Returning to FINISH the project

[zweihander]

btw I have to find the MTW font to add names.

Is it this file?
https://forums.totalwar.org/mizu/miz...alFontPack.zip

[Stazi]

Is it this file?
https://forums.totalwar.org/mizu/miz...alFontPack.zip

Thanks. I forgot about this pack. Anyway, I've found nearly identical font for campaign map called Livingstone.

[Stazi]

Some of my old findings which maybe you are not aware of.

Game engine can use not only 256x256 and 512x512 textures but 1024x1024 too. What does it mean? We can have 4 times more detailed, less pixeleted units or we can quadruple the amont of units. Each unit folder can be used for 4 totally different unit graphics, not only with different shields and weapons. Example:



As you can see the image contains 3 types of mounts (camel, warg and ring-wraith horse), all of them functioning in game as default camel (-4 attack to all horse based cavalry). They are declared in UNIT_PROD_FILE like this:

1
2
48

Camel
MOUNT
CAMEL, NO, YES

Warg
MOUNT
CAMEL, NO, YES

RingWraithHorse
MOUNT
CAMEL, NO, YES

To make them look different in game we have to add appropriate frame coordinates in ..Textures\Men\ActionsPage\ - modify Camel.txt and add Warg.txt and RingWraithHorse.txt. Coordinates can be easily tuned with ReadBIF 2.3c editor (Excel helps too). Similar procedure works for all units, not only mounts.

BUT this method has disadvantages. Units are 4 times smaller than normal units (half hight, half width). It can be partially countered by SCALE factor (24th column in gnome editor) but SCALE works in 0-225 range. Units set to 225 still lacks about 20-30% of their size comparing to old ones. So, you have to reduce the scale of old units to match the new ones or rework all of them to 1024x1024 textures. IMHO in MTW, units' are a bit too big comparing to castles/buildings so small reduction won't hurt.

That's all for now. If I find somethings else I will post it in this topic.

[zweihander]

This is an important and useful discovery!

Question: To a bif which size is 512x512, in the ActionPage file, 1 represent 2 pixels. Now, if a bif is 1024x1024, is it means that in the ActionPage file, 1 will represent 4 pixels?

And I am thinking of another disadvantage of this method: there are only 256 colours in one BIF file, if you put 4 units into one BIF, that mean the colour quality need to be reduce.

[Stazi]

This is an important and useful discovery!

Question: To a bif which size is 512x512, in the ActionPage file, 1 represent 2 pixels. Now, if a bif is 1024x1024, is it means that in the ActionPage file, 1 will represent 4 pixels?

Yes.

And I am thinking of another disadvantage of this method: there are only 256 colours in one BIF file, if you put 4 units into one BIF, that mean the colour quality need to be reduce.

Unfortunately, yes but it's not a big issue. Here, check the camel comparison.

On the left original camel bif using about 240 colors, on the right camel using exactly 50 colors (including background and shadow). While difference is noticeable (especially zoomed), during a battle and from a distance, its really hard to see those differences. Additionally, it's quite a big frame (110x110) so it contains relatively lot of pixels. Human soldier frames are smaller and need even less pixels and colors. So, we can easily put 4 units, 50 colors each, into one texture and we'll still have 56 colors reserve for faction coloring (31 colors), shadow, background, etc. If we use faction coloring (those pinks and greens) it even further reduce the amount of normal colors needed for the image. And, on the top of that, you can choose units using similar colors (for a single 1012x1024 texture) to effectively nullify the problem.

[cegorach]

Every day a new wonder. Never before the mod had so dedicated suporters. Thank you again.

I'd rather have more graphics than more detailed ones.

If we could throw all mounts into one file it could save a lot of useful space without any risk of CTDs cause by some graphics when added factions somehow manage to take them (almost alway through bribary).