Problem giving Italy new Army-sprite

[Ayeshteni]

Problem with a minor db change ;p

Problem is how to give a country an existing armysprite that already exists in the db files and has absolutely nothing to do with the graphical construction of said sprites. Any help here guys? Or is there nowt wrong?


Ok.

decided to give Italy a new army sprite, rather than the bog-standard MIN one.

Have no talent in making sprites, so I had a look through vanilla GC unit sprites to see if any seemed appropriate.

L2 Russian was ideal, burgeonet helmet and green livery with flashes of red! brilliant. As I use Mad King James' russian sprites for my GC I could not just change the armysprite tag in country.csv to RUS.

so heres the thing.
I copied all the vanilla GC Russian bitmap sprites and bit files and renamed the 'RUS' part of tag to 'ITA' and put them in my GC moddir folder. Italian entry in country.csv I changed the MIN armysprite tag to ITA.

Saved.

Loaded up my game hoping to see the new armysprites.......found they were the usual bog-standard ones!

Searched through the savefile to see if it has any reference to what army sprite to use in that and found none.

So, why does the new sprites not show up? am I missing something? Is it hardcoded what tags can have sprites (i.e. you cant just make new ones?)

I am puzzled. I am trying to remember what files MKJ included in his files, I am sure you just need to have the unit bitmaps and bit files and change the entry in country.csv

do I need to start the game from scratch again to get them?

yours
Ayeshteni

 

[Havard]

Did you also copy/edit/rename the corresponding *.spr files?

 

[Kasperus]

SPR's and unit bitmaps don't seem to work in moddir (or at least the game always seems to read only from the standard folder), we have had that issue at least with our scenario. The best solution if you don't want to overwrite any files is to create separate SPR files in your standard folder for a tag that is as yet unused for unit graphics (most are not used anyway), point in there to the bitmaps you want to use and change in country.csv to the chosen tag (country.csv you can moddir out so nothing gets overwritten).

 

[Kasperus]

A small rectification of the previous statement:
SPR-files and unit-bitmaps DO work in moddir but only if there is already a file of the same name in the standard folder. Iow if you want to post SPR's for England in moddir it will work as the ENG tag was used in standard folder but as ITA tag was not used in the standard folder moddir has nothing to 'mod around'
Quite logical if you tink about it Further my advice remains the same.

 

[Ayeshteni]

OK, so I just put the ITA bitmaps and bit files in the main folder as well?

Did you also copy/edit/rename the corresponding *.spr files?

Is this the files in the GFX/UNITS folder?
yours
Ayeshteni

 

[Ayeshteni]

A small rectification of the previous statement:
SPR-files and unit-bitmaps DO work in moddir but only if there is already a file of the same name in the standard folder. Iow if you want to post SPR's for England in moddir it will work as the ENG tag was used in standard folder but as ITA tag was not used in the standard folder moddir has nothing to 'mod around'
Quite logical if you tink about it Further my advice remains the same.

well I am halfway there. I copied all of the ITA sprites (copies of the original RUS ones at the mo) from my moddir folder into the vanilla GC one (so there is something to mod around).

Now I get a grainy semi-distinct image that flashes regularily on the screen. Both .bmp and .spr files have been included. Why is it not working properly? the sprites are just copies of original RUS ones, renamed ITA and placed in the moddir (and now) original GFX/units folders

no wonder there is little sprite making going on, if a simple duplication of originals cause these probs.

help
yours
Ayeshteni

 

[Kasperus]

hmm, this sounds weird indeed... you have not changed the names of the bitmaps or if you did you did change also these names in the corresponding SPR-files I assume? And you did not modify the files in any other way? If not then it should work, otherwise maybe try another tag? To be honest I don't know, it also on time works for me very well, otherwise not (so my last unit, a hussar for Poland converted from civ3 does flicker like idiot only and I cannot find the cause - other units worked with no problem here).
How does that flickering look btw? Is it just the standard unit which flickers or are also all the colours including background changed? The unit at least should be still visible in some form, otherwise you must have made mistakes with the names.

 

[Mad King James]

Ooookay here we go

First off this is how sprites work in most games that use them; there is a single image file that contains a sequence of images that are loaded in game via a reference file that says how big each image is. In the EU engine's case, this is a continuous line.

EU also picks apart a filename for additional information in the sprite reference file.

Now lets look at a spr file.

Sprite = {
	Bitmap = "T-ARMY C-ALI A-WALK L-1 D-SE.bmp"
	Origin = { x = 8 y = 35 }
	Frames = 11
	Palette = "Armypalette 1.bmp"
	Speed = 6
}

The T-ARMY refers to the sprite type, in this case, it's an army sprite
The C-ALI is the country, in this case, the Aliens
A-WALK refers to the animation, in this case walking
L-1 is the level (1 for medieval, 2 for muskets, 3 for 18th century, 4 for 19th century, but in truth you can have as many levels as you want)
D-SE is the direction of the WALK animation, in this case, southeast.

the Origin is where to put the center offset, so it looks like the sprite is sitting in the right place.

Frames is how many frames of animation
Palette is the palette file for the animation, since it's 256 colours
and finally speed is how fast to play the animation.

So ALL you have to do is rename the C-RUS to C-ITA in all the filenames and copy them to their respective folders, and set MIN to ITA in the country.csv and you're good to go.

 

[Ayeshteni]

So ALL you have to do is rename the C-RUS to C-ITA in all the filenames and copy them to their respective folders, and set MIN to ITA in the country.csv and you're good to go.

Which is what I have done (in fact it is the only thing I have done), that is what is puzzling.

What I did....

Copied the RUS bmp's and RUS spr's.
Pasted them back into folder
renamed the 'Copy of yada RUS yada' to 'yada ITA yada' (I knew about the levels and army/country whatnots)
changed ITA entry in country.csv to ITA not MIN (the correct MIN as well)
and sans viola

@Kasperus.
at your advice placed these units in standard GFX folder as well as moddir folder. There is no graphic alteration. The only alteration being 'ITA' to 'RUS'.
IIRC it is only the image of the soldier which flickers constantly. As I said the image is grainy.

yours, puzzled
Ayeshteni

 

[Mad King James]

Oh wait, did you change the RUS entry referencing the graphic INSIDE the .SPR file?

 

[Ayeshteni]

Oh wait, did you change the RUS entry referencing the graphic INSIDE the .SPR file?

*blink, blink, blink*
Hmm I think we have hit the jackpot.

The answer there is no. Do I open the .spr files with a text editor and change the RUS entry with ITA? I will try that and get back to you.

yours
Ayeshhteni

 

[Ayeshteni]

Bingo, they now work a dream.

Sorry MKJ, serves me right for not reading your post properly earlier. o

Thanks guys for all the help. Thats something new I have learned about modding in this game. Who says you cant teach an old dog new tricks?

*mutters to self* now all I have to do is change the ITA L1 from the russian one to the starting portugese.

WAHOO more work.
yours
Ayeshteni