WARNING: NEW GUY

[Dr. Wonderful]

I don't turn the score screen on anyway...

 

So, I can't get icons to show, still. I looked at the Chem Tank icon and I am absolutely positively sure it is in the temperat palette.

[Kilkakon]

Is it in a sc*.mix file? Have the right filename? With the .tem extension?

[Dr. Wonderful]

TEM!!! Wholly cheese, I created this simple icon in the SHP builder. It needs to end in .tem?!

 

Also, I want to see if there is a better graphics editor out there.

 

:mad: This silly thing wont let me post shp files!

[Nyerguds]

As the shp editing guide says, a shp file isn't "in" a certain palette; it doesn't contain colours. It is just meant for a palette. Since C&C colour palettes are all the same except for an area of about 64 colours for terrain (the blue crossed-out ones at the top) and another 31 for shadow (at the bottom), yes, the icon will still look mostly OK even when viewed in the wrong palette. But if you take a look at the icon with the desert and with the temperate palette, you'll see it looks right in one of them, and weird colour pixels pop up in the other.

 

As for attaching shp files, just zip them.

 

And, yes, extensions aren't a file type related thing in C&C; pretty much everything related to one theater gets an extension of that theater, no matter the file type. Similarly, the game uses v00/v01/v02/v03 extensions for assigning AUD files to specific voice sets (v00/v02 are the two distinct vehicle voice sets, and v01/v03 are the infantry ones.)

[Dr. Wonderful]

Yep, it worked. By solving that one, here's another: I can't open the title screen or edit it.

 

Oh, yes, and how can I convet gif files to shp files.

:mammoth: 

[Dr. Wonderful]

Oh yes, and were do I find the ownership and such. What file are they in? What do you need to edit them? How's your mom doing?

[Nyerguds]

Ownership is a bit of an annoying thing to edit...

 

The docs of C&C95 UGE should have some info on them (it's possible those aren't all in the version I linked to. I seem to remember there being more docs in the older version), but it's one of those things that's just way handier to see in hexadecimal... well, in pure binary, actually. Like prerequisites, they're bit switches. Meaning, you have a value of 32 bits (4 bytes), and each bit in that is one owner (or prerequisite building).

 

So if you have nothing owning it, your bits start off as all empty:

[0000 0000] [0000 0000] [0000 0000] [0000 0000]

(each [ ] block is 1 byte)

 

Now, the different Houses are GoodGuy, BadGuy, Neutral, Special, Multi1, Multi2, Multi3, Multi4, Multi5 and Multi6. Goodguy is the lowest, so their bits are:

[–––– ––––] [–––– ––––] [–––– ––65] [4321 SNBG]

As you see, the two highest bytes aren't actually used, for ownership.

 

Now you'll see in practice that most units have all multi-sides all enabled, because the units are usable in multiplay. But, ignoring that for a moment, if you'd want a unit buildable by just GDI and Nod, the value would become

 

[0000 0000] [0000 0000] [0000 0000] [0000 0011] = 3

With the multi-Houses included:

[0000 0000] [0000 0000] [0000 0011] [1111 0011] = 000003F3 in hexadecimal, or 1011 in plain normal decimal. Since the order of bytes for multi-byte values get reversed inside the exe, the actual bytes you'd see for that are "F3 03 00 00"

 

The Windows calculator, when set to "programmer" mode, has a simple converter for this stuff.

[Dr. Wonderful]

Cool. What are the rest of the bits for? Prerequisites?

Also,

how do I load me custom title screen into the game?

[Nyerguds]

-Save as 256-color pcx

-Check lang_eng.ini for the title screen file names

-Rename to the correct name and put in the game folder.

 

And if the menu doesn't look right... I suggest you dig into palette editing and figure out how to correctly change the colors that are needed for the menu while still retaining your custom image.

 

Cool. What are the rest of the bits for? Prerequisites?

The rest of the bits in the value for owners are simply not used. It's a 32-bit value, but that doesn't mean all of these 32 bits are necessarily used.

 

The bits for the prerequisites are buildings, in the order of their name IDs (with the lowest ID being the lowest bit).

[Dr. Wonderful]

Uhh, 256 color? Mine is 272 color. I can't seem to convert it by any conventional means.

[Nyerguds]

This isn't about the number of colours. 256-colour images are indexed, paletted images. It's an entirely different format. C&C doesn't support high-colour PCX format. Converting an image from high colour mode to 256-colour 8-bit indexed mode should be a standard function in any slightly advanced image editor. I'm fairly sure I posted tutorials covering both the basics of paletted images, and on palette handling in Gimp.

[Dr. Wonderful]

Yup. And it worked!?

 

I have a little ... surprise for everyone.

But first I need to find exactly how to make the light tank fire two shells instead of one...

[Nyerguds]

"fires twice" should just be in the options. You see it on line #28 (a little below halfway) in the Rocket Launcher stats pic I showed earlier.

 

 

[Nyerguds]

Divatox: I split your post to a new topic and moved it to Mapping. There was no reason at all to post that in here.

[Dr. Wonderful]

You know, I could create a ARCO tanker truck unit. It would do nothing but crush tiny people.

 

But any way, have you heard of the Biowar mod?

 

*Of course he has!*

 

But anyway, does it still even exist?

(I'm probably not the first one to have asked this.)

 

 

[Nyerguds]

I remade that once, but I think the exe has changed so much in my patch since then that I'd have to remake it all over again, lol.

http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/mods/downloads/

[Dr. Wonderful]

Is it possible for the game to load icons for iconless things?

(The Bio Research facility)

[Nyerguds]

Yea, sure. You just add them; BIOICNH.TEM / WIN / DES / SNO. But as mentioned before, the game is prone to errors and crashes when switching theaters if those kinds of icons are loaded from sc*.mix files, so it's best to put them in the specific theater-icons mixfiles where they belong.

 

In fact, for the bio lab, tomsoms26 and I made something not too long ago:

http://www.ppmforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=14518#550587

Note that I probably only included a .tem and .des icon in there, since temperate uses the same palette as winter and snow, so to get those, you just make two copies of the .tem one and rename their extensions.

[Dr. Wonderful]

I just go done reading the doc of Cnc95UGE and, well, I can't see them in binary.  Oh wait! The calculator!

But, how do I tell which byte a unit/structure's code starts?

 

Also, how do I get radar icons to load?

[Nyerguds]

UGE has all data in decimal, but, isn't the "fires twice" option simply in there for all units?

 

What do you man with "radar icons"?

[Dr. Wonderful]

Oh, sorry. Your right. Never mind.

 

What I mean is I have just figured out how to work UGE. Problem solved.

 

But, you know, radar icons. When playing the mission. You see the big (honking, if I might add) GDI/Nod/Dino icon. How is that messed up, er, I mean edited.

[Nyerguds]

Ohhh, the house logos.

 

They're SHP files, inside updatec.mix I think. They're called "HRADAR.???", with the short house code as extension. These house codes are in the houses ini file as "ShortName". So, HRADAR.GDI / HRADAR.NOD / HRADAR.JP

 

These logos can actually be customized in missions: the dinosaur campaign in v1.06 gives the JP logo simply because the missions have the line RadarLogo=JP in the [basic] section of the missions. Incidentally, this is explained in the patch manual

 

(you should try out the radar logos "WW" and "EA" )

 

It's a pity their animations don't really work anymore on modern systems. It's gone in a split second.

[Dr. Wonderful]

I just got done experimenting with a Multi 3 logo. It doesn't fit correctly with the... uh,  designated space.

 

Also, I can't conver PNG files to SHPs!!

 

And finally, why is there an error here?

[Nyerguds]

I just got done experimenting with a Multi 3 logo. It doesn't fit correctly with the... uh,  designated space.

Then... resize it?

 

Basic rule of all modding is to start from the original stuff and edit it. This is especially true for graphics and animations that need to fit back into the game UI.

 

I personally wouldn't try to actually set the multi3 radar logo though. Even if you're using them in a mission, it seems safer to use the ini key to override the logo. That way you can give it any extension you want, too.

 

Also, I can't conver PNG files to SHPs!!

Why not? What goes wrong? Are they 256-colour? Did you use the correct palettes? Did you read the conversion guides I posted in the tutorials section?

 

And finally, why is there an error here?

Why on earth does it say "cc95inf.mdl" as "saved game file"? That's the file you're supposed to be editing with it; it should always point to C&C95.exe. Remember, UGE is originally a customizable savegame editor; it just uses C&C95 as "savegame" to edit.

 

The instructions in the readme should tell you how to set that up; you shouldn't ever have to change that in the editor. As long as you don't mount the UGE folder itself as a bare drive (rather, mount the "dosstuff" one) UGE should be able to find C&C95.exe in the C&C95 parent folder you put it in.

[Dr. Wonderful]

Okay, I got the logos sorted out. I have also successfully did an experiment involving minigunners actually using a chain gun.

 

Now, I know how to assemble a tech tree, but I wanted one faction to have a "Heavy Gunner" while the rest of them have minigunners. How can this be done?

 

And finally, yes, I have looked at your conversion guide. The problem is, I just have a reqular PNG. Only one frame. Soooo, I cant quite finish the conversion process.