Smilies Offer

[Buster's Uncle]

So I been on a forum graphics kick lately, prettying-up Apolyton and my own place, AC2. Packaging/appearance matters to member happiness. It matters to drawing new signups. The health of the other forums in the community matters to AC2, as growing the community ultimately tends to grow us.

So the occasional forum goodie dispensed, like a smilie, is gravy to raising member happiness/drawing new members.


-And I notice that CFC ain't got nothin' to speak of in the way of on-topic smilies. Civ 5? Ptooey! I spit upon 5 from a height!

So here's a little something I been up to at 'Poly the last ten days, and in progress:

-Screenies reduced a reasonable bit for display.

And because none of the animations show:

And I also humbly submit these two for the Space Cadets of CFC:

-and this one because so cool->

-and this one because Star Trek rocks so hard ->

-Now, if you gentlemen would be interested, what would you need from me? .zips of the II and 6 sets? They're almost all over the usual size, so I could be talked into doing some reductions --- and since I'm submitting 245 smilies, I'd be willing to puzzle out the drudgework of installing, given access...

So? Interested?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Thanks for your efforts, looks very cool - I think this would be up to @Thunderfall to progress.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

...Well, the main work is already done, and it's in everyone's best interest to share - in the meanwhile, I've reduced this

to something a bit more reasonable...

 

[Thunderfall]

Thanks for the offer, Buster's Uncle! I think we currently have some of them (such as civ2 units) as avatars but not smilies.

Could you attach them to a post? I am open to adding them to the forums as smilies.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Okeydoke. Take a few minutes to make some .zip files - I don't have the sets in their own folders.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'll get the Civ II after lunch - the 6 was littered w/ irrelevant 'Poly comedy smilies, which took a lot longer than the rest should.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Also? The shadow on the dude in your logo in Modern CFC theme is going the wrong way - he's lit from that side. I'll see if I can dig up a corrected version I made when I get back...

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Here's Olaf w/ the shadow fixed...

See? Lighting agrees now.

-It'll look better against the browner pagetop background. The whitish aura really is there.


...Back shortly w/ the II smilies...

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Now, I'd make a recommendation about smilie code format - start with a semicolon and keep it short and lowercase. Bracketing between colons makes it awkward to type twice over. -Thus, the code at Poly for the Civ II Fanatic smilie is ";cfc". That much less work for the end user once they get used to the difference.

Any place I've slipped and included more than one version of a smilie, it's usually same name w/ a numeral added at the end - use the highest #, of course. One exception is the city screen citizen heads - there I used filenames like "AncientContent.png" and "AncientContent2.png"; you'll want both. I mostly used filenames that'll be a great help keeping track of what's what and what to call them in the hovertext. -But this was all for my own use, and no refunds where jokes crept in; I had a page open in Civpedia for days while I worked through the units.


And hey - there's some left to add in the 6 set -and a lot of that I cut out of backgrounds a pixel at a time, you're welcome- and considerable to go for Civ II. I'll be back in the future w/ more...

 

[Buster's Uncle]

TF, you'll wanna wait about the cities in the .zip I posted. I've renamed those files in the follow-up .zip I'm assembling as I work through more Civ II images, to go with the smaller cities in each series - it'll make more sense when you're going through a LOT of files...


I think I left in tiny x20 versions of the first five units - you can judge for yourself if they're worth anything THAT small. They look pretty much like themselves; the quality hit is not as bad as I'd feared.

-Awful tiny, though. There's a certain primitive glory one has come to associate w/ II, when you can make out the individual pixels...

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Thunder, I'd note that if Xenoforo has a numbering scheme like vB does, for ordering smilies in a category, when dealing with large sets like these, you'd be well-served to always leave large gaps in the assigned #s as you go from type to type of smilie thing -like units to terrain to citizens- it'll save you work later, should you decide to change order, or something overlooked pops up...

 

[Recursive]

Moderator Action: Several posts edited; please keep offsite personal drama/conflicts off of the forum and stick to the thread topic.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I note w/ wry amusement that the II .zip is getting the view love - none at all for 6 so far.


...I should also note that I have modest SMACX and BE sets I could offer.

If I had some screenshots supplied, I suppose I could take requests for 10 or so units -or whatever people want- for 4 and 5. 4, at least, ought to be represented...

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Honestly I'm amazed nobody thought of this before. Definitely support.

-and this one because so cool->

I remember this guy!

 

[Birdjaguar]

I like more smilie choices.

 

[Takhisis]

So, if we're talking about more smileys, can we finally have some essential ones added?

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Which essential ones? I might already have what you need in my collection - or can surely make it. -Installation at the discretion of the management, of course.

I guess I could set up in OT and take requests, it being up to the membership to @Thunderfall and try to talk him into any particular thing...

---

I think I've mined all the useful Civ II sprites...

-That seems to be 260 of them.

In addition to all the new II smilies, the new .zip has three subfolders -
-ramdom cool, just a few I threw in while I was assembling the rest for little reason but I like them, folder named by fat fingers.
-SMACX, leaderheads of all 14, cute animations of the Original Seven, and six units.
-And BE, w/ 12 leaderheads, Harmony, Purity and Supremacy symbols, the window, the platform, the ARC plaque, a boat, three soldiers and the Health and Unhealth symbols I animated.


Civ 6, I'll have more to add soon, but I doubt it'll be a lot. -For one thing, I got a working copy of CivII "as research", and started a game "as research", and right now "research" is seriously distracting me from most anything else...

 

[Takhisis]

Which essential ones?

Facepalm and bow as they have over at totalwar.org, among other examples we've been requesting for years but there's always been a policy of ‘no smileys added whatsoever’ which Thunderfall's recent words would point to changing.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Buster's Uncle I believe that TF is mulling all these great additions over. Is there a particular group that is less civ and more OT oriented?

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh, I've got a million. I've been knocking these out since sometime in 2009. In addition to the four in the OP, here's a few from the 20 in the 'rambom' subfolder in the of todays .zip:

- another being a version of popcorn that I fixed the animation and optimized the file.

I don't find a facepalm smilie in a cursory search - let's see how long it takes me to make one from scratch...