Gah! Unit Textures!

[ULC]

I have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried...and I still can't get my Unit textures to work, period . I have already looked in the Repository, the guide there wasn't much of a help. I realy need new unit textures for many units. Can anyone help? I need a generic unit for the Germans/Steppe/Slavic with leather lamellar armor (mounted and unmounted, wields sword/spear/axe/bow), a mounted unit in scale mail, a redone PesTunic for levies (must be able to wield spear/sword/axe and have shield) that looks like the Info pic for Woodsmen/Archer, an infantry with tunic style chain mail, metal epulates/guantlets, greaves, and helmet, a general redoing of shields (early unit have a small round shield, alter units use a kite) and weapons, etc. I can't think of all the changes right now, but I have done all of these, but none of them work! Please Help!

[cegorach]

If you are good at drawing and patient it will be rather easy to make all the changes you want - all with old, rusty windows paint and readbif - thse are all tools you will really need.

I can describe what to do - step by step, but doing any real work for now is out of the question ( I am quite busy..., besides if you learn you will realise how many possibilities there are...

[ULC]

Please do! I keeping CTDing when I use mine.

[cegorach]

I will write more tomorrow, but for now the basics...



You will need the readbif and something to draw - that is basically all what is necessary.


NOW - the images must be drawn using 256 colour palette - certain colours are more important of course and you will need to reserve one place for the colour of the background (the invisible one).

You need to remember too that certain shades of green will appear in the game as primary faction colour (as defined in the txt campmap files) and certain 'pinks' will make secondary faction colours - that is quite useful for obvious reasons.



I suggest to launch the readbif and open any of the .bif files in Textures/Men to look how it works and what colour is really defined as the shade of the background, same with the 'universal' pinks and greens.

Second question - it is the size of the drawing - it cannot be larger than 512 for 512 to work correctly in the game.

There are usually two different bif files in each animation folder - one with _H (larger and more detailed drawings - size 512 for 512) and the second one with less detailed pictures ( 256 x 256) - BOTH MUST be present in any given folder, though not necessarily of different sizes. A good graphic card (for obsolete models) will hand the animations even if they will all use the detailed .bifs in large numbers, but that will be your choice.


Third thing to remember is the fact that EACH bif file consists of 12 layers ( FRAMES) - it can be smaller to work well, but the more of those there are the more complicated moves/actions each model can perform.


I suggest to open a bif file now and skip from one frame to another using the tool.

To see how complicated it is to make a good animation I suggest to use the option to extract all frames ( file) somewhere - you will receive 12 different .bmp 256 drawings as a result.




So in general - each picture must use 256 colour bmp files no larger than 512 x 512 pixels - all banded together in 12 (or smaller) layer deep .bif files - 2 for each animation folder.


Of course now it is obvious that each image has 12 phases and only thanks to this fact it is possible to see any action except 'sliding' all the way without any moves at all.

It is little different from a TV cartoon - and extremely flexible too.





You will aslo notice that cavalry do not usually (not in the vanilla) appear with their mounts which is defined by other set of animation elsewhere.







Moves/actions of every model are directed by the set of coordinates placed in ActionPage folder - each and every unit MUST have its own set of coordinates to work at all.

Each action set sees a short description before - there is a number of those - all define a certain action like running, marching, shooting etc.



Each line is responsible for defining the exact place which the action uses. Each action needs four lines to define it, because there are 4 different 'views' from which a model is seen on the battlefiled - from behind, slightly from behind, from its side and from the front.


BUt why there are SIX numbers in each line ?

Well - each is divided into two pairs, second and 3rd are responsible for defining two coordinates which describe the area of the picture which will be used to show the model from the back/almost back/side/front view.

Second defines the upper-left one and the third is for the lower-right.

First pair is generally useful only for the cavalry - it defines how 'ddep' the model will be seen compared to a steed it rides and how high over it it will appear - if you are not lucky you can see your cavalry 'hovering' over their horses or literally merged with the steeds altogether.

Now I suggest to open a crusader file to search for a unit you would see using its coorinates from its own ActionPage file.

Find one, open the .bif file (one of two) it uses and now use the option from the special mode - namely load anime rect. - browse to the ActionPage folder and open the txt file governing the animations of the chosen unit.


You should see the rectangles, the coorinates defining the area of each picture for a certain view, from a certain side.


Now you can skip through various frames to see how the unit will act in certain rectangle/set of coordinates - now that is exactly why tere are more than one frames/layers used for the animations.






That is the very basics you will need to remember and test somehow before we can really proceed further. If you already know it I can write more tomorrow.