Civ 3 Dock Icon

[AlanH]

Nah! It's not laughter ... it's sympathy

 

[ChiefSparkY]

Sure, something like this ? This is an earlier version, but I could never get it to work in the dock properly (always lost transparency, plus bottom edges of pyramid are all wrong/squared-off).

That's exactly the sort of thing I was talking about! I'd love to see that in a .icns - anyone?

Good work guys!

 

[JoAT]

I happened to notice that tao is using the updated Civilization 2 icon (sixth from the right) available from here:

http://www.maxthemes.com/

It is very nice when enlarged...

ejday: I thought I had my icons all set, and now you go and give me more options. Now I don't know which ones to use! Maybe I should find a copy of Civ1 on E-bay so that I can utilise more of 'em.

JoAT

 

[frunobulax]

Here's another variation - bit of lens flare from the sun, pyramid repositioned and trimmed/blurred, earth as was...

ejday:
How do you convert to .icns format - is this possible within Photoshop 7.0 or poss. Graphic Convertor, and where does that file live in OSX anyway!?
I thought about uploading it (as per previous post) but realised it's a huge Photoshop doc and would take far too long to upload via my modem! Sorry!

 

[frunobulax]

Version 2 in use - note that dock icon is not an alias this time, for some reason it worked by clicking and pasting jpeg into the smaller image in the Get Info dialogue for my Civ3 DYP mod.,which didn't seem to work before...

 

[ainwood]

It must be fairly trivial to write a dock-bar program that can support decent-size icons. the only downside I see to them is the screen real-estate - I tend to use the quick-launch bar, where everything is on a 12-12 (or simething similar) icon size.

 

[AlanH]

On the Mac you can set the dock to auto-hide like the task bar. And you select its size, and you can also choose to have it magnify the region under your mouse pointer, so it takes very little screen space. Mine appears at the bottom of the screen and overlays the bottoms of my document/browser windows , and I see an effect like:

 

[ejday]

...and I see an effect like:

Good Lord. I think Alan is using the new Apple 847-inch screen.

 

[AlanH]

17" - TFT - 1280 x 1024

 

[ejday]

Here's another variation - bit of lens flare from the sun, pyramid repositioned and trimmed/blurred, earth as was...

ejday:
How do you convert to .icns format - is this possible within Photoshop 7.0 or poss. Graphic Convertor, and where does that file live in OSX anyway!?

You can make .icns a few ways but none of them are 1-step simple. I do it with a Photoshop 7 plug-in called "IconBuilder Pro" from the Iconfactory. Great tool (but not cheap). The process involves making alpha channels over a transparent background at each of the resolutions that will be used: the 128, then the 48, 32 and 16. The filter then compiles them (at different bit levels) into a single .icns document, and it uses the alpha versus the transparent background to create the mask layer.

Another program called "Iconographer" does a fair job of it, too. It doesn't have the elegance of working in Photoshop, but it's comparatively inexpensive shareware from Mscape software, so you can give it a run first. One note: Mscape had plans to update Iconographer but never did. I don't know what the story is behind that, but be aware that support might be a bit sketchy.

I see there are some others out there that I'm only marginally familiar with (you can do an icon search [OS X] on VersionTracker), so if you discover anything cool, please share the news.

I thought about uploading it (as per previous post) but realised it's a huge Photoshop doc and would take far too long to upload via my modem! Sorry!

Bummer, but I certainly understand. Photoshop files are gigantic, especially when you've got them in layers. Say... you might be able to save each layer as it's own document and upload those. They'd be a lot smaller. If not, I can icns-ize this but it'll get a little fuzzy (it's kind of like dubbing tape to tape, each generation gets a bit blurrier).

 

[ejday]

17" - TFT - 1280 x 1024

Just kiddin' with ya, Alan.
...I just not often that I see the dock icons shrunk to minimum size (my own poor eye sight, I suppose).

EJ

 

[frunobulax]

You can make .icns a few ways...

Wow, thanks ejday for all the info. - I'll see if I can get hold of the Photoshop one...

 

[AlanH]

Just kiddin' with ya, Alan.
...I just not often that I see the dock icons shrunk to minimum size

Nope! It'll go about 40% smaller than that. I set it to a size where I can see all the items in it across the 1280 pixel width. With about 50-60 icons that gives me 20 pixels per icon. Expansion factor makes the ones under the cursor about 50 pixels.

 

[frunobulax]

Okay, now I'm getting distracted... here's another icon which I'm using for my GOTM install of Civ3...

 

[frunobulax]

... in action

 

[ejday]

here's another icon which I'm using for my GOTM install of Civ3...
... in action

Cool.
Here's your version one icon as an icns. Looks like this:

Click the pic to download. The icon is inside the folder.
Fruno, if you're serious about it, here's how I did it:

• Opened the .gif in Photoshop, then cleaned up the masking (those white artifacts, including the planet's "halo").

• Once it was ready, used the Iconfactory IconBuilder Pro 5.0 filter to make a normal icon (a resource).

• Once it was saved, I resaved as an .icns file in case anybody wants to crack their app and make this the default icon (.icns files are what applications use as a display reference, and since they're usually buried in the app, the .icns icon is usually [and ironically] a blank white document.

• Pasted the resource on the .icns file for the best of both worlds.

Good luck, amigo.
EJ

 

[ejday]

Nope! It'll go about 40% smaller than that. I set it to a size where I can see all the items in it across the 1280 pixel width. With about 50-60 icons that gives me 20 pixels per icon. Expansion factor makes the ones under the cursor about 50 pixels.

Okay, almost minimum. Still, two days of that and I'd need glasses.
Hm...
I might need glasses anyway.

EJ
PS: this "age" thing sucks (but I suppose it's still better than the alternative).

 

[frunobulax]

Cool.
Here's your version one icon as an icns. Looks like this...
Good luck, amigo.
EJ

Hey, that's great! I launched IconBuilder last night and had a go, but was drawn off into making the new one I just posted... thanks for the info on how to use it.

 

[ChiefSparkY]

Cool.
Here's your version one icon as an icns. Looks like this:

Now in my dock! Looks much better than the original icon - thanks guys!

 

[Sophie 378]

Five months, five months, then I will have free broadband and can download all those seriously cool icons - thanks guys! Looking forward to using them, the Civ3 icon for Win was just a fuzzy red III to me, only just realised I hated it!