more PIC file activity

[Dack]

Over the years there has been interest in the PIC files as seen in this threads.
PIC file format
PIC and PAL files viewer?
What format are Civ1 pictures in?

My interest has ebbed and flowed, waxed and waned. The new posts have roused my curiosity again. I have been aware of Joel "Quadko" McIntyre work on this topic at the Darklands site. It appears the on Jan 11, 2011 I must have used his converter program to modify the ADSCREEN.PIC file to have some text in it.
I attempted to write a DOS program to write BMP files. But lack of interest and real life (something outside of hobby programming) must have caught my attention.

Over the weekend I have produced a test program that will read and display CIV PIC files. I have to incorporate the secondary palette data and the PAL files. My goal here is to read / write PIC <> BMP.

I have thought over the years that modifying the PIC files would allow for new leader images. This of course would require an artist and does it really have value.

Test Program image

 

[Dack]

First attempts

MY reconstructed palette leaves a little to be desired

perhaps tomorrow

revised ARCH.PIC displayed by CIV

Salvador dali shall return

Moderate success PIC to BMP and return. Encoding algorithm is not as tight as I would like.

 

[Dack]

An index with a value slightly off will change your palette. A thanks to Darkpanda for giving me the inspiration to move on with this project. This is about as much intense fun as I’ve had with CIV since the development of TerraForm. Once more Joel "Quadko" McIntyre, his work on Darklands pic files especially the description of the pic Identifiers, I say thank you.

The law of unintended consequences is always in play. As can be seen in the two end sequences from CIV the palette is also used for the color of the fount used for the text. In my altered ARCH.PIC the color appears as black. The only testing I performed was for VGA (256 color). Does anybody use anything else? Question with no answer; I wonder what sort of tool they used to render the original art? I particularly like the nice sorted palette colors.

Example: The attached zip file has a map & sve file that in 2 moves will bring about the end of your civilization. The file ti2.pic should be renamed to ARCH.PIC and put in place of the current file (save your original!).
Attached images titanic palette, titanic used as ARCH.PIC by CIV with black text, ARCH.PIC palette, and with text from its palette