Civilopedia Icon Issues using The GIMP

[Promenthus]

I have recently made two civilopedia icons for Civ IV (which are practically identical) and yet only one of them works. I took genetics.dds from the TechTree folder, saved into another folder, and then manually (using The GIMP), pixel by pixel, I blanked out the picture (leaving the bluish border and the alpha channel untouched). Then I went to google.ca and got a "photon torpedo" bitmap image (150x150), saved into the same folder, and using The GIMP, I scaled (using Scale Image) it down to 64x64, not changing the DPI Resolution, and using Cubic Interpolation. I saved it as a .dds image, using DXT3 Compression and no other options.

I re-opened the blank icon image (now called blank icon.dds) and opened the photon torpedo image as a new layer (now called photontorpedo.dds). I scaled down the new layer to 50x50 using Cubic Interpolation and then filled in the rest of the white spaces with black. This one worked magically!

Then I tried copy-and-pasting it (renaming it photontorpedo2.dds) and it didn't work! I also tried repeating the whole process from scratch (IDENTICALLY AS THE AFOREMENTIONED), naming the new file photontorpedo3.dds, and it didn't work!

If someone could look into this, I would greatly appreciate it.

Photon Torpedo.bmp
AND
Photon Torpedo.dds are the downloaded image and the processed downloaded image.

blank civilopedia icon.dds is the genetics.dds blanked out except for its alpha channel and the little border.

photontorpedo.dds
AND
photontorpedo2.dds are the completed files, the first one working and the other not working.

Anyone help? PLEASE?!

 

[Promenthus]

Sorry to double-post, but I need to bring this to the top of the thread list because I need to get the help quick!

 

[KingJackaL]

How'd you 'copy it' at the end? (for photontorpedo and photontorpedo2).

The 2 files are the same size etc - but they're NOT bit identical. Consider a few quick checksums I did:

photontorpedo.dds : 593929
photontorpedo2.dds : 598390
photontorpedo3.dds : 593407
photontorpedo5.dds : 252564
photontorpedo4.dds : 593929

That's your photontorpedo and photontorpedo2. photontorpedo3 was doing a 'duplicate image' in GIMP and saving with DXT3. photontorpedo5 was doing a 'duplicate image' in GIMP again and saving with DXT5. photontorpedo4 was copying in Windows and renaming.

Some thoughts:
- maybe whatever GIMP changes in a 'duplicate image' causes the problem (if that's how you 'copied' the image).
- maybe civ can't use DDS's with a number in the name??

 

[Promenthus]

Thank you very much for the insight. I copy-and-pasted my good picture (photontorpedo.dds) and renamed the copy: photontorpedo a.dds. It worked! You were right, numbers cannot be in the filename of a .dds for Civilization IV to recognize, and from what I can tell, custom images cannot be reused for multiple technologies.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

 

[KingJackaL]

;o

wow, nice guess lol. Well, that's an odd quirk. Must find a way to wiki/sticky that, cos I'm sure others will run into that (most people will probably assume digits are valid in a filename).