Spaceship Parts Graphical Overlay Order

[tom2050]

Might be useful to someone who is creating a new spaceship screen. Knowing how the graphics overlay over one-another is helpful when laying out the graphic design.

Each graphical piece of the spaceship (22 PCX's) appear either on top of other pieces, or below them graphically.

From Top (graphics show on top) to Bottom (graphics show underneath):
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Piece 5 - cap_top.pcx
Piece 1 - thruster_top.pcx
Piece 5 - fuelcells_top.pcx
Piece 10 - casing all.pcx
Piece 10* - casing_back_topB.pcx
Piece 10* - casing_back_topA.pcx
Piece 4 - cockpit.pcx
Piece 9 - partylounge.pcx
Piece 8 - storage.pcx
Piece 3 - dockingbay.pcx
Piece 7 - statis.pcx
Piece 10* - (Might be LOWER) casing_back_bottom.pcx
Piece 6 - lifesupport.pcx
Piece 2 - engine.pcx
Piece 5 - cap_bottom.pcx
Piece 1 - Thrusters_bottom.pcx
Piece 5 - fuelcells_bottom.pcx

Reference of SS Parts / Piece #'s

Spoiler :

Piece 1 - SS Thrusters
Piece 2 - SS Engine
Piece 3 - SS Docking Bay
Piece 4 - SS Cockpit
Piece 5 - SS Fuel Cells
Piece 6 - SS Life Support System
Piece 7 - SS Stasis Chamber
Piece 8 - SS Storage/Supply
Piece 9 - SS Planetary Party Lounge
Piece 10 - SS Exterior Casing

* Testing in DEBUG mode; pieces only appeared when ship was ready to be launched; pieces built in order 1-10.

Obviously there is only 17 graphics here, out of 22 total.
The ones missing are:
casing_back_top.pcx
casing_front.pcx
thrusters_and_cells_bottom.pcx
thrusters_and_cells_top.pcx
ship_all.pcx (probably on Top as complete overlay)

The other missing pieces may appear when you move your cursor over them at certain times, or when you select an unbuilt component.

 

[Pounder]

This is something I've wondered about, but I usually play with only Conquest Victory turned on, so I probably won't make a new spaceship or equivalent.

Always nice to have the info.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Thanks for your research, tom2050. When we started work on the Time Machine I didn't consider overlapping graphics. Knowing this will help a lot.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I have some good news for you. Remember that I said before that with C3C, it defaulted to the standard space victory movie if you use exactly 10 spaceship parts?

I tested the situation out this afternoon with my copy of Civ III Complete, and it goes to whatever victory movie you've installed!!

 

[tom2050]

I almost decided not to do it! Then, I figured what the heck, so I just tried making one yesterday, which took forever, because some setting made the BIK keep coming out with no sound, but finally figured it out. And yep indeed it worked! I'm happy!

 

[MeteorPunch]

Tom, could you post your settings somewhere?

I found this site, Bink Video!, which has a great lightweight, free .bik video converter here: RAD Video Tools.

 

[tom2050]

Yea, that's what I used. Settings were the default settings actually. Like here:

Only thing you might do is adjust default settings if you want to try to make the BIK smaller in size, but you'll lose quality as well. Long videos can get huge quick.

Spoiler :

Used Default settings here. Video came out great.

Also, to point out, if you get no sound in the final BIK (such as I initially did); my problem was I was converting an AVI to a BIK, and the AVI was encoded with a sound format that Rad Tools didn't like. I had to re-encode the AVI to use a different audio codec. And then it worked.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Good stuff, thanks.