DOS Tileset for CivNet

[Lord_Hill]

DOS Tileset for CivNet (BETA)

This is a port of the 'DOS tileset for CivWin' graphics mod created by @honza.havlicek to CivNet. This port is possible because CivNet is based on Civilization for Windows with graphics assets stored using the same Microprose internal GIF format. This means that once the graphics have been extracted from CivNet's dll files, the existing Civilization for Windows mod tools (also created by @honza.havlicek) can be used to edit them.

The mod is based on the version of the CivWin graphics mod I tweaked to use the original CivDOS Civ colours rather than Honza's original. You can see the version history for this mod here.

DOS tileset for CivWin

DOS Tileset for Civilization I for Windows After an incredibly long time (3 weeks), I have finished the DOS version tileset for CivWin. It required quite a lot of time, effort and patience. However, IT IS DONE! Although I do realize, that CivWin is not as popular as DOS version due to...

forums.civfanatics.com

Unfortunately it was not possible to support the 256 colour only wave/river animations in this release. Please use a higher colour graphics mode with this mod or you'll see pulsing shorelines instead of gentle waves. There is an explanation for this in the linked thread above.

Note that this is a BETA release and needs testing! The biggest difference between CivNet and CivWin's graphics handling is that CivNet reserves certain palette indexes for various GUI background colours (including, but not limited to, window backgrounds, the minimap, borders, buttons, text and more). These have to be identified by trial and error, so please give it a try and if you notice anything off, let me know because it means there's another reserved colour in the palette.

To use, simply back up your copy of civdata4.dll on your hard drive and replace it with the version in the zip file.

Known issues
-256 colour animations do not work properly (as mentioned above)
-The advisor windows do not use the right background colours. I wanted to get this out there before slogging through all those! UPDATE: I've tweaked the obnoxious dark brown of the city status screen but left the others, they are different but no harder to read than the original CivNet colours.
-text on the 'select unit to buy' window is the wrong colour, both heading and advisor stuff. UPDATE: fixed these in Beta 2
-greyed out text is 'greened out' instead, this is pretty minor if a little annoying.

UPDATE: replaced with Beta 2 which fixes a few little things.

UPDATE 2 replaced with Beta 3 which restores the animated rivers/shorelines in 256 colour mode

UPDATE 3 - replaced with Beta 4 which fixes the missing flashing 'end turn' screen in 256 colour mode.

Thanks, and enjoy!

 

[Blake00]

Man this has been a good day for Civ1 fans with all sorts of stuff coming out. Well done mate!!! This is definitely going to get covered in my next Civ1 video!

 

[Lord_Hill]

As a follow up, and just so it's documented somewhere other than my PC. CivNet's graphics are stored in the DLL file 'civdata4.dll', which uses the standard Windows 16 bit DLL format so any resource hacking program which can handle 16 bit DLLs should be able to extract from it.

I used eXeScope v6.3 by Toshi. Open the Resource tree and browse to 32512 --> 200 (offset 0x08a00 in the raw binary, at least for my version of CivNet) then hit Export. If the first few bytes are 0x05, 0xC0, 0x01, 0x90... you're in the right place. I suggest giving the exported file the name 'SPR32x32.GIF' so it matches up with Honza's readme for the CivWin mod tools.

Now you can use Honza's 'gif_convertor' tool to convert to TGA just like with CivWin. Make your changes in your image editor of choice, then convert back to GIF using Honza's 'tga2gif' tool.

I found that eXeScope did not allow me to import files back into the DLL so I had to do it manually. To get your new file back in, make sure your newly modified GIF is the same size or smaller than the original file (in theory it always will be, but one should always check) then open it up in a hex editor (I used frhed which is free), copy all the bytes, open up civdata4.dll in a hex editor and paste in from offset 0x08a00 being sure to overwrite bytes and not insert them.

 

[Lord_Hill]

I finally figured out what was going on with the broken animated rivers/shorelines in GIMP, so beta 3 is now up and has the animations restored

 

[Blake00]

Woah well done!!!

 

[Lord_Hill]

Another tiny improvement for this, the colour I picked for the flashing 'end turn' button only showed up win WineVDM, not true 256 colour systems like my PCEm/Win95 and DOSBox/Win3.1 test setups.

So here's a pic that has it all, it's got the wave animation, a nice flashing end turn button and the properly coloured blue city screen (which was always there but no screenshot until now). I think I'm happy with it now!

 

[Blake00]

Wow! CivNET has never looked so good lol!