Trouble with PCX for tech chooser icons

[robotlincoln]

I've made some tech chooser icons with ChatGPT that I'm pretty happy with, and I'm using GIMP to convert the files to .pcx format, but the icons are showing up as black boxes when I try to use them. They have the right dimensions, but I don't know if there are other parameters that need to be met for them to be readable. Does anyone know a fix?

 

[robotlincoln]

Including some of the .pcx files here for reference.

 

[Bralvodrenak]

(comment number 6)

Open the image in GIMP, go to Image > Mode > Indexed, set the number of color slots to 254, then export the image as a .pcx file.

 

[Civinator]

I don´t use Gimp, but PSP 7. The reason for "black boxes" mostly is, that the image still has 16 mio colours instead of 256 colours, so in a first step the colours must be reduced to 256 and in a second step the correct colour slots in a palette must be set to transparency, for PSP 7 the last slot must be set to magenta and the slot before the last slot to "poison-green".

When downloading your cavalry large example, the colours of the image still are 16mio colours and not the needed 256 colours - and than the next step for setting transparency must follow edit: may be as written in the post above by Gimp (that I don´t use).

 

[register]

Your images need to be in Indexed mode, and you also need to add one pink color and one green color, then rearrange them the same way I did for you. Blue Monkey made a tutorial on how to create a proper palette in GIMP.

[REFERENCE] Thread 'Working with PCX Palettes in GIMP'

Jul 28, 2017

Working with PCX Palettes in GIMP​

GIMP can be confusing about how to work with indexed colors as needed for C3 pcx files. Terminology is not necessarily consistent. Different parts of the process are in completely different menus. Here are some general explanations. There's a summary of the process at the bottom of the post.

This post is only about pcx – the static files such as civilopedia icons, terrain, and so on. Other types of files - such as unit animations - use a very different palette arrangement. Someone else (Vuldacon iirc) has written very detailed explanations of...

• Blue Monkey
• Replies: 16
• Forum: Civ3 - Tutorials, Reference, & Guides

• 

 

[Bralvodrenak]

you don't need green and magenta in the palette for these images, it works with with 254 colors. here is a tutorial in gimp on how to do it.

Step 1. Open the image in gimp and scale it up to for example 150 X 150. by, Go to Image > Scale Image. Paint it with full magenta (RGB 255,0,255) or green (RGB 0,255,0).

Not like this, so you don't get mixed magenta and green.

Paint it fully with magenta then copy paste over your 128X128 image. Then select a square on magenta (hotkey R) and paint it fully with green (RGB 0,255,0).

Not like in the next image, but fully green.

Like this.

Now make the palette by, Go to Image > Mode > Indexed and select 256 colors, press convert.

The palette will appear in right corner, if it doesn't appear, open it by, Go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs >Colormap.

Now you need to rearrange magenta and green to the last two slots on the palette. Right click on the palette and and select Rearrange Colormap. Then select magenta and drag it to the last slot on the palette and green to the before last slot.

Like this.

Now scale down the image back to 128X128, by, Go to Image > Scale Image

Now select your initial image and copy paste it over the image with the palette.

Now export it by, Go to File > Export As..., and manually change the file extension to the .pcx. Save as will not work, you have to export as..., in Gimp.

 

[robotlincoln]

Thanks, figured it out and it's working. Posting the results in case anyone wants to use them.

 

[robotlincoln]

Continued

 

[Bralvodrenak]

A faster way to make a palette in Gimp. Convert an image to 254 colors, open the palette, Go to Windows > Dockable Dialogs >Colormap. Then add two new slots by pressing plus button and manually select green and magenta. i didn't think of that before.

 

[robotlincoln]

That approach makes sense. The way I worked it out was just to have ChatGPT generate a frame with each image, open each image in Paint and paint part of the frame green and magenta, then open it in GIMP and convert to 256, then extract the image from the frame by just copy-pasting. Pretty happy with the results.

 

[robotlincoln]

There's something about the cartoonish, computer-generated, generic quality of them that fits with Civ3's visual language. I think if I saw these images in an advertisement or somewhere else I'd be kind of averse, but here they work.