I am pleased to announce the 1.0 release of the Grand Unified Flag/Shield Mod, or GUFSM (pronounced "gum" -- the F and S are silent). The GUFSM is an ongoing project headed by Birger Jarl with help from Mad King James, Iostephanos, and myself, and contributions from Trajanus, Walter Hawkwood, Txini, and St. Leo, to replace the shield and flag graphics of all the countries in Europa Universalis II with more accurate, high-quality, 24-bit renditions.
Some anticipated questions and their answers:
1. Where can I download it?
From my page: http://mozart.atpnet.com/~korath/eu2/gufsm/gufsm10.exe. Be warned -- it's a 7.6 megabyte download, and on an overloaded server with a moderately poor net connection besides. Mirrors have been kindly arranged by Ricci at his EU II site and by St. Leo at the Scenario League; any more would be greatly appreciated.
Naturally, all the usual caveats about running strange exe files downloaded from the net apply. If you're (rightfully) paranoid about such things, you can extract it with Rar 2.90 or better.
Decompress it directly into your Europa Universalis II directory. You may wish to make backups of the original graphics first.
2. Can I just download the differences between 0.2 and 1.0?
I'm afraid not. Enough of the graphics have changed since then that the incremental upgrade was nearly the size of the full download.
3. How complete is it?
The graphics for all the countries that appear in the standard game, as well as Armenia Minor, the Hanseatic League, Perm, and Salzburg, are done. Additionally, shields for the Holy Roman Empire and Minors are in the download.
4. Can I see previews of the graphics before I install it?
See these pages.
5. The flags look too bright when covered by the fog of war!
24-bit flags, unfortunately, don't get dimmed out like 8-bit flags do. There's nothing we can do other than to use 8-bit flags. This is nonpreferable, since only whites, greys, blacks, reds, and dark blues are well-represented in the flag palette. All others either can't be used at all (for example, the light blue bottom stripe of Luxembourg) or are subject to ugly dithering (for example, the green Eire flag). The good news is that the flags will at least consistently not be dimmed out.
6. Will 8-bit flags be included?
Not yet. "Soon." It'll need a new palette to do it any sort of justice, as explained above, and I'm a bit hesitant since that'll make any non-GUFSM 8-bit flags look awfully strange.
7. This flag or shield is incorrect.
If you have a better source than the ones we've found, please let us know. Almost all of our research is web-based; we're always happy to receive more accurate information. Furthermore, we were unable to find any information at all about the heraldry or vexillology of some of these countries -- or in fact discovered that they had none -- and instead based our images on some of their more important symbols, or as a last resort, used the same graphic designs as Paradox.
8. This flag or shield looks horrible!
I hope you'll phrase it less bluntly, but we are certainly open to criticism, especially when you think our graphic looks worse than the Paradox one. When you've been working on the same tricky flag or shield for a half hour or more, you're inclined to say, "Good enough" and stop; it's difficult to tell whether the remaining flaws are flaws in fact, or are only visible to the author's eye.
9. That Castille/England/Netherlands/etc flag looks awfully familiar -- did you just convert Paradox' flag to 24-bit and stamp your name on it?
The flags I personally have done are based in part on a library of geometric shapes culled from Paradox' flags, recolored and antialiased into 24-bit. To my knowledge, everyone else uses Mad King James' template as a base to start from. There are no mechanical 8-to-24-bit resamplings in the GUFSM.
10. The Burgundy and Spain/Moscow and Lithuania flags look too much alike.
We're aware of these two problems in particular (Burgundy and Spain are in fact identical, not just similar), and welcome suggestions on how to resolve them. We'd also welcome identification of any other conflicting flags.
11. I only have zip installed. Why do you use rar?
Because the mod is really, really big -- thirty-three megabytes uncompressed -- and rar compresses better. Download winrar from at http://www.rarlab.com/ -- it's completely free for the first forty days, and still useable (though nagware) afterwards.
12. What's new in version 1.0?
New Shields: Chimú, Columbia, Creek, Fez, Gujarat, Hanseatic League, Huron, Lenape, Malwa, Mataram, Minors, Mysore, Natives, Navaho, Nubia, Orissa, Pegu, Rebel Scum, Shawnee, Songhai, Union of Kalmar, Vijayanagar, and Zapotec.
Updated Shields: Just about all of the rest.
New Flags: Bohemia, Bosnia, Burgundy, Chimú, Creek, Croatia, Duchy of Athens, Fez, Hanseatic League, Hessen, Huron, Kongo, Lenape, Magdeburg, Malacca, Malwa, Mataram, Mysore, Natives, Navaho, Norway, Nubia, Orissa, Pegu, Pskov, Rebel Scum, Salzburg, Shawnee, Songhai, Union of Kalmar, United States, Vijayanagar, Zanj, and Zapotec.
Updated flags: Albania, Aragon, Ashanti, Baden, Brabant, Brandenburg, Catalunya, Courland, Denmark, England, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Genoa, Great Britain, Hannover, Helbetia, Hellas, Hungary, Inca Empire, Iran, Kazan, Lithuania, Münster, Makassar, Milan, Moldavia, Muscowy, Navarra, Provence, Royalists, Russia, Ryazan, Scotland, Serbia, Siebenbürgen, Siena, Strassburg, Tuscany, Tver, Ukraine, Würzburg, Wales, Wallachia, and Wurtemberg.
13. If Birger Jarl's in charge now, how come you're doing the announcing?
Because he's going to be in Thailand and environs for the next several months, and there were a few minor issues left to deal with when he left.
14. Can I help?
Please! We can use aid in research, mirrors (as mentioned above), and the actual graphics. You can find links to and instructions for Mad King James' shield and flag templates in the stickied threads in the Graphics Forum.
Some anticipated questions and their answers:
1. Where can I download it?
From my page: http://mozart.atpnet.com/~korath/eu2/gufsm/gufsm10.exe. Be warned -- it's a 7.6 megabyte download, and on an overloaded server with a moderately poor net connection besides. Mirrors have been kindly arranged by Ricci at his EU II site and by St. Leo at the Scenario League; any more would be greatly appreciated.
Naturally, all the usual caveats about running strange exe files downloaded from the net apply. If you're (rightfully) paranoid about such things, you can extract it with Rar 2.90 or better.
Decompress it directly into your Europa Universalis II directory. You may wish to make backups of the original graphics first.
2. Can I just download the differences between 0.2 and 1.0?
I'm afraid not. Enough of the graphics have changed since then that the incremental upgrade was nearly the size of the full download.
3. How complete is it?
The graphics for all the countries that appear in the standard game, as well as Armenia Minor, the Hanseatic League, Perm, and Salzburg, are done. Additionally, shields for the Holy Roman Empire and Minors are in the download.
4. Can I see previews of the graphics before I install it?
See these pages.
5. The flags look too bright when covered by the fog of war!
24-bit flags, unfortunately, don't get dimmed out like 8-bit flags do. There's nothing we can do other than to use 8-bit flags. This is nonpreferable, since only whites, greys, blacks, reds, and dark blues are well-represented in the flag palette. All others either can't be used at all (for example, the light blue bottom stripe of Luxembourg) or are subject to ugly dithering (for example, the green Eire flag). The good news is that the flags will at least consistently not be dimmed out.
6. Will 8-bit flags be included?
Not yet. "Soon." It'll need a new palette to do it any sort of justice, as explained above, and I'm a bit hesitant since that'll make any non-GUFSM 8-bit flags look awfully strange.
7. This flag or shield is incorrect.
If you have a better source than the ones we've found, please let us know. Almost all of our research is web-based; we're always happy to receive more accurate information. Furthermore, we were unable to find any information at all about the heraldry or vexillology of some of these countries -- or in fact discovered that they had none -- and instead based our images on some of their more important symbols, or as a last resort, used the same graphic designs as Paradox.
8. This flag or shield looks horrible!
I hope you'll phrase it less bluntly
, but we are certainly open to criticism, especially when you think our graphic looks worse than the Paradox one. When you've been working on the same tricky flag or shield for a half hour or more, you're inclined to say, "Good enough" and stop; it's difficult to tell whether the remaining flaws are flaws in fact, or are only visible to the author's eye.9. That Castille/England/Netherlands/etc flag looks awfully familiar -- did you just convert Paradox' flag to 24-bit and stamp your name on it?
The flags I personally have done are based in part on a library of geometric shapes culled from Paradox' flags, recolored and antialiased into 24-bit. To my knowledge, everyone else uses Mad King James' template as a base to start from. There are no mechanical 8-to-24-bit resamplings in the GUFSM.
10. The Burgundy and Spain/Moscow and Lithuania flags look too much alike.
We're aware of these two problems in particular (Burgundy and Spain are in fact identical, not just similar), and welcome suggestions on how to resolve them. We'd also welcome identification of any other conflicting flags.
11. I only have zip installed. Why do you use rar?
Because the mod is really, really big -- thirty-three megabytes uncompressed -- and rar compresses better. Download winrar from at http://www.rarlab.com/ -- it's completely free for the first forty days, and still useable (though nagware) afterwards.
12. What's new in version 1.0?
New Shields: Chimú, Columbia, Creek, Fez, Gujarat, Hanseatic League, Huron, Lenape, Malwa, Mataram, Minors, Mysore, Natives, Navaho, Nubia, Orissa, Pegu, Rebel Scum, Shawnee, Songhai, Union of Kalmar, Vijayanagar, and Zapotec.
Updated Shields: Just about all of the rest.
New Flags: Bohemia, Bosnia, Burgundy, Chimú, Creek, Croatia, Duchy of Athens, Fez, Hanseatic League, Hessen, Huron, Kongo, Lenape, Magdeburg, Malacca, Malwa, Mataram, Mysore, Natives, Navaho, Norway, Nubia, Orissa, Pegu, Pskov, Rebel Scum, Salzburg, Shawnee, Songhai, Union of Kalmar, United States, Vijayanagar, Zanj, and Zapotec.
Updated flags: Albania, Aragon, Ashanti, Baden, Brabant, Brandenburg, Catalunya, Courland, Denmark, England, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Genoa, Great Britain, Hannover, Helbetia, Hellas, Hungary, Inca Empire, Iran, Kazan, Lithuania, Münster, Makassar, Milan, Moldavia, Muscowy, Navarra, Provence, Royalists, Russia, Ryazan, Scotland, Serbia, Siebenbürgen, Siena, Strassburg, Tuscany, Tver, Ukraine, Würzburg, Wales, Wallachia, and Wurtemberg.
13. If Birger Jarl's in charge now, how come you're doing the announcing?
Because he's going to be in Thailand and environs for the next several months, and there were a few minor issues left to deal with when he left.
14. Can I help?
Please! We can use aid in research, mirrors (as mentioned above), and the actual graphics. You can find links to and instructions for Mad King James' shield and flag templates in the stickied threads in the Graphics Forum.
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