Unknown file names

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Philippeatbay
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
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Unknown file names

Post by Philippeatbay »

Image

Does anyone happen to know the names of the two files circled in yellow in this screenshot?

The one on the left (the little flags draped around the headquarters building) is the one I am most interested in. I suspect it can't be modded, and I also suspect that it isn't a DDS file.

I'd like to know where to find the unit nationality markers in case I ever decide to make a mod for Romanian or Hungarian troop markers. I always thought it was hard coded or out of reach (which I suspect is the case with the other texture I'm asking about), but I recently saw a screenshot from the Capture of Balta scenario that made me think it might be doable.

(I'm inclined to leave the Germans alone, but I'd be curious to see what they would look like with feldgrau instead of red markers).

[Since writing this I've realized that I knew the answer to the second queston: it's UNITSICONS1. But I still want to know where to find the little flags on the left, assuming they're anywhere to be found].

[[Are the little flags from the assorted_extras_W_@ files?]]
pipfromslitherine
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Re: Unknown file names

Post by pipfromslitherine »

They are almost certainly part of the object textures, in the appropriate subfolder of DATA/OBJECTS.

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Philippeatbay
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Posts: 279
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:19 pm

Re: Unknown file names

Post by Philippeatbay »

Image

This is sort of where it's going.

Not sure how the transparent textures in the eight files with the banners work. I'm guessing that I need to make the black areas explicitly transparent with an alpha channel.

This is almost certainly not the finished version. I like the way the victory location marker looks, but I'm not satisfied with the grey unit nationality markers. I may try a darker shade of grey, but I think I prefer the traditional grey to the original red.
Philippeatbay
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Posts: 279
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:19 pm

Re: Unknown file names

Post by Philippeatbay »

Still wrestling with the unitsicon file, but through trial and error I'm getting a sense of what works and what doesn't (what was in that last screenshot doesn't).

In the meantime there's another image I haven't managed to track down yet. Anyone know where this is?

Image
Philippeatbay
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Posts: 279
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:19 pm

Re: Unknown file names

Post by Philippeatbay »

The Uniticons files are more involved than I thought.

In addition to the one I've been modding, there seem to be abbreviated sets of Uniticons files that have both sides on them, one for each campaign and one for the entire game. The one I've been modding (the one with a number after it) seems to govern, but why do these other files exist? They're a real pain to clean up before converting them back to DDS files, so I'd really like to ignore these if I can.

The problem I've been having with modding the Uniticons01 file may only be a by-product of my Rube Goldberg modding method (I convert the DDS to a bitmap, repaint it, and then convert it back to a DDS with a different program. If I have to change the size of something I convert the bitmap into a PNG and use an alpha channel to prevent colors bleeding into adjacent pixels, resize, and convert back to a bitmap). The problem I was having was that light shades of grey were picking up random splotches of neighboring colors, which forced me to use darker shades, not the end of the world since I liked the look of the darker shades better anyway. I'm using Photoshop 7 (very old) and it isn't configured for handling very many different types of files, but it's been so long since I installed it I can't remember what kind of files I configured it to work with.
Philippeatbay
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Posts: 279
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:19 pm

Re: Unknown file names

Post by Philippeatbay »

The texture files that are puzzling me look like this:

Image


Image

At one point I thought they might have something to do with skirmish battles (or perhaps multi-player?) but when I created a skirmish battle to see if anything looked different, all that happened when I opened a German side skirmish was that the German player could only recruit Soviet units instead of German ones: the unit icons were the modded ones I was using for the campaign scenarios rather than these unmodded ones. So I think I've found a bug, but I'm back to not knowing what these things are for, if anything.

I've pretty much decided to ignore them unless someone can tell me what they're for. I'm hoping they're artefacts of the development process.
Philippeatbay
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Staff Sergeant - StuG IIIF
Posts: 279
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:19 pm

Re: Unknown file names

Post by Philippeatbay »

I think I finally understand how the national symbols on the campaign screen work. Here's my version of the two Kursk campaign screens:


Image


Image


I still don't understand what is going on with the unit icons in the previous post. In case someone explains it to me (that they do or don't do anything), I'm holding off announcing the next version of the Historical Flag Mod, though I've added the national symbols in and changed the version number.
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