How to make .flc's on a Mac

[eeZee]

hi everybody,

i'm ready to make my first mod for civ iii. it's gonna be a fantasy theme (some kind of a conversion of "Master of Magic"). so, i got poser with a ton of stuff and wonder how i can make flc-animations on the mac. anyone knows a prog like Flicster or similar for use on mac? maybe anyone wants me to help making this mod? my goal is to make real good looking graphics so it would help if you have graphic skills. later i will post the plans for races, units, improvements, tech-tree etc.

 

[eeZee]

guess my question isn't that interesting.
mybe i should buy myself a PC. at least they have the applications and a suporting community.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by eeZee
guess my question isn't that interesting.
mybe i should buy myself a PC. at least they have the applications and a suporting community.

I'm sorry no-one responded. I suspect it's more because no-one knows the answer or there aren't many people around just now, rather than lack of interest. Remember that the game editor has only just arrived for the Mac, and has some limitations - not least, it isn't compatible with the latest Civ3 patch beta. So I suspect the modding community here is pretty small. However, given the artistic flair of many Mac users I hope you are able to generate some enthusiasm.

I don't know how best to edit .flcs on the Mac, but that's just because I'm not into animation. Since a .flc can be displayed in Quicktime Player, I'd hazard a guess that you can maybe use Quicktime Pro to edit a .flc.

I have a copy of GraphicsConverter that can open the .flc files and you can certainly edit the individual frame images. It looks promising - there are control panels that seem to allow you to add and delete frames but I havent found out how it works. This is version 4.4.4, so the latest version might do even more.

Having done some quick research I notice that the Civ3 file format is not exacty standard, as it concatenates eight animation sequences (one for each compass direction) into a single file. The ones I looked at had variable numbers of frames. CavalryRun has 81 total, with 7 sequences of 11 frames and one of 4. ArtillaryAttackA has 121 frames, 7 sequences of 16 frames and one of 9. I guess the software must divide the total into 7 equal pieces and use the remainder as the eighth sequence (West). I also note that my copy of Civ3 doesn't always play the correct sequences, and I have seen artillary firing backwards!

Hope this helps, and good luck!

 

[eeZee]

thanks for answering,

i've tryed to open the flc files with QT but i get only an error?? (-116 "unknown error") what ever that means ...

anyhow, i guess it would be the best to just make the single frames and than ask some of the PC users to convert them into an animation? maybe that would be the easiest way.

i wonder if there are any mac users out there make some mods ... i remember the mac forum crying about not having an editor, now it seems that no one is using it, now thhat we have it, how disappointing. (by the way sorry for my poor english, i live in germany).

maybe some one is interested in helping me out making the tech-tree and making the concepts for the units, improvements etc. (any help would be apreciated).

let's show the PC users, how a mod can look (i do have poser with lots of stuff, i'm also a graphic-designer, but at least i'm not a historian nor a programmer).

thanks anyhow.

by the way, i'm playing with 1.21g. i really don't know what 1.29b2 is good for, if can't use the editor with it. what is the advantage at least?

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by eeZee
thanks for answering,

i've tryed to open the flc files with QT but i get only an error?? (-116 "unknown error") what ever that means ...

That's interesting, so do I. I'm sure I've opened them in QT before. Anyway, they definitely open in GraphicConverter, and they are editable there. Have you tried that? It's a shareware download from places like www.versiontracker.com.

by the way, i'm playing with 1.21g. i really don't know what 1.29b2 is good for, if can't use the editor with it. what is the advantage at least?

The main advantages for me are that it is compatible with GOTM, it is more stable as far as I can tell, and I believe it fixes some Civ3 bugs that were in 1.21. As I don't have time to play and do mods as well, I can live without the editor for now.

 

[tao]

I just tried it. QuickTime Pro 6.3 opens flics. It also converts back and forth between .flc and .mov.
At least under MacOS X 10.2.6.

 

[Trixter]

Originally posted by tao
I just tried it. QuickTime Pro 6.3 opens flics. It also converts back and forth between .flc and .mov.
At least under MacOS X 10.2.6.

Well then you probably tried the ones you find in Art/Flics/ and those do work.
Take a look at the flics in Art/Units/any unit/ and you'll se the problem.

The only way I found to open these is to use GraphicConverter which has been able to open this kind of file for ages, as far as I know. Since GC has only limited editing abilities, if you compare it to other graphics programs, I'd try and open it in GC and convert it into something you like, then do the editing and use QuickTime to convert it to fli/flc/flh. It's just going to be a hell of a lot of work if you have to do all the frames one by one.

I'm sorry to say that this is the best idea I can come up with.

 

[eeZee]

i'm also sure that i had open flics in QT (6.3) but now it doesn't work, that's wired. but at least it is possible to save a movie as flc with QT. (BTW: i'm under MacOs X 10.2.6) i guess it isn't that important to open flics, as long as i can save movies (or sequences) as flc with QT. when i export the movie from QT to flc (which color palette should i use?) i've tried it with both palettes (win and mac), but the flic looks lousy in the colors, any ideas?

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by eeZee
thanks for answering,

i've tryed to open the flc files with QT but i get only an error?? (-116 "unknown error") what ever that means ...

As it happens, the flc files that ship with Civ3 have bogus data in them - the last frame in each flc contains a link to a non-existent frame (it is like this on the PC as well). QuickTime does not like this, but you can use Graphic Converter to get at them since it has its own decompressor that is a little more forgiving.

 

[nmcul]

I'm fairly sure that though Graphic Converter can open .flc files, it can't save in .flc format. In fact, I just tried and couldn't get it to even list .flc as a possibility.

 

[eeZee]

at least i've done my first flic with QT. besides from the colors it seems to look ok. just saved the animation from poser (a leaderhead) as qt-movie and open it in QT and saved as flic. seems to work. now i'm gonna try an unit animation.