Modding Q&A

[Vuldacon]

ajb... Read the Tutorial again...You need to follow the steps to make a Leaderhead... using Animation Shop to make the .Flc because you are making a Leaderhead that is suppose to have animations Happy, Normal, Angry. even if you are not showing an animation but a still image it must be arranged as if it is animated.
You use the same frames for both so called animations. one with 01 and the other with 02 in the name of the Leaderhead. Example: Zero_01.flc and Zero_02.flc
The Palette is added to the Leaderhead in Animation Shop.
The .Fls are placed in the Flics Folder.

 

[ajb]

ajb... Read the Tutorial again...You need to follow the steps to make a Leaderhead... using Animation Shop to make the .Flc because you are making a Leaderhead that is suppose to have animations Happy, Normal, Angry. even if you are not showing an animation but a still image it must be arranged as if it is animated.
You use the same frames for both so called animations. one with 01 and the other with 02 in the name of the Leaderhead. Example: Zero_01.flc and Zero_02.flc
The Palette is added to the Leaderhead in Animation Shop.
The .Fls are placed in the Flics Folder.

Yes, I'm having troubles making the final FLC.

I'm able to generate a flc using "JASC animation shop" using the tutorial, looks very good in preview (in Jasc), but is black in game and will cause a crash eventually. I can't get a working non black in game flc using Jasc Animation Shop, I've even used pallets used by other moders as well as the pcx images supplied in the tutorial.

Spend hours. . . whatever I'm missing it's going to be a facepalm item.

Maybe I missed something super simple. Other than the CIV3 editor, there isn't any other place I should be listing Zero_01.flc, and Zero_01.flc, no text file????

Anyone take a look at my pallet and image to see what I'm doing wrong? I also attached my flc attempts -- like I said, they looked good in Jasc.

 

[ajb]

Ok, so even using flc's which work for other races, which I can easily see, this one race doesn't seem to be able to handle any flc. . . any suggestions? It is the 28th faction. . . I don't believe that breaks any limits. Everything seems fine otherwise.

Added the faction in editor, increased the number of players in the scenario added all the civ entries (as far as I can tell).

If someone can verify those FLCs work, then at least that issues is gone. thanks!

 

[ajb]

So. . . been playing custom scenarios for so long, I forgot there are more eras than one.. . .so there was no flc in the other eras. Thus the black screen.


I knew it was going to be a facepalm

@Vuldacon I much appreciate your suggestions and tutorial.

​

 

[Civinator]

ajb, please try this one. In my test it did work. Vuldacon was so kind to teach me how to do these single-image-leaderheads long ago at the SOC site. For those simple-image-leaderheads I use a a very primitive way to do them. I take the pcx file in the correct size reduced to 256 colours and set the last two colours in the pcx palette with psp7 to magenta (last colour) and poison-green. Than I open that image with the animation shop and set the animation to flc and save it - and this is it.

As the animation is the same for both animation entries of a civ in the biq, one flc is sufficient for both entries in the biq.

I never heared of a civ 28 problem.

Edit just have seen your last entry after doing that flc. So this post is in vein.

 

[Vuldacon]

ajb... Glad you found the problem... most problems are generally simple when discovered
I checked your palette as soon as I downloaded your files and it was not the problem.

As you probably know, the Green and Magenta do not have to be Pure (0, 256, 0 and 256, 0, 256) or even those colors. Some procedures require loading the palette to nearest color matching and if those two colors are close to another color in the palette, the programs will load them with the wrong color and that changes the index.
Those two colors at the end of the palette are in preset slots for Transparency. If the Magenta is not pure and close to the Light Smoke shades in the Unit palette, programs will load the Light smoke shade in the transparency slot causing the background of the Unit to be the lightest smoke shade... and you cannot see this until in the game. This is the reason to use Pure Green and Magenta just as a general rule. The truth is that you could use any of the same colors on the palette again for those two transparent slots but you would always have to check them to make sure the palette indexes were correct for the transparency palette slots.

Unit Palettes use the last two palette slots for transparency ( first one for the Frame lines and the last one for the Background ) but Leaderhead palettes only use one color for Transparency.that you select when adding the palette in Animation Shop. and if you have both Green and Magenta already in your Palette it does not matter because you only use one of them. IF all color slots were used and you only have Magenta or Green (for example) at the end of your Palette you would have one more color used in the Leaderhead. We generally use the same palette that we use for the other Leaderhead pcx images both for simplicity and to keep the Animated Leaderhead with the same appearance.

 

[ajb]

ajb, please try this one. In my test it did work. Vuldacon was so kind to teach me how to do these single-image-leaderheads long ago at the SOC site. For those simple-image-leaderheads I use a a very primitive way to do them. I take the pcx file in the correct size reduced to 256 colours and set the last two colours in the pcx palette with psp7 to magenta (last colour) and poison-green. Than I open that image with the animation shop and set the animation to flc and save it - and this is it.

As the animation is the same for both animation entries of a civ in the biq, one flc is sufficient for both entries in the biq.

I never heared of a civ 28 problem.

Edit just have seen your last entry after doing that flc. So this post is in vein.

Never in vain, always good to support the community when you can!

ajb... Glad you found the problem... most problems are generally simple when discovered
I checked your palette as soon as I downloaded your files and it was not the problem.

As you probably know, the Green and Magenta do not have to be Pure (0, 256, 0 and 256, 0, 256) or even those colors. Some procedures require loading the palette to nearest color matching and if those two colors are close to another color in the palette, the programs will load them with the wrong color and that changes the index.
Those two colors at the end of the palette are in preset slots for Transparency. If the Magenta is not pure and close to the Light Smoke shades in the Unit palette, programs will load the Light smoke shade in the transparency slot causing the background of the Unit to be the lightest smoke shade... and you cannot see this until in the game. This is the reason to use Pure Green and Magenta just as a general rule. The truth is that you could use any of the same colors on the palette again for those two transparent slots but you would always have to check them to make sure the palette indexes were correct for the transparency palette slots.

Unit Palettes use the last two palette slots for transparency ( first one for the Frame lines and the last one for the Background ) but Leaderhead palettes only use one color for Transparency.that you select when adding the palette in Animation Shop. and if you have both Green and Magenta already in your Palette it does not matter because you only use one of them. IF all color slots were used and you only have Magenta or Green (for example) at the end of your Palette you would have one more color used in the Leaderhead. We generally use the same palette that we use for the other Leaderhead pcx images both for simplicity and to keep the Animated Leaderhead with the same appearance.

Appreciate the responses, I can't believe I spent hours on this one

Might try and avoid doing again. . . can hardly wait until Grok is sophisticated enough to just do this for you.

 

[Vuldacon]

ajb... don't be concerned, once you know and understand something it is easy

 

[Vuldacon]

Just for your information... your palettes can be 255 colors plus just the last one for Transparency (typically Green or Magenta) because those animated Leaderheads only use one color for transparency... Animation Shop asks you to select the one transparent color you want.
Even so, I generally use both Green and Magenta because I want the animated leaderheads to be exactly like the static game images so I use the same palette.

I mentioned before that when making the animated leaderheads, do not use pure white (255, 255, 255) because it will show as Black in game... use a little different white such as 255, 254, 252. Only needs to be slightly different.

 

[robotlincoln]

The strictest random limitation would be a strategic resource and an appearance rate of 1, as this means, that there exists only one such resource on the map. Not so strict limitations could be done with virtual resources in several variations.

This is a basic question, but how do the appearance and disappearance rates for resources work? Does the appearance rate directly align with the quantity of the resource on the map?

 

[tjs282]

There is a thread about the exact math somewhere here in C+C (or possibly the Civ3 War Academy?), but basically, the higher the appearance ratio value, the more of that resource will appear on the map, per civ spawned at the start of the game.

That means setting fewer opponents than the maximum allowed for a given map-size (e.g. 2 opponents instead of 7 for a Standard map) will simultaneously significantly reduce the availability of all Strat-and Lux-resources.

 

[robotlincoln]

There is a thread about the exact math somewhere here in C+C (or possibly the Civ3 War Academy?), but basically, the higher the appearance ratio value, the more of that resource will appear on the map, per civ spawned at the start of the game.

That means setting fewer opponents than the maximum allowed for a given map-size (e.g. 2 opponents instead of 7 for a Standard map) will simultaneously significantly reduce the availability of all Strat-and Lux-resources.

Thank you!

 

[ajb]

I'm creating a Star Wars mod and replacing the airport and harbor with Jedi and Sith symbols.

Unlike the base game, there may be multiple airports and harbors per city. With 512 planets (cities), I want to keep things efficient. Will having multiple harbors/airports per city increase trade network calculations? Ideally, if it only calculates once per city per harbor/airport —manageable since Jedi/Sith sites will be rare.

Alternatively, I could set the EXE to not have the harbor/airport symbol for trade networks, but have them show for unit upgrades. There are no naval units, so the "harbor" could represent the Force (would have blank for airport as that is combined with ground units in my game). Still, I was hoping to use the harbor/airport distinction to differentiate Jedi and Sith visually.

Any deep knowledge someone can share?

 

[Civinator]

With C3X you can set up those icons to show the "unit-veteran-component" of those hybrid buildings instead of the trade net part (per example veteran air unit production instead of air trade). Of course you should set up those buildings to have no tradenet function.