Community Asian Ship Project

Okay... I have updated this Community Asian Ship thread to include the latest forum work including Coyote's Zheng He Treasure Ship Galleon... included are his latest NIF fixes and all custom skins to-date, to include Coyote's original, C.Roland's, Wolf's and tsentom1's skins.

The download includes ALL known asian ship alternatives (except the Asian Caravel, which comes default with BtS).

 

Okay... v4.0 updated now as-of 3 August 08.

This is the "colored dragon" project. I've collected and reskinned several different varieties of dragon ships, including the asian trireme and asian caravel. The dragon ships now come in a variety of five different colors, Green, Gold, Red, Blue & Black for both the trireme and caravel respectively. DWolf converted an asian trireme to red, and I just figured I'd do a couple more myself.

Enjoy.

P.S.
The sails on the Triremes are still team-color

 

You know what would've been simpler? Teamcolour.

 

You know, I was thinking the same thing...

 

Everyone's a critic!

Except:

A) I don't know how to do team-color
B) The Dragons here are NOT mono-tone... they all have variations to their color
C) Nobody else was stepping up to the plate... those that complain the loudest should be the first to address the issue themselves, rather then say it was done wrong!

Oh... and you're welcome!

 

Teamcolour is controlled in the alpha channel, and you can definitely have different shades, and some different colours based on how dark the alpha channel is and what colour you have underneath it.

I'm not complaining btw, I just thought it would be easier to do, and it would be a smaller download.

 

Well, that leads back to Issue-A, and to Issue-C.

Someone is welcome to do a Teamcolor Dragonship if they know how to handle the fact the Dragon is actually multi-colored, not monotone (it's beyond my skills).

For everyone else...

 

wow...I never thought my recolor of the Dragon Trireme would inspire such a movement...hehe

 

I only did two more (black/green)... Gold, Blue and your Red were already done! Frankly, I'm surprised nobody else thought of it sooner (either recolor or team color).

 

wow. I thought since wolfie dishes out complaints he'd be able to take it

ON TOPIC: Was a turtle ship ever done?

 

Of course I can take it... they just need to bring-on better complaints!

ON TOPIC: Wow... with the amount of excellent detailed LHs Ekmek does, you'd think he'd be able to spot the turtle ship prominently featured on post-1 of this very thread!

 

thats a turtle ship??? I was expecting an AoK looking one. but as long as there is something.

 

Yeah... I guess someone needs to state that the one on page-1 is based on actual history, as opposed to a total fantasy like AoK's is... in history, it wasn't a turtle with some oars stuck in it... it was actually a ship!



I'm also very happy that Coyote got to stick some cannons on it, like the historical one had... it makes the perfect asian replacement for the Medieval Galleass.

 

yeah its a good historical representation i just didnt see the word "turtle ship" in the first post aand i didnt know the Hangul name And the pixs are a tad small. (I did find turtle in the 2nd post). Good job coyote!

 

Sorry for reviving a dead thread, but how do you get the skins to replace the defaults for Asians only? What code do you use?

 

You will have to add the graphics in the CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml file and then define them in the CIV4UnitArtStyleTypeInfos.xml file as Asian skins. You could look at the ART_DEF_UNIT_ASIAN_WAR_GALLEY as reference.

 

I modeled it after the Asian caravel, and when I loaded the game I had a red ball floating on a frigate's shadow... I think the file is incomplete? I'm really just guessing here

There are only 4 files in the Large_War_Junk folder: Asian_Boat_128.dds, Asian_BoatDamageStates.dds, frigate.dds, and Large_War_Junk.nif.

Here is the code I used (based off the Asian caravel):

Code:

			<NIF>Art/Units/Large_War_Junk/Large_War_Junk.nif</NIF>
			<KFM>Art/Units/Large_War_Junk/Large_War_Junk.kfm</KFM>
			<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/Large_War_Junk/Large_War_Junk_FX.nif</SHADERNIF>

 

The problem is that you are refering to files which do not exist, you will have to fill the missing ones with already existing Civ4 files.

Just as a short introduction, nif files are the files containing the 3d model, while kfm files contain the references to the animation files (which are kf files). The dds files contain the texture that is applied to the 3d models (and should be refered to in the nif file).

If named correctly, a nif file without the _fx is a 3d model without shader information, while the one with _fx contains shader information. The former are used when the game runs on low graphic settings, the later when the game is on high graphic settings. However, you can also interchange them, with nowadays computers it should not make much of a difference anymore.

If you are interested to have a look at the nif files, NifSkope is a freely available and easy to use 3d viewer that can open these files.

So, back to the code, all that is available here is one nif file. If there is no further information which animation should be used for the 3d model, one has to guess. My guess would be that the unit uses the frigate animation. Therefore, the code should look like this:

Code:

			<NIF>Art/Units/Large_War_Junk/Large_War_Junk.nif</NIF>
			<KFM>Art/Units/Frigate/Frigate.kfm</KFM>
			<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/Large_War_Junk/Large_War_Junk.nif</SHADERNIF>

If that animation works, it might also be an idea to use the other settings for the frigate in the CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml file for the new unit as well.

By the way, don't know if you already have done so, but it is highly recommended to only alter code lines in files you have copied into a mod folder, never should the original files be changed (or, if you really need to change them, make backups beforehand). This way you can always go back to the original files if you somehow accidentally made the modified files unusable.

 

Ok, well I still got the red ball with a frigate shadow.. I had also tried using the Large_War_Junk.nif with Frigate_FX.nif file but then I get the default frigate.

And I usually make backups before I change existing code, but I don't bother when I'm adding something completely new since I know where it is if it messes something up.

 

Hm, maybe check that the Large_War_Junk.nif is really in the folder .../Art/Units/Large_War_Junk/

If it is there and the folders are all named correctly, you could try to go to the art definition of the standard frigate and only exchange the code line

Code:

<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/Frigate/Frigate_FX.nif</SHADERNIF>

with

Code:

<SHADERNIF>Art/Units/Large_War_Junk/Large_War_Junk.nif</SHADERNIF>

If you still get the red sphere, than something has to be wrong with the nif file or with the reference to the file.