rescaled on GIMP. Is there a way to paste the rescaled image directly to DXTbmp rather than its Paint editor?

Right now my problem is actually creating an image that can be scaled back to a 20 pixel size image without the new icon turning into an unrecognizable blob. I also ran into trouble modifying the tga file's Alpha channel. I must have made some change that wasn't aligned right, which caused the file to become unusable (all the icons disappeared from the city bar when I loaded the game).

 

[Ekmek]

when i mess with the alpha i look at the coordinates in paint for the corners. the cheap way I did things was to take the confucianism icon then I copied some white bits from it and pasted it until I had an all white box that fit the icon. I then just made my new icons have a colored background. this method made it easier to add new icons since its only one pixel apart and easy to place since its a complete square instead of a picture. I know you've done what you ned your self but I could upload my tgas if you want them.

 

[Ambreville]

when i mess with the alpha i look at the coordinates in paint for the corners. the cheap way I did things was to take the confucianism icon then I copied some white bits from it and pasted it until I had an all white box that fit the icon. I then just made my new icons have a colored background. this method made it easier to add new icons since its only one pixel apart and easy to place since its a complete square instead of a picture. I know you've done what you ned your self but I could upload my tgas if you want them.

I'm not sure I'm following you here. Go ahead with the upload. I can have a look at what you are describing.