My Circle Icons became Squares

[TheMimzy]

I'm working on my first full mod for adding a new Civ and the last thing I seem to be stuck on is the art files. I've found the means to save as .dds files in photoshop. I found the bit about the include statement to make Civ actually LOAD the artwork. So it seems like I'm almost there because the artwork actually DID show up the last time I tried test running things. But I hit two snags...

(1)One is that the Leader spash image didn't display in the game. I think this might have been because I set the duel map so that I was both playing as and opposing the same modded civ and the game just freaked out because there were two copies of the mod civ in the game. I just haven't gotten to retest yet. But if that's a known issue, confirmation of the problem existing would make me feel better.

(2)More importantly though is the little circle icons. They are displaying and centered correctly, but there is a giant black square boarder surrounding all of them. I'm not sure how that happened or how I can fix it. I'm assuming it probably has something to do with how I saved the files? Does anyone have tips on how to save those circle sheets correctly in Photoshop? What settings to use? The most I had to go by was a screenshot in the Modding Tutorial.

 

[KnelRivendare]

sounds to me like a problem with the "levels" that decides which texture is show and which is "invisible"

i have no photoshop nor any experiencewith it,
tho could you maybe upload one of the "iconatlas"? to confirm that theres nothing else wrong with the file.

oh and what do you mean with "leader spash image" do you mean the "Dawn of Man" image? if so no, afaik the dom should display anyways.

 

[whoward69]

But if that's a known issue,

The only known issues with the Dawn of Man and Leader Screen graphics are that they a) must be the correct dimensions and b) must be compressed correctly

And the square icons sounds like you don't have an alpha channel.

 

[TheMimzy]

I can provide the files, just not at this exact moment. (Not at home XP)
I may try remaking them with a fresh copy of the psd file the SDK came with first though. I suspect that comment about the 'alpha channel' might hold some weight. One time when I was saving files it warned me with something about 'alphas would be lost'. Maybe a fresh attempt will save them this time.

and I guess I meant the Leader Screen. The Dawn of Man (Loading) screen worked fine (there were black bars on either side of it but I assumed they were normal and I just hadn't noticed them before). The Leader Screen just showed blank with "no scene loaded" or something like that at the top.

 

[KnelRivendare]

yepp pretty certain that its the alpha channel missing, thats what i tried to describe with "levels"


about the diplo screen "leader screen" i dont know if its still like that but, if you want to add a static leaderimage you have to edit the civ5 userfolder/GraphicsSettingsDX9.config
change the 0 to 1 at this line-

"; Whether or not to use static screenshots of leaders (this is the default for min-spec machines)
UseScreenShots = 0"

 

[whoward69]

Dunno about DX9, but DX10/11 just needs the image specifying in the FallbackImage attribute of the <LeaderScene> tag

 

[KnelRivendare]

Dunno about DX9, but DX10/11 just needs the image specifying in the FallbackImage attribute of the <LeaderScene> tag

well my knowledge about this is more than a year old, could work different now

 

[TheMimzy]

Okay, good news, circles are circles now. Redoing the photoshop file from scratch seems to have restored the alphas or whatever.

Bad news, Diplomacy/Leader Image still not showing up... I know the size is correct. So... okay. How do I setup this variable you're talking about? Because I'm not sure I'm following 100% on that. I've played mods that have static images before and the image on that showed up no problem, so I would assume my own computer is already setup for that? Or... not?

I guess I'm just not sure how that setting is supposed to work. And if it's something that has to be changed manually, then how do I ensure people downloading my mod (if they actually do) will have that same setting fixed so they can see the image too?

---------------
EDIT:
Nevermind! XD
Okay, apparently I just needed to set the same "upload to vtf" TRUE thing to the .xml file as you do for the rest of the .dds image files and NOW it works. Gawd! I'd have never considered that, I thought I just needed to set the .xml file for the leader scene to apply on startup like the rest of the .xml files. LESSON LEARNED! XP

 

[whoward69]

Okay, apparently I just needed to set the same "upload to vtf" TRUE thing to the .xml file as you do for the rest of the .dds image files and NOW it works.

See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=487846

 

[TheMimzy]

And bookmarking the hell out of that link. Thank you very much!