DOS tileset for CivWin

[honza.havlicek]

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 many issues I am well aware of, I believe that this mod will make it more attractive.


Features:

• Nice and old design see screenshots
• Wave animation in 256 mode
• River animation in 256 mode

Some notes about custom tileset:
In DOS version, the Tileset (tiles, icons for buildings in city and modifiers like rivers, resources, villages, units) is separated into three pictures, each of the pictures has it's own palette, a nice and big palette.

CivWin is far more greedy. I have only 64 colours for whole tileset (=terrain, rivers, units, buildings icons...) and 8 for cyclic animation. I have done the best I can and I believe that the result is as close as possible, but in CivWin is place only for one animation instead of two (DOS = rivers + oceans, My version = one animation for all). Oh well. It is working quite well. You will see (if you change to 256 colour mode).

Source and tools included! Yes, you don't have to decode the .rsc format and .GIF format again! I have done it for you! When I will leave this board, this information won't be lost.

If you find some bugs or irregularity, post it here along with screenshot, description and saved game and I will do something about it (probably).

Installation: Backup your civdata4.rsc and replace it with the one in the attachment archive.

Trouble? Problems?

• Step 1: read readme
• Step 2: Ask here (or post mail). I don't bite

There are few things, like city walls are unaligned, but if I align them, they are overlapped with something else... Oh well.


I haven't played the CivWin with this tileset (except few short experiments).

Update:
Version 20080325:

• Fixed color of barbarians and colors of some other civilizations
• Changed color of the grid of city, so size of city is easier to read.

Regards,
Honza

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Disclaimer: If it kill you computer, eat your dog and scratch your DVD collection, I am in no way responsible.

 

[cthom]

oh boy! i've been waiting for something just like this

 

[honza.havlicek]

One satisfied user... check. At least it wasn't complete waste of time.

It is possible that I will create some more.

I am thinking about creating CivWin map editor (as always no guarantee that I will actually do it).

For now, I have discovered, that SAV is RLE compressed (see source), however, even after decompression, the size is individual for games. One game seems to have same decompressed size regardless of time.


The other choice is proper resource editor (proper = user friendly), but I don't believe that there would be more than 5 users, so for such small user base, too much effor would be needed. If someone would actually use it, he can mail me and I may reconsider it.

 

[cthom]

i used the set last night. everything looks as i hoped it would. if i find any probs with it i'll let you know. cheers!

 

[Dack]

Barbarians displayed in same color as human player.

 

[GenMarshall]

Hopefuly this would work for the Windows 3.1 version of Civ1 (I run Windows 3.1 via DOSBox with Win3.1 stored on a USB stick. Yeah, I have Windows-on-Stick )

 

[honza.havlicek]

Barbarians displayed in same color as human player.

Fixed in new version (along with annoying black grid over city).

Hopefuly this would work for the Windows 3.1 version of Civ1 (I run Windows 3.1 via DOSBox with Win3.1 stored on a USB stick. Yeah, I have Windows-on-Stick )

You can try , it should.

As for the next issue, everyone loves screeenshots, don't they? Some screens of very early stage of possible CivWin Editor:

 

[Waldo Wainthrop]

Thank you for making this!

I will be getting Civ 1 in my Chronicles pack in a few days, so I'll be looking forward to playing it in high res with decent graphics.

 

[t0mme]

beautiful! Though I prefer playing CivDos with DosBox, everybody who plays CivWin should use this. I will, the next time I install CivWin again.
Question though; could you make it work with CivNet?

 

[ivan866]

...creating CivWin map editor...

Isn't it shipped with it and called CIVMAPS.EXE?

Are there any custom tilesets for civnet available?

Btw, where can I post my custom maps? I've done quite a few geographic locations already.

 

[Blake00]

You sir are friggin BRILLIANT man! While the CivWin graphics were sharper and maybe more realistic colour wise I just never liked them and I hated the yellow city screen. Thanks to you I've been able to achieve my dream of playing classic style Civ1 in HD resolution on a big screen.

Test pic attached.

 

[Blake00]

@honza.havlicek I forgot to tell you a while back that I had a huge long Civ1 game with your DOS graphics mod and my Soundtrack overhaul mod (that converts CivWin's lousy music to the full high quality DOS tracks but even better thanks to a Roland MT-32 being used) and the combined affect of our mods is awesome! I had so much fun! Have made a video about it and plan to post it soon!



Also cheers for attaching the tools you used to insert the graphics into CivWin. In theory someone could use your tools plus @riderr3 's extracted Super Nintendo Civ1's graphics (after some colour corrections & conversions) to do an awesome SNES graphics mod for CivWin too! That would be cool!
EDIT: Good news! Lord Hill has now made a SNES graphics mod for CivWIN here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/snes-graphics-mod-for-civilization-for-windows-wip.685066/
And he's even made a SNES graphics mod for classic CivDOS here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/snes-graphics-mod-for-civilization-for-dos-very-wip.687730/

Also liked them.
I ripped a CIV1 SNES tiles some time ago, here are the link.
https://imgur.com/a/fZb5too

Luckily, they are also 16x16 size. But it seems they will need new palette. I didn't mess with it yet, may be someone can help with paletting/editing.

 

[getulio]

How do i play civWin? help me

 

[Theov]

How do i play civWin? help me

Do a google search.
A 'hi', 'please' and 'thank you' go a long way too.

 

[Blake00]

How do i play civWin? help me

Sorry for the late reply! I've made a video and also written some instructions on how to get CivWin working in HD with Honza's DOS Tileset mod and my Soundtrack overhaul mod in this thread here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ization-1-hd-tour-with-mods-scenarios.673292/



Also I don't want this critical mod to get lost so similar to what I've been doing over in the scenario preservation thread I've put a mirror copy of Honza's mod on ModDB here:
(link may not work yet as I'm waiting for approval)
https://www.moddb.com/games/civilization-i/addons/civwin-dos-tileset-overhaul-mod

.

 

[Lord_Hill]

DOS Tileset for Civilization I for Windows - DOS Civ Colours Enhancement
A little bonus for fans of this mod. I've made some very small tweaks to the mod to make it possible to reuse the original DOS colours (or close enough given the more limited palette of the windows version) rather than the original CivWin colours or the colours that Honza chose to use. The following changes have been made

-restoring the original DOS colour scheme for each Civ (or close enough approximations given palette limitations, it may be possible to improve these with different palette choices)
-shaded the city 'grid' a light grey so it doesn't obscure the city size number. (in the original DOS game, the city grid graphic matches the border colour of your civ. Windows just uses a generic grey grid for all civs)
-fixed positioning of units in the GIF file to avoid cutting off the right hand border
-fixed Barbarians using the transparent colour for their border, making it invisible.

Known bugs
-The Egyptians/Aztecs don't seem to get their green border on units even though they should. It shows up on the cities as expected. Fixed in v4 by using a different colour to flag transparency
-This mod does not currently work with the 256 colour exclusive animated shorelines/rivers, the waves pulse white instead of gently rippling. Current theory is that some Civ colours are shared with the waves. Use 16 bit colour or higher for now. Included a separate version with working 256 colour waves, this sacrifices the unit positioning fix mentioned above to achieve this. EDIT 13/06/2023 - 256 colour animations fixed in the main version, the separate 256 colour version has been removed.

99.99% of the credit for this goes to the author of the DOS Tileset mod, @honza.havlicek. They reverse engineered the RSC container format, the undocumented GIF format and provided simple binary tools for unpacking the graphics and converting to a TGA, as well as specifying how to change the default civ colours in the documentation. Thanks Honza!

Here's a comparison, from the top left clockwise we have original DOS version colours, My CivWin DOS Colours, Honza's CivWin DOS Titleset colours and finally CivWin colours. To use, just copy the rsc file into the CivWin folder and overwrite (having backed up the original) just like the original mod. It's very lightly tested, so if you spot any dodgy colours showing up elsewhere thanks to my palette tweaks, let me know and I'll have another go!.

 

[Blake00]

that is brilliant! you sir are a legend!

I'll be working on a followup bonus video to my Civ1 in HD video that talks about all the stuff I missed the first time (eg WineVDM removing the need for VM, CivOne project, my Civ1 graphics mod for Civ2, JCivEd's updates, Tomekum & Vaximillian's custom terrain & unit packs for CivDOS etc) so I'll definitely be mentioning your work now too!

 

[Lord_Hill]

Thanks @Blake00! When you get the chance, I'd appreciate you giving it a quick go in your XP VM in 256 colour mode. In particular checking the wave animations still work and that the pink I chose for the English is still valid in 256 colour land (I'm new to the world of retro graphics mods, I didn't really know what I was doing). I don't have a VM set up so couldn't test that, I've only tried it in WineVDM so far.

The Egypt missing border thing is because that green doubles up as the default foreground colour that is replaced by the civ specific foreground colour. Apparently that also works if you use it on a border colour as well (but only for units, not cities) So I'm left with the choice of using a different green (which would be a shame as all the other greens are the rather muted colours used for grassland) or just accepting that only Egyptian cities will have borders. I'm inclined to just leave it alone.

 

[Blake00]

Can do! I'll test your mod in my VM this weekend!

 

[Lord_Hill]

So I had a look on Win 3.1 in DOSBox and it does seem that the animated wave palettes are messed up by this. I think what's going on is that at least some of the civ city colour palettes are being shared by the animated waves, which might explain why the CivWin devs and Honza changed a bunch of the colours around. This might just have to be a 16 bit colour or higher mod unless I can find some way of juggling the colours to keep everything happy.