How do I make an ICBM type unit?

[Grandraem]

I remember long ago that I tried to make a replacement animation for an ICBM type unit and that it kept crashing the game. I think that I figured out that you can only have a 1-direction (SW) flc file or else it crashes the game. I noticed that when I load up the ICBM animations in Flicster that they have only a SW animation and all other animation directions are disabled.

I've made a new ICBM type unit, but when I tried to generate a storyboard it only allowed a full storyboard, and when I import a storyboard it makes a full 8-direction storyboard.

I can't seem to figure out how to get my animations in a 1-direction storyboard. I've looked for an answer in some things but it seems that there is only directions for the standard 8-direction units... unless I've missed the info somewhere whilst skimming through things.

If anyone could give me some pointers I'd be very appreciative. Thanks.

 

[Wyrmshadow]

Someone long ago on the old CDG forums figured out how to do it but he's been MIA for alteast 5 years now. Krazeenbek or something like that.

 

[timerover51]

Is there anyway of doing what the game does, and disabling all of the other directions, leaving only the SW one? It would be nice to have both a tactical missile and ICBM-type weapon, with a high bombard value that did not leave pollution to simulate a very small nuke.

 

[Vuldacon]

It does not matter if you have other directions, the SW direction is all that will be played.
That said, IF you want to make a single SW Direction animation just like the one in the game, you can generate a storyboard of the Original Flc with Flicster and use the .FXM file for your New animation. You can also resize and or change the number of frames in it.
Otherwise all you need to do is copy and paste your animation on the first Row of the Storyboard which is the SW direction and leave the other directions Blank.

Perhaps I am not understanding what you want to do.

IF you want to create a New Missile that takes the place of the ICBM, you can do that and only apply the SW direction because that is all that will be used as an ICBM.

As for Pollution, it is Hard Coded for Nuclear Bombs to generate Pollution so if you do not want Pollution, you cannot set the Missile as a Nuclear Weapon. You Can use a Nuclear Missile with its Mushroom Cloud as a non Nuclear Missile and no pollution...or make any new missile you want.

 

[Grandraem]

Thank you for the answers everyone.

It seems that my post is somewhat irrelevant, but I still have another resulting question.

First of all, Vuldacon, you said that it will only show the SW direction if an 8-direction animation is used. I'm sure that long ago I got frustrated because I couldn't replace the ICBM animations without the game crashing as the unit got created. HOWEVER, I tested it again, replacing the ICBMDefault file with the warriorDefault file (from the Warrior unit) and it displayed as you said it would, only showing the SW direction. I'm assuming that when I first tested it, probably when only Vanilla CivIII was out, the problem may have existed then, but got fixed later with PTW, Conquests, or one of the patches.

I also thought to export the ICBM units files and copy and paste over them, but I didn't realize that I could export them with a different number of frames. I guess I should have paid more attention to what Flicster could do as I use it. I think that I will still go this route, even if a regular storyboard will work now. It might prevent any weird crashes if I export the ICBM single-direction files with larger and more frames, change the palette, copy-and-paste, then reimport them as single-direction animations for my new unit.

Now, if anyone is still reading after all that , then here's my question? Does anyone know why Flicster won't export the animations for the 'ICBM Launch' and 'ICBM Trail' files? They were added with PTW. They weren't in the original 'Vanilla' CivIII ICBM folder (which is partly what makes me suspect that they fixed the problem I ran into earlier). It only shows the 'File Information' and 'Extended Information' for them. All other tabs, the 'View Animation', 'Palette View', and 'Export' tabs, don't show up. The height for the 'ICBM trail' animation is listed as 259, which I assume is too large, but the 'ICBM Launch' animation should still fit at 234, as it is under the 240 size limit for the program. Neither animation will display or export though? I'm going to try to just replace these animations with ones I make on my own, but I would have liked to compare them to the original animations if I could have studied them.

 

[Quinzy]

Try and play them in Civ3flc?

 

[Lord Malbeth]

Those ending animations are in the same format that Civ3 Leaderheads are in too.
It think it has something to do with the size, but I could be wrong.

 

[Vuldacon]

Flicster will not show those particular animations and probably because of the Offsets. Rather than try to figure out why they would not show in Flicster, I just used CIV3FlcEdit for those animations to make what I wanted.

Yes, it is easiest to simply generate a storyboard of the Original ICBM and when doing this, adjust the Frame size and number of frames you will use for your New Unit. You Keep the .FXM file and Toss out the Generated .pcx Storyboard and add your New One in its place. You will then have a SW only animation. You can use a Different Palette and set the Frame Sizes and Numbers as you want this way.

 

[Grandraem]

Thanks again for the answers.

I will go the route of replacing the ICBM animations, but using its resized storyboards. I think that I've created a suitable palette for the unit. It was a bit of a pain because the unit contains lots of non-civ colour blue, but I think that I've got it sorted.

I haven't used Civ3FlcEdit. I don't think that I even have it downloaded, but I'll check it out for the trail and launch animations if my Flicster created ones don't work ok.

Thanks.

 

[Grandraem]

In case anyone is curious, here's the unit I'm working on, my first non-cut-and-paste unit. This preview is much larger than it will be in-game. I just wanted to show it with more of the texture for the preview.

I don't think it'll be used by anyone outside of my mod, though. Unless someone will have an unusual use for it. It is a 'Doomsday Weapon', derived from the 'Doomsday Artifact.' It's supposed to be a floating, rotating globe of Mystara with clouds, and a rotating red disk that is used to select where you want to annihilate. Obviously it is a magical device. It's going to look like this, with the globe and red disk rotating in a slow 360 degree spin, for the default animation. The other animations aren't going to be anything fancy. They'll probably be cut-and-paste because I don't have any idea how to do fancy effects in Poser.

The orange band is the civ coloured band. My original had no civ colour on it, but I thought that if anyone did plan on using it for their own mod, they might prefer to have some civ colour on it.

Please let me know whether the south view or the southwest view look better. I seem to think that the SW facing one would suit the angle of cities more (as the unit is immobile and won't leave the city), but please let me know if you think the straight south view suits a 1-direction unit better.

 

[Grandraem]

I have another question about ICBM units. I created my default animation of my Doomsday Weapon and tested it in-game and... it wasn't animated, just a still of the first frame. So I put the original ICBMDefault file back and tested it and... it wasn't animated, just a still of the first frame. Loading it in Flicster it is animated; a simple flashing light, but it is animated. So I was wondering if someone could confirm for me whether or not in their Civ game the ICBM is animated, just so I know whether my game is somehow messed up, or whether for some reason they waste their own default animation by not displaying it.

 

[General 666]

I don't think it'll be used by anyone outside of my mod, though. Unless someone will have an unusual use for it.

Errrmm ... Me !

 

[Vuldacon]

Grandraem... I like the SW direction best.

The Default ICBM is a Still animation...if you look closely, you will see the Light Blinking on it. That is all it does because until the Missile is fired, it would just be sitting there.

 

[Grandraem]

Grandraem...if you look closely, you will see the Light Blinking on it.

Hi Vuldacon,

Thank you for your answer, but I think you misunderstood what I meant a little.

What I meant was that when I open an ICBM's Default animation in Flicster, I see the light blinking (even though I know that the rest of the unit is still), but when I create one in CivIII I don't even see the light blinking, just a still ICBM with the light constantly out.

In the same way, when I changed the default animation to the Default animation of my unit I created, I see it rotating in Flicster, but when I create an ICBM in the game with my default animation it only appears as a still of the first frame. If I create any other unit, like a Warrior, Swordsman, etc. I see them moving slightly in their default animations the way they are supposed to, but my ICBM unit won't display an animated default animation in CivIII, even though it does in Flicster.

EDIT: I did some more testing after I wrote this, and I substituted my animation for another unit's default, and found that it did the same thing (only showing a frozen first frame), so I copied the storyboard onto a regular 8-direction storyboard, and then recreated an flc (this time 8-direction instead of the ICBM's 1-direction) and everything worked as it should (it was animated). So it seems that my original worry about an 8-direction ICBM unit not working properly and fussing to create a 1-direction animation like the original ICBM turned out causing more trouble in the long run. So I guess I should have my problem solved now for creating an ICBM type unit. But that still leaves me with the problem of why my original ICBM unit, and the one I created, don't display an animated default animation. I'm not sure if something about my CivIII is screwed up or whether there is a general bug with CivIII Conquests (latest patch... I think 1.22). If someone with the same Civ version wouldn't mind sparing a few minutes, could they please load up a debug game and build an ICBM unit quickly and just let me know if the little light is blinking in their game (I know it would in Flicster either way)? If they could I would greatly appreciate it. If no one wishes to spare the time it is no problem, it won't be a problem in getting my unit to work.

And General 666, if you do find a use for it, then I'll be happy it'll get more use then just my mod alone.

 

[timerover51]

And General 666, if you do find a use for it, then I'll be happy it'll get more use then just my mod alone.

Hmm, I was thinking about using is as a non-nuclear weapon, with the ICBM range, a very high bombardment value, and precision bombing for selective attacks on difficult to capture enemy cities, where I have units closing in to attack, but no nearby air bases. Or for cases where I want to severely damage the enemy's city, but not deal with all of the pollution clean up. Basically as an ICBM version of a precision-guided conventional cruise missile. I thought about modifying the cruise missile to having an enormous range, but that is a bit of a stretch for me to consider, and also does not leave for the possibility of any defense. My creations tend to bite back at times.

 

[tom2050]

What I meant was that when I open an ICBM's Default animation in Flicster, I see the light blinking (even though I know that the rest of the unit is still), but when I create one in CivIII I don't even see the light blinking, just a still ICBM with the light constantly out.

Same thing happens with the nuclear_bomb.flc out of the WW2 War in the Pacific Scenario. The Flc shows it rotate, but in game it is static. Also a SW only flc. At first I wasn't sure if it was just from a Civ3 installation error, but if you encounter the same thing, must be something with either the flc, or the game.

Tom

 

[General 666]

And General 666, if you do find a use for it, then I'll be happy it'll get more use then just my mod alone.

I`m ALWAYS looking for new Fantasy and Sci-Fi artwork. In this case I would ,at least ,try it out as an immobile `Portal` Unit over an invisible City. The improvements in that City spawns Units like mad ... but no Units will be buildable ,only improvements.
(I working on a Heaven-Hell and Hell-Heaven double mini-scenario ,featuring Gods and Demons while attacking the other sides Realm.)
I think that your work is making a reasonable Dimension-Portal. In the moment I want to use the Sci-Fi Unit "Wormhole" I have once found in a mod. (It`s an extremly sensational flc.)

Bye
General 666

 

[Grandraem]

timerover51,
It'll be nice if you can use the unit, too. If not, oh well.

tom2050,
Thank you for letting me know about that. I probably wouldn't have noticed about the static animations ingame because I haven't played many 'regular' civ games for such a long time, and if I built an ICBM or nuclear bomb I probably would have just assumed it was supposed to be still. It's nice to know that it is not a problem with my Civ program alone, but of course that leaves the question about why they never fixed this little bug?

General 666,
Sounds interesting. Long ago I remember someone requested a devil LH and I remember being tempted to give it a try, thinking that it would probably be cool to have an angels vs. demons scenario (partly because of the angel units that Kinboat had created). I'd definitely download your mod when it was done, assuming that you'll be uploading it and that it isn't just a personal mod.

 

[Vuldacon]

Grandraem and tom2050... I Remade the CIV III/Conquests ICBM Default animation so it will show the animated Blinking light in game. I adjusted that Light so it looks better but used the same palette so it would remain the same and continue to go with all other Original Flcs.

I also Remade the Civilization III\Conquests\Conquests\WWII in the Pacific Nuclear Bomb Default Animation so it will play in game.

The short answer as to why those animations did not show in game is because they had only the SW direction.
Default Flcs Need to have all Directions in order to show.
Because the Units were basically showing in the SE direction on the game map such as when Fortified, the Game was forced to use ONLY the 1st Frame of the SW direction because that was the only animation. Naturally, because there was no animation to show for any other direction, they could not be shown.
This corrects those Default animations IF any one wants them

The Thread and Upload Links are here

 

[Grandraem]

Thanks, Vuldacon. I was thinking of remaking them myself, but you saved me the trouble. And thank you for your explanation.