Help Me Retrofy Civ 3!

[computerdude113]

After searching around a bit tonight, I got to find something that I thought was very cool. Matrix's Civ1 Terrain. My only problem is that we don't have any Civ1 resources to go along with it! Can someone help a chap out and make some? Thanks!

 

[Chieftess]

Hey, I'll try some! I like changing graphics to make them look like the old 3-color days. This would actually be my first attempt at a modpack creation in a while. (Now, if I could just find his... I've seen it somewhere)...

 

[computerdude113]

No need to look:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=37121&highlight=Civ1+Terrain
and these are the two screen shots that he has w/them



O, and THANK YOU!

 

[Chieftess]

hehe, that almost makes me dizzy, but it's nostalgic. I know there's a bunch of static avatars on this forum. So, I could take those and try to animate them.

 

[Matrix]

?!

If someone wants to continue with this, I'm very interested in the results.

I stopped making the mod because it's just too screwed up since all the tiles are rotated 45 degrees. (It's "isometric". ) What would be achievable is redrawing everything, but then in Civ1 style. But that would be so much work. Perhaps if a team of people would do it, it would be doable.

Furthermore, look at those mountains. It'll be very hard to make that looks right.

But the best thing about the Civ1 mod is the irrigation. That makes land look developed! Much better than the watery mess of Civ3.

The ideal.

 

[computerdude113]

Matrix, I saw that in the TerrainBuildings.pcx file from the terrain, the pink tile was physically rotated to make a rectangle. Did you do this for ALL of the terrain?
As for the resoures, that isn't that hard, because they are already rectangular.
The units will be a deleted to do, but i truly think that the hardest part of the conversion is the terrain, and thank yo a lot for doing that!

 

[Snoopy]

impressive!! that must have taken a long time to do!

 

[Chieftess]

I gave the city icon a go, but the first few versions didn't even have straigh lines (for an isometric grid).
127x127 worked, but when it's squished into a 127x64 box, things turn ugly. I've had some success though.

I'm also trying to add the units to the animations. Do you want them to be static? Or, should I try to add some motion?


Here's my first 2 attempts at the city graphic.

 

[warpstorm]

They need to be static for the true retro look. With a square around them.

 

[Chieftess]

Actually, the Civ1 units blinked, and slid. So, in the idea animation, it could blink.

Also, I just looked at the city graphics, and there's no way that I can find to make the city graphics use civ colors. Of ALL the graphics, cities seem to not have civ colors.


EDIT: Here we go! My best city graphic yet.



I think the black outline only appeared when there was a unit inside.

 

[computerdude113]

O well, that's too bad. As for the units, make whatever blinks like a 2 frame animation, one w/the unit, the other one w/o it, and make the timing a bit slow. That should work. As for resources, again I'm really antsey for those. I'm not sure if it's against copyright or not, so don't jump when I say this, but if someone could send me the one file w/the resources I'd make them. If that's against copyright, sry, not that up to date w/those laws, but I think that it should be ok, because its only one file and I can't really do anything w/it besides use the graphics to make a new file. All for games from the same company. Anyway, that's it.

 

[Chieftess]

Anyone see this?

However, those graphics look like they've been run through the wash once too often - not the clear graphics of Civ1.


Anyway, here's a civ1-sized Pioneer with the civ color.



Should they stay the same size? Or be doubled to be as large as normal units?

 

[computerdude113]

Those are fine, but a bunch are missing, and I don't like how he made the charriot and mech inf. jump up and down.
As for the units, u should make them double size because it looks as if Civ3 is more zoomed out then Civ1, and 3D units show up better at the smaller size as compared to the 1D units, so yah, make them double size, actually, 1.5 size.
Again, I would love to help convert these, but I simply don't have the files to do so

 

[computerdude113]

I have a question about the copyright of Civ1. I just did a quick search around the web, including stores like AMAZON, BEST BUY, and EBAY, looking for Civ1 to see how mich it is. Amazon only came up with Civ2 for PSX, and as a note it said it was out of print, Best Buy came up w/Civ3 and Gal Civ, and not even EBAY came up w/nething for Civ1, so I'm pretty confident in thinking that this game is out of print and the copyright is probably old. How can I confirm this? Again the reason I sak is because I would really like to help this along, but I would need Civ1 files to do so and I can't download them because that wouldn't be legal due to copyright, but if the game's copyright is out of date, mby Firiax would allow someone to post some files here so those willing could help this along, even if they don't ahve the game.

 

[Chieftess]

Ok, here's a terrain tile with the 3 sizes. I tend to agree that 1.5 is fine. 2x the size seems too big. Fine for a normal unit, but these are 2D space-mongers.

 

[computerdude113]

I think that the 1 or 1.5 is good, but we need to see an in-game to be sure.
Also, does ne1 know of an AVI->FLC converter?

 

[computerdude113]

Chieftess, is there a way to make the origonal size just a bit bigger, kind of like something between 1 and 1.5, but not big enough to go outside of the terrain box? This way it won't look like the unit is poping off of the terrain, but more like it is on the terrain. I'm just thinking how one of those would look on a coast tile for instance. Would look a bit like a card standing up, I personally don't think that would look cool. What u think?

Or possibly center the 1.5 in the terrain and not have it peek over? If this can't be done, I think that the origonal size should work fine.

 

[Chieftess]

I have 2 frames each of the pioneer at different sizes (for the SW animation). However... my first attempt resulted in Civ3 convulsing and locking up.

BTW, to show my modmaking newbieness , why is there a workRoad and workerRoad animations when they're the same thing? Oh well, back to the drawing board. Atleast it works in Animation Shop 3.

EDIT: Just took a look at the frames, and for some reason, it cut out the duplicate frames...

Also, we'll need the science screens and icons. The civilopedia of the day was pretty much within the image.

 

[Matrix]

Units x1.5 would be best IMO. (Which is actually x3. )

What I did for the terrain was not simple. Each terrain square consisted of four quarters and I had to copy these quarters from a template I created into a whole. (E.g. upper left: plain, upper right: plain, lower left: coast, lower right: grassland.) Then I resized it to something very big (maintaining aspect ratio), rotated it 45 degrees, and resized it to 128x64. I admit it was drudgery. That's also why I'm very happy that you all like to take over. Perhaps I'll help too in the future, but for now I have lots of other things to do (like beta testing ).

But thanks! Keep it up!!

 

[Chieftess]

I just used print screen.