Preview: AWACS radar plane, please help...

[Headmaster]

This is gonna be my first unit

First I thought about creating a drone, but I think an AWACS plane would be more interesting. (Hope nobody already created one )

I use the 3D model of a US E-3 found at CNN. Of course I have to remove all the US signs + texts.

I started with the W view. Quite lucky that I have to create neither movement nor attack/bombard animations. But the crash animation will be very hard...

I'm experiencing some problems making the picture smaller, because I started with a larger screenshot. The image is 414 pixels wide, i.e. i have to change the size with a 4.5 ratio to make it 92 pixels wide. I used Paint Shop Pro 7 which has multiple options to change size. 'Smart' and 'Bilinear' create nice results, but blur the pink and the grey which will give the unit a purple border in the game. 'Bicubic' and 'Pixel' don't blur, but of course the quality is really poor afterwards.
I would really appreciate it if somebody could help me out...

 

[Dark Sheer]

I have downloaded your pcx file and resize it using smart resize with Paintshop Pro. After the resizing you usually need to remove those residual pixel (those very light pink ones around the original graphic)

Since I was at it, I help you to resize it so that it can fit nicely into the original frame for bomber. I even added shadow for you

So here is your first frame. I am reattaching the modified pcx file back for your further work The current file is exactly the same size for 1 frame of bomber unit

Oh, and welcome to the club of unit creation for Civ3

 

[Headmaster]

thx Dark Sheer!

I think the AWACS will be like this:

requires Advanced Flight (or Computers, not sure)
requires Oil

100 shields
0/0/0
Rebase
Recon

Radar
Sees submarines

I was thinking about not making it unmovable, but an AWACS plane fortified over ocean would be really strange...

I'm now adding small stars showing the team color (like the ones the bomber has)...

 

[Headmaster]

The South view is done, the East view as well (simply mirrored the West view). The shadow for South isn't perfect, have to fix it... hope it doesn't look like it's going down when flying South, because its perspective is a little too high, compared to the bomber.

Haven't made the culture colors thing yet... I think I'll paint some stripes onto the front and rear and bomber-like stars onto the wings.

 

[Dark Ryder]

Nah, other than the shadow, the South view looks great! One problem with the East view, however: mirroring the image reverses the direction of the "stripe" so that it's at ninety degrees to the stripes in the West and South views.

 

[Headmaster]

do you mean the white stripe on the big black disc? AFAIK this disc is the radar which keeps turning around, isn't it?

 

[Headmaster]

- deleted -

 

[blissett]

Originally posted by Headmaster
thx Dark Sheer!

I think the AWACS will be like this:

requires Advanced Flight (or Computers, not sure)
requires Oil

100 shields
0/0/0
Rebase
Recon

Radar
Sees submarines

The awacs cannot see submarines, the awacs can only intercept bomb mission or fighters, I think that use of awacs is to block air bomb normal/stelath missions in 70/30% of cases and act a city improvements like sam missiles.

the principal use of awacs is this prevents enemy misisons, Another use is to command figther interceptor to enemis but i not know if is possible realize this in civ3mod, but if is possible a 50% of destroyng enemy possibility is realistic.

The correct cost for this awacs for me is 400 because is real potential defend unit(or city improvement).

Sorry for my Wake English

Bye
Luther

 

[Headmaster]

Thanks for your feedback.

About the submarine thing, you're maybe right.

The AWACS has no weapons, so you can't compare it to the SAM batteries. A bomber won't be shot down when there is only an AWACS, but no fighter or anti aircraft MG/SAM nearby.
It would be nice if fighter planes, SAM etc were more effective in defending a city if an AWACS was in there. But I don't think this is possible with Civ3.

Another thing I tried to do is to make it an army. (CNN says: Primary function: Airborne surveillance, command, control and communications)
Would be nice if you could build air armies of 3 fighter jets, for example. But I can't give an air unit the army attribute in the editor

Well i think the only purpose for this unit will be to observe. But I think this is enough to make it an important unit. I just made a test map where I gave fighters radar and an operational range of 8. It's a great advantage if you can surveil a 5x5 squares wide area 8 squares away from your city/carrier. It's also a good addition to (Stealth) Bombers because you can look for enemies in their range.


I think 400 shields is very high, that's even more expensive than most wonders. I think 80 - 120 shields would be ok. I don't want to make it a city improvement because now I've started painting it as a unit. And I also think it would be unrealistic if you couldn't rebase your AWACS.

I'm done painting all 8 views of the AWACS, but without shadows and country colors. Hope somebody can help me with the crash animation...(contact me so that i can send you the pcx files, because gif has worse quality).

btw if you make a recon mission near an enemy city, and this city contains fighters which are on air superiority mission, the plane will be shot down, won't it?

 

[Headmaster]

forgot to show the NW/NE views

I'll attach the NW view, the NE view is simply mirrored.

 

[GenPatton]

Good work on the graphics. This will be a great addition to the game. I have tried my hand at the graphic editing with not so much success, but keeping pounding away. If when your finnished with this one you could do some work on a B-52 bomber that would be great. The game is missing not having an intermidiary between WWII style bomer and the Stealth Bomber.

 

[Headmaster]

I have created a new shadow for the south view. I'm also attaching pictures of the original civ3 jets so that you can compare the shadows.

About the B-52 thing... It could get a range of 8 like the stealth bomber, and a bombardment strength of 12 or higher (because I think it can do more damage than a B-2 which has to fly very high). Maybe also precision bombardment (though I don't think their strikes are very precise). And it should be much cheaper than a stealth bomber (which costs half a billion $ AFAIK)

But I don't have much time in the next days, so I'll have to concentrate on the AWACS, don't know when it'll be done.

 

[Headmaster]

forgot the damn attachment again
I always forget it when I preview my reply because you have to browse for it again afterwards.
Another thing I don't like about this forum is that you can't delete your own posts. At least you should be able to until somebody replied to your posting.

 

[Dark Sheer]

You are getting there with unit creation

 

[Headmaster]

I repainted all the shadows and am now done with them (though the diagonal shadows need a fix). Now I wanted to create a bic with my unit, just to look if it works, but had probs

Can anybody help me w/ putting the unit into the game? I tried to do it with the Cracked Editor but the AWACS doesn't appear in the game. Also, when I tried to convert the attached pcx file to flc, FLICster gave me a flc file with 4 frames only... so can NE1 please give me detailled instructions on how to add units? (or just post the URL of a good description)

 

[Scipio Africanu]

I agree that because of some of the confinements of the Civilization editor the AWACS won't be as capable a unit as they could be, but the option to add a 5 square radar visual on the map is one that will make the AWACS required for border garrison. Did I say it looks great yet? well it does. I was wondering if I could use this bad boy in my realism mod. Nice job headmaster.

About your problem, are you editing the unit32.pcx to have an icon usable for the unit? Im not sure about your problems with the FLICster, you may have to seek out Moeniier (I don't think thats how you spell it, but it's close). You might wanna try just adding one, two, or maybe three extra frames per direction so that it might include each on the finished flc, then again most air units only have one so its kind of an enigma to me. I don't have enough practice making untis and implementing them (though i'm learning) so people like Dark Sheer or MazterJo might be your best bet on this info after the FLICster creator.

 

[Dark Sheer]

I have no problem merging the pcx back into flc using Flicster

Anyway, I have merge them back for ya and I have also did some minor change to the pallete so that the shadow will show properly