Confused about promotion icons

[Tholal]

I've looked all over and through several guides about altering icons, but they all seem to leave out the most important part... Where do I find the darn things?

I know that they are supposedly in some .dds atlas, but which one? There are a ton of these things scattered throughout many subdirectories. And then once I do find the atlas, how do I reference the particular image I want?

Also, why do I see direct references to files that don't show up when I search the Civ IV directory and all of its subfolders? For example, see this reference -- Art/Interface/Buttons/Promotions/Winterborn.dds -- but that files doesn't seem to exist!

 

[God-Emperor]

A lot of the art is packed into "fpk" files. These may all be up in the main Civ 4 (vanilla) assets folder. These are something like a zip file full of other files.

If a specific art file doesn't seem to exist anywhere, it is in one of those.

Isn't "winterborn" from FFH? I think they have their own FPK file.

The way to know which atlas a dds is in is to look up the promotion that uses it and see which atlas it references. Check the Button tag. If this starts with a comma, then some specific dds file then a dds file with the word "atlas" in it then int he game it is (most likely) using the atlas version. The atlas that is listed is the atlas it is in (oddly enough) and it specifies the path to it (first check that path in the mod, then in BtS, then in Warlords, and finally in plain vanilla Civ4). The two number following the atlas specification are the column and row (count with the upper left icon as 1,1) in the atlas for the icon.

 

[Tholal]

OK. Thanks for all the info! Do I need a special program to open the fpk files?

 

[TheLadiesOgre]

Civ4 PakBuild