Flic Images

[Timeline]

Hello everyone!!

It's good to be here, as you can see I am new, just signed up, but I hang around the Apolyton forums alot.

Anyway, I just wanted to ask if anyone here knows of a editor/viewer I can use to modify the flic images in Civ III. I am not too experianced at editing, but I want to make one scenario so I would like to learn . . .

Thnx in advance!

 

[thecrazyroach]

the flc in civ3 are reportedly saved in a non standard format. rumor is, the format is any format other than standard (some bug) will work but i'm not going to waste my time until firaxis gives me some straight answers and a patch.

 

[ryank]

Haven't tested wheher the flics are special in any way, but I do know that one app that edits flcs is Jasc's Animation Shop, bundled with Paint Shop Pro 7.

 

[Timeline]

Jasc's Animation Shop Where can I download Jasc's Animation Shop? Do I need to buy Paint Shop Pro 7?

 

[ryank]

I don't think there is a legal trial version out there. If there is a legal trial version that would help, you could find it at a site like www.zdnet.com/downloads. I have the full commercial release.

 

[Timeline]

Thanks! Do you plan on doing any work on Civ 3 with it?

 

[Armor]

I've been using animation shop to look at the FLC files, although I can't tell you if re-saved FLCs give Civ3 a problem or not (by the way, I think there is a trial version of Paintshop/animation shop available for download).

I want to add new units, and I'm trying to figure out how to do the graphics. Each unit has its own directory and various FLC and WAV files in it, but some have more than others. I'm not sure how to point the program toward the appropriate folder, since, for example, the settler has two folders, but only one listing in the civ3mod.bic file. The files within the folder appear to be pointed to by the unit's .ini file. But there are these .amb files that complicate matters -- they appear to redirect the program to a different sound file depending on game circumstances (e.g. is the attack against a ship or land or air unit, etc.).

Has anyone managed to figure this stuff out yet?

Armor

 

[Armor]

Ok, I've been experimenting more with the .flc format by trying to create a new unit. It may be true that the Civedit hack that allows you to add units is not entirely accepted by the game yet, since I experienced several crashes and hangs in the process.

At any rate, I made a .flc animation file for my unit, but the weird thing is that different animation files are different lengths, and I can't find the variable that tells the program how long each one is (since each incorporates all 8 directions, it has to know how long each direction segment is, so it knows which frame to start and stop on for each one). Perhaps it knows just to divide by 8? I made my file 120 frames, as that seemed to be a common number, and adjusted the pallete to the one used by the other Civ3 flics. I also added a miniature image to the .pcx file that has all the units for the build que (the only part that worked out fine).

I created a directory for the unit, named exactly as the unit is named in civ3mod.bic, with a .ini file also named after the unit, since the name is the only way I can figure the program finds the directory and animation/sound files. I edited the .ini file so that all the animation cues pointed to my .flc file.

In the game, the unit appeared as a buildable item on the city screen, but its graphic appeared to be a negative of the original, with the background visible -- very bad looking. This means that the program was, however, able to find the graphic, which means that the 'directory and ini file named after the unit' system appears to be sound.

When the unit was produced, the game froze, and I never saw the graphic on the map. I'm guessing now that Civ3 does use a very particular or proprietary encoding on its .flc files, which would be too bad if it can't be overcome. I'm going to try saving the .flc in different ways, and see if it helps. Maybe you can just put in a static .gif or .pcx file in place of the .flc -- I'll try that too.

Let me know if you guys have tried this, or have any useful info.

Armor

 

[spidey]

the city screens build icons are from the art\units\units_32.pcx file, if that has gone messed with the colors then your palette is wrong, try converting the image you want to use using the current palette and itll look alright.

i made a convoy unit (landgoing troop transport 0/0/3 carry 3 foot units), copied the transport dir as a basis for my poking and tried mucking with the flc's after that.
ive must have gone thru 12 shareware utils and other not so sharewareish programs trying to open those f*ckers, all with the result 'unknown format' or insta-crash. only one FLI2GIF reported that this file had multiple palettes and couldnt be converted, yippie.

all in all, i dont like firaxis, sid made poo poo and should be ashamed. infograme presure or not. shame

// spidey (dissapointed)

 

[esnyper]

Use Animator Pro from Spinsoft.

 

[Armor]

Animation Shop, as noted above, has no problem opening or saving the flc files, but the game doesn't seem to accept read colors correctly in their format. I was mistaken above when I said I adjusted the palette of the flc file; I was thinking of the picture I inserted into the units image (for the cityscreen build que).

Animation shop doesn't seem to have palette functionality, at least not for flc files. If the civ flcs are set to a palette, I can't figure out what it is, or how to access it. I exported my animation into paintshop and from there applied the civ palette that I had saved from the units image, and then sent it back to Anim shop, but that didn't work either -- the picture still looks like a negative.

It's certainly very frustrating when a company leaves their game so open to customization, but then doesn't use industry standard formats. It's like they've given us the salsa, but no chips.

Armor

 

[AspenDruid]

If you go into the Art directory there is a file called pallette.pcx which has a lot of coloured boxes in it. That may well be the pallette that Civilization III uses.

I had a similar problem when trying to edit the resource.pcx. I changed the file and it opened fine with the editor (When I made a new map in the editor, the resources looked fine). When I change the file, I either get all my resources looking like pollution squares or I get black boxes (depending on which program I use to save it.)

As for the Unit Crashing, I've been having similar problems with some of my units. Check some of the following;

-Directory name matches EXACTLY the unit's name.
-The text file (.ini) name matches.
-all the other files can be whatever name you want, but you have to go inside the .ini file to make sure that all the path and filenames are right so it knows where to find it.
-The unit must be 'legal'. A lot of crashes I had have been because I forgot to set a unit to 'Footman Wheeled or Mounted' or because I created an Air unit that not Immobile (damnit, no air scouts)

 

[Armor]

Yeah, like I said before, it's easy enough to get the palette used in pcx images, but the flc file format doesn't appear to support paletting, at least not via Animation Shop. As I also mentioned before, I did manage to apply the Civ3 palette to a pcx animation by exporting it to PaintShop, and then sending it back, but this didn't help at all.

This all supports my theory that they're using a funky flc format, and there's nothing we can do. Perhaps exploring other image editors beyond Animation Shop could shed some light, but someone recently said that they had a hard time finding programs that supported flc files at all.

Right now, it's pretty lame to have custom units, but to have to use the graphics of preexisting ones to make them appear. If anyone finds a solution, please post.

Armor

 

[AspenDruid]

Palletting isn't hard.. you just gotta make sure that every pixel in your file is a colour found in the pallette.pcx file. If any pixels are a colour not found in the palette, there could be problems =)

 

[Armor]

I don't think you're reading what I've written -- there is no clear way to palette the flc files; they don't seem to be paletted at all. That's the thing, see? No palette.

The pcx files are different, and easily paletted (easier than you've described it, actually). This is not a problem, or the issue. Everyone is producing new .pcx graphics for the game, but no animations yet, and that means no new units (at least not with new graphics).

But let me ask you -- are you telling me that you've successfully saved an FLC animation file and used it in the game? Because that's the Holy Grail right now, as far as I'm concerned. Anyone who can do this, PLEASE post here and tell us how you did it!

Armor

 

[uglydisease]

Armor here yea go i just tested this one.

 

[uglydisease]

Ok heres the link instead

http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,25834,00.html

http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,25834,00.html

 

[ryank]

I have had success creating a new leader animation in JASC Animation Shop 3. Civ3 appears to have no problems with this file. This means that there is no reason that new civs cannot be accompanied by at least a STILL animnation to replace the appropriate leader/

Here's the ("for dummies") "how to" if you have Animation Shop:

Get an image you like for the leader in gif or jpg format at 200x240.

Use the Animation Wizard from the File Menu.
Retain all of the default settings, except:
How long do you want each frame to be displayed? 2

Now you have your image in the first frame. Right click on it, and use "Duplicate Selected." You now have 2 frames. Hit Ctrl-A. Then Duplicate Selected, you have 4 frames, repeat until you have 128 frames. Now select the last 7 frames, and right click and delete 7 frames. You will have 121 frames of duration 2, which is what you need. (There may be an easier--less repetitive-- way, but I haven't found it yet.)

Now Save as "Autodesk Animation (.flc)".
Choose your file name, and use the defaults for the save.

Sorry I belabored that, but I wanted it to answer all potential questions in advance.

I have attached my napoleon.flc file.

CivEdit gives you a place to change the leader animation files, or you can just backup the files and replace them with this one. Because CivEdit does not let you replace the other leader images, I decided to do it the file-swap way.

To replace the Joan of Arc animations with my Napoleon animation, go to the \Art\Flics directory. Backup all of the JO_*.flc files and replace all of them with copies of napoleon.flc.

Note that this will only replace the places where the game uses an animation. There are other .pcx files that need to be changed as well to get a full leader change, but those are easier, and people are already having good luck changing the game's pcx files. They are in the \Art\Advisors and \Art\leaderheads directory, at least.

Cheers,
ryank

>Thanks! Do you plan on doing any work on Civ 3 with it?
Yes.

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Most programs that can write FLC files out can create FLCs which will work for leader animations. Units are a different beast, because we store special information in the FLC header which tells the game how many directions the animation has, what the x and y offset of the animation are, and so on.

Check out Pro Motion. You can download it for free (30 day trial) and it should read all of our FLCs. You can use it to create leader animations as well. I am hopeful that we'll have a solution for allowing you guys to create unit FLCs in the near future, but nothing is set in stone.

As for palette, the units are indeed palettized. It's how we do team colors. The easiest way I can think to get the palette is to load a single frame of a FLC, save the palette out, and then re-palettize the frames your new animation using that palette. DeBabelizer works wonders with repalettizing. IIRC, the leader animations are not palettized so you've got more freedom there.


Hope this clears up some confusion.


Dan

 

[Armor]

Yeah, I had been wondering where all that information about the unit size, animation frames, etc., was stored. Too bad it isn't separated as a text file or some such; perhaps the solution is some sort of simple editor that adds the header information to a given flc file, allowing the user to adjust it appropriately and re-save.

Armor