Making a custom civ, need to change a few flags

[Drazule]

Hey everybody. I've been scouring the web for a while and haven't been able to find an answer for this question: How do I get these images to work properly?

Spoiler :

I'm using these two images in DDS form, but the Paratrooper's just becomes this weird blob thing, and I don't know where I am supposed to change the reference for the little American Shield next to the city names.

Spoiler :

http://imgur.com/P69RX7p

Can anybody help me implement these, or point me towards a good tutorial for that. I can get every other image working, like leader icon, civ icon, UA and UB icons, just not those little bits.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

What you should do when you need to start a thread asking for help:​

1. In your original post you should try to be as specific as you can as to what your problem is, so far as you are able to understand what has gone wrong with your mod. Many times, however, what the novice modder thinks the problem is and what the problem actually is are two different things. Which is why, at a minimum, you need to adhere to #2 and #3 in this list of what you should do when starting a thread to ask for help.
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The "Little American shield" you speak of refers to the civ's alpha icon atlas, which is defined by the column AlphaIconAtlas in the table <Civilizations>. You apparently have it set to America's, or just didn't set it up correctly. Either way, we're just throwing out wild guesses unless you follow #2 in the above instructions. You already did #1 and #3, so good job with that. (Sadly, LeeS had to write those steps in because most people don't follow those)

 

[Drazule]

The "Little American shield" you speak of refers to the civ's alpha icon atlas, which is defined by the column AlphaIconAtlas in the table <Civilizations>. You apparently have it set to America's, or just didn't set it up correctly. Either way, we're just throwing out wild guesses unless you follow #2 in the above instructions. You already did #1 and #3, so good job with that. (Sadly, LeeS had to write those steps in because most people don't follow those)

Thanks so much for your reply! I might be really dumb, but I didn't see that thread anywhere before posting.

So yeah, I will definitely go ahead and try editing the AlphaIconAtlas. I just had no idea what the reference in the files was. I'm going to go back and try working on some of your suggestions, but here's the current build.


Thanks again for getting back to me!

 

[AW Arcaeca]

Alright, so, you have AlphaIconAtlas set to CIV_ALPHA_ATLAS:

<Civilizations>
		<Row>
			<Type>CIVILIZATION_CZECH</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_CIV_CZECH_DESC</Description>
			<ShortDescription>TXT_KEY_CIV_CZECH_SHORT_DESC</ShortDescription>
			<Adjective>TXT_KEY_CIV_CZECH_ADJECTIVE</Adjective>
			<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_CIV_CZECH_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
			<CivilopediaTag>TXT_KEY_CIV5_CZECH</CivilopediaTag>
			<DefaultPlayerColor>PLAYERCOLOR_CZECH</DefaultPlayerColor>
			<ArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_CIVILIZATION_ENGLAND</ArtDefineTag>
			<ArtStyleType>ARTSTYLE_EUROPEAN</ArtStyleType>
			<ArtStyleSuffix>_EURO</ArtStyleSuffix>
			<ArtStylePrefix>EUROPEAN </ArtStylePrefix>
			<PortraitIndex>0</PortraitIndex>
			<IconAtlas>CIV_COLOR_ATLAS_LEGENDS</IconAtlas>
			[B][COLOR="Blue"]<AlphaIconAtlas>CIV_ALPHA_ATLAS</AlphaIconAtlas>[/COLOR][/B]
			<MapImage>DOM_Map.dds</MapImage>
			<DawnOfManQuote>TXT_KEY_CIV5_CZECH_TEXT_1</DawnOfManQuote>
			<DawnOfManImage>VaclavDOM.dds</DawnOfManImage>
		</Row>
	</Civilizations>

Except that atlas doesn't exist because you haven't defined it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!-- Created by ModBuddy on 7/22/2015 12:17:36 PM -->
<GameData>
	<IconTextureAtlases>
		<Row>
			<Atlas>CIV_COLOR_ATLAS_LEGENDS</Atlas>
			<IconSize>256</IconSize>
			<Filename>CivSymbolsColorLegends256.dds</Filename>
			<IconsPerRow>8</IconsPerRow>
			<IconsPerColumn>8</IconsPerColumn>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<Atlas>CIV_COLOR_ATLAS_LEGENDS</Atlas>
			<IconSize>128</IconSize>
			<Filename>CivSymbolsColorLegends128.dds</Filename>
			<IconsPerRow>8</IconsPerRow>
			<IconsPerColumn>8</IconsPerColumn>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<Atlas>CIV_COLOR_ATLAS_LEGENDS</Atlas>
			<IconSize>80</IconSize>
			<Filename>CivSymbolsColorLegends80.dds</Filename>
			<IconsPerRow>8</IconsPerRow>
			<IconsPerColumn>8</IconsPerColumn>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<Atlas>CIV_COLOR_ATLAS_LEGENDS</Atlas>
			<IconSize>64</IconSize>
			<Filename>CivSymbolsColorLegends64.dds</Filename>
			<IconsPerRow>8</IconsPerRow>
			<IconsPerColumn>8</IconsPerColumn>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<Atlas>CIV_COLOR_ATLAS_LEGENDS</Atlas>
			<IconSize>45</IconSize>
			<Filename>CivSymbolsColorLegends45.dds</Filename>
			<IconsPerRow>8</IconsPerRow>
			<IconsPerColumn>8</IconsPerColumn>
		</Row>
		<Row>
			<Atlas>CIV_COLOR_ATLAS_LEGENDS</Atlas>
			<IconSize>32</IconSize>
			<Filename>CivSymbolsColorLegends32.dds</Filename>
			<IconsPerRow>4</IconsPerRow>
			<IconsPerColumn>3</IconsPerColumn>
		</Row>
	</IconTextureAtlases>
</GameData>

And when the game is given invalid information within <Civilizations>, it defaults to America (which is the first entry in <Civilizations>). There's your problem.

As for the weird blob shape showing up as your unit flag - you might be surprised to learn that it's working perfectly! Look at the file that's supposed to hold the unit flag - Flag_Atlas_32.dds - and you'll find the flag corresponding to your unit (all of the icons in the atlas, really) is, indeed, just a circle.
Unit flags and civilization alpha icons have to be completely white, BTW. Also, I didn't find any alpha icon for your civ anywhere - any of my civs can serve as an example of what a civ alpha icon should look like. (The icon from the color icon colored pure white)

 

[Drazule]

Thanks for the speedy reply. So I actually kinda mostly figured it out based off your first post, but I have a follow up question:

Why do they have black circles around them now? Current theory is that DDS files don't ignore hidden layers, but you probably know better!

Spoiler :

When you say the icon from the color icon, but pure white, should they also be the same resoultion? Because Kael's Modding Guide says they should be much, much smaller than that.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

I mean that - taking my Zapotec mod as an example - if the civ's color icon is this (size 256x256):

Spoiler :

Then the civ's alpha icon (also size 256x256, which is actually 4x larger than it needs to be) should be this:

Spoiler :

Your unit flag has a black circle surrounding it, so a black circle is showing up in game!

 

[Drazule]

Does that apply to the Unit Flag too? Or does the Unit Flag have to be 32x32?

 

[LeeS]

FramedArchitect's Icon and Screen Pixel Dimension Reference tutorial

 

[Drazule]

Your unit flag has a black circle surrounding it, so a black circle is showing up in game!

Still working off that same version:

With Black Background, the black circles show up in-game behind, like in the screenshots.
With Transparent Background, the symbols just save as white circles in the DDS, thus as border colored circles in-game like I had in my first post.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

It almost sounds like you're just layering the black circle + icon on top of the default white circle. While that's not bad practice for aligning color icons that are complete circle (personally I just make 512x512 icons and use multiples of 512 as coordinates to align it correctly), alpha icons - including unit flags - need transparency behind them to show up correctly, per my example above. First delete the white circle, then layer on the alpha icon - or, first layer the black circle + icon on, then delete the surrounding circle.

It also almost sounds like - with what you describe for transparent background - like you might be trying to layer the alpha icon straight onto the white circle, which will do you no good, since they're the same color!

Bottom line, you MUST delete that template circle if you want it to show up in-game the way you do. The game isn't simply going to ignore a huge circle surrounding the icon - you told the game that everything in the 32x32 square in the top left corner was the icon.

 

[Drazule]

So what are you DDS settings? Because this is most likely an issue in Photoshop, not Civ.


Once again, thanks for following through with my problems.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

I'm not sure what you mean by my "DDS settings". They're loaded into the game via VFS, which you've already done. Beyond that, I can't even begin to guess what you're talking about, especially since I use GIMP, not PS.

 

[Drazule]

Sorry, I had to take a few days off from working on the mod.

So I've started to get it to work! I can improve the quality, but GIMP's DDS plug-in seems to have complete vanished, and I eventually had to try Paint.net which worked for me.

Spoiler :

I'm gonna see on improving their quality/size, but thanks for your help!
Any idea where I can find a good Leader Screen tutorial?

You're awesome. If there were a karma system, I'd upvote the out of you AggressiveWimp.

And thanks LeeS for the link.

 

[AW Arcaeca]

Any idea where I can find a good Leader Screen tutorial?

Leugi's 2D Leaderscene Collage Hints
This is the process I used to make my Harappan and Zapotec leaderscenes... plus another one coming at the end of February. I think the end quality of the Leugi's leaderscene example speaks for itself.
Note that the tutorial covers the process for Photoshop, which can be easily fit to work with GIMP (which I use). If it doesn't work for Paint.Net, you could always use the tutorial to make a .jpg or .png in GIMP and then simply convert to DDS in Paint.Net.

 

[Drazule]

I do all of my work in Photoshop, I just use Paint.net to export as DDS with transparency. I have absolutely no idea why photoshop's DDS export gave me so much trouble with the flags specifically.

Thanks though. I'll let you know when I release. Probably by the end of the month.