Prettying up the game little by little

[dom111]

You could also use the Civ color as part of the unit colors, what would that do ?

This sounds intriguing to me too! I don't know of that would affect the used palette much or not?

I feel bad for commenting so much on your hard work, I hope it doesn't detract from your enjoyment! Thanks for your efforts already!

 

[Vaximillian]

@darkpanda I have absolutely thought of and considered having units actually wear their team colours like every other game does, and a potential positive side effect of that would be that I can bring back the wall graphic for the cities and units that had to be replaced because it would have covered the coloured underline. I’ll see what I can do about it.

@dom111 It’s okay; a new pair of eyes brings a fresh prespective. Feedback is necessary because everyone’s perception is unique, and in the purely graphical environment readability is king. I know what all the icons stand for, but that’s because I literally drew them.

 

[Vaximillian]

@darkpanda, how do you like this?


I need to think of something better with the white player but eh, proof of concept is proof of concept.

 

[Blake00]

awesome!

 

[darkpanda]

@darkpanda, how do you like this?


I need to think of something better with the white player but eh, proof of concept is proof of concept.

OMG I love it

Reminds me of Dune 2 unit coloring style

 

[darkpanda]

Except I think you attached the original SP257.PIC file instead of your mod :/

 

[Vaximillian]

I really did accidentally copy the file from the backup vanilla Civ1 folder.

This should be the correct one.

 

[rhaul]

I had a problem with a city that did not lose population when attacking and I did not understand the reason, until I discovered that it had a wall. Include an image for city walls.

 

[Vaximillian]

@rhaul There was a shield icon in the bottom left to show walls and being fortified (because it is the same icon in the game) but how do you like these?

 

[rhaul]

The important thing is that there is some graphic that clearly identifies that the city has a wall.
The graphic of the wall seems fine to me, although you know that the graphic of the city itself does not convince me. I would even try a new graph with a view from above.

 

[Vaximillian]

I like this city icon and I will keep it.

Also, I drew new planes:

 

[darkpanda]

I like the new planes

By the way, switching the drawing order to have irrigation above, is a tough call... The map square rendering routine is quite big with many conditional branchings...

I keep looking.

 

[rhaul]

What do you think that to further differentiate the units, the mosaic would have different geometric shapes, for example, round aerial ones (as in the original), diamond-shaped ground ones...

 

[Vaximillian]

What do you think that to further differentiate the units, the mosaic would have different geometric shapes, for example, round aerial ones (as in the original), diamond-shaped ground ones...

I will have to redesign and redraw some units wholesale to get them to fit into smaller shapes, which is why I’m unlikely to do it. And my personal preference is for consistency, in all honesty.

 

[darkpanda]

Wasn't looking for this, but I stumbled upon sprite loading code, where the special coloring treatment for White Civs occurs (and also for Grey Civs actually, Indian and Mongol).

Made a quick patch to disable it, that seems to work:

All-white settler:

 

[Vaximillian]

@darkpanda This is absolutely huge, and you are a genius: this absolutely saved backgoundless icons. Now I do still need to recolour the knight’s horse for one because it’s still, well, white. I’ll see if the light grey isn’t going to look too horrible and also won’t get lost on the grey player’s grey.

Speaking of grey player’s grey, I noticed the replacing in my recent game where I was up against Indians, and I actually didn’t hate it. But yeah, if it’s possible to disable the special treatment, the better for me and my design.

EDIT: here’s the composite shot of all units on coloured counters; as expected, the knight’s horse and the galleytrireme’s sail are completely invisible for white player, but also certain details are now invisible for the grey player too. I’ll have to find some grey that works for both white and grey player.


further EDIT: Civilopedia be damned, I’m using extra greys for the sails and the whites in general.

Oh, and touched up the galleytrireme a bit.

 

[darkpanda]

By the way I am also looking into the whole "draw irrigation OVER terrain", but this looks like a realy challenge.

I identified both code blocks (draw irrigation and draw terrain details), fortunately they are almost just one after the other.

Now changing the order is hard because at the moment I may require to add more jumps in the code, but I'm not sure I can afford the room for such extra code... I have seen useless conditional check for this code (such as: check if terrain is not ocean), but those check may not be placed in the right location for saving room...

Will keep you posted.

 

[Vaximillian]

There have been no updates to this thing because there have been no updates to this thing.
I don’t know what I can even do for the remaining units (redraw the diplomat and the trader in my style I guess), other than prepare this whole project for release. Dunno, there aren’t a lot of units in this game to redraw.

 

[rhaul]

Have you managed to solve the issue of the colors of the units in the civilopedia?

 

[Vaximillian]

Have you managed to solve the issue of the colors of the units in the civilopedia?

No, and frankly, I don’t give a damn. If I have to sacrifice the Civilopedia to get at least some visibility in the actual in-game icons, so be it.
I need these greys from the “extra” part of the palette to have the units not blend in with the white or grey of the background.

Not my fault that Sid and Bruce and all those civilized guys at MPS Labs decided to use twenty million different palettes instead of one.