Lots of New Units Possible (Tentative)

Chris B · March 20, 2001, 16:08

Dont get 2 excited, this is just an idea. I'm a player of Age of Kings as well as CTP2, and after downloading mod pack studio i found a way to extract frames from that games units. I have niether the time nor the rescourses to convert these to CTP2 right now, but if anyone does, I could send them frames. My brother Silas is already Working on Corresponding TGA's.
Probelms:
1) Many units are 2 big for a CTP2 square.
2) These may be Copyrighted Material. DON'T tell Bill!
If these issues don't scare you off, please let me know here.
-CB

[This message has been edited by Chris B (edited March 20, 2001).]

Locutus · March 20, 2001, 16:53

How did you do that exactly? I tried that months ago but only had succes with AoE1 units, AoE2 graphics had some kind of weird glitch that screwed up the bmp's.

BTW, who gives a f*ck about copyrights? Ever looked at some of those Civ2 scenarios? Independance day, Star Trek, Star Wars, you name it...
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited March 20, 2001).]

Immortal Wombat · March 20, 2001, 17:02

1 step ahead of you...

Firstly Locutus, to get the screenshots from AOK, press the print screen button on the keyboard and then a *.bmp picture is automatically saved to your AoK folder as something like AOK0001.bmp These you can get unit pictures from.

Chris, as soon as I figured this out, I started making units from AoK, and I have made so far:
>A battering ram that should attack and die properly, if I can get the script to work, see my thread here on Spritetool.
>A camel that is very small and rubbishy, but could easily be improved
>A war elephant

Pretty cool huh?

Any other units anyone wants, I can make them relativly quickly, although they are nowhere near the standard of Tom Davies units, and mostly won't have animations

(yet

:grim determination: )

Next projects include: Zeppelin
Small sub-orbit "space" plane
Trebuchet from AoK

Its fun to make units!!

Ben - The Immortal Wombat

Locutus · March 20, 2001, 17:13

Screenshots? Isn't that butt-ugly? I used some user-made hack/tool that extracts the graphics files from the archives and converts them to bmp. Not only does this generally look a lot better, it also gives you all the files you need to make animations and even shadows. I devoted a thread to this, with an elaborate explanation of the procedure (it wasn't even that difficult, but I'm a complete idiot when it comes to graphics, so I never got very far with it) back in the days of CtP1, it's probably in the archives of the CtP1 Creation Forum. I'll see if I can dig it up again. But as I already explained, it didn't work for AoK, just of AoE, so I don't know how much it'll help anyone.

Update: here's that thread I was talking about: http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum11/HTML/000681.html
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited March 20, 2001).]

Immortal Wombat · March 20, 2001, 17:18

quote:

Originally posted by Locutus on 03-20-2001 04:13 PM
Screenshots? Isn't that but-ugly? .

Its harder to make it look good, put it that way, but I'll amil you my battering ram if you like, and you can see how good(or not) it looks.

When the graphic is shrunk to size its really not that bad.

Chris B · March 20, 2001, 20:58

I didn't mean screenshots. With AOK MOad Pack Studio, I have all the frames needed that can be exported. They aren't all needed though, because AOK has enough to mak them 3D and all ctp2 needs is 5 facing. Also, the reason i said tentative is because I have never really tested it. The only time was once my brother put a villager with a blowing dress into one of the his projects (not ctp2 of course, he hates it

)
Immortal Wombat- I'd very much like to see the Camel.
Also, The most crucial Units we could get of of AOK are the Man-at-Arms and the Crossbowman.
That's about it for now.
-CB
[This message has been edited by Chris B (edited March 20, 2001).]

Locutus · March 21, 2001, 03:33

Chris, where can I download this program? I definitely want to at least try it out once (as I said, I'm a complete idiot when it comes to graphics so don't expect me to actually start releasing stuff or anything).

All those other frames *are* necessary if you want to make animation: not only does the 5-facing system work virtually identical in CtP(2) and AoE(2), but the animations are done in a very similar way as well (for more info, see my link above).

Chris B · March 21, 2001, 08:06

quote:

Originally posted by Locutus on 03-21-2001 02:33 AM
Chris, where can I download this program? I definitely want to at least try it out once (as I said, I'm a complete idiot when it comes to graphics so don't expect me to actually start releasing stuff or anything).

All those other frames *are* necessary if you want to make animation: not only does the 5-facing system work virtually identical in CtP(2) and AoE(2), but the animations are done in a very similar way as well (for more info, see my link above).

www.aok.heavengames.com. On the main Screen find the link for the mod pack studio website and go there. Then there is a link to download it. It only works if you have age of kings installed, because it copies all the games graphics files.
-CB

Immortal Wombat · March 21, 2001, 14:03

Damn, all my hard work could have been done in a much easier way. Grrrrr

Oh well, I'll download the program and make the sprites even better.

The camel is really bad, you don't want to see this one.
Expect better ones though...

Chris B · March 21, 2001, 17:01

Keep me posted, Immortal Wombat. Were doing a great favor to the rest of the CTP2 community. Oh, and does anyone have the background template for CTP2 unit icons? My brother willl need them (why is he doing this for a game he can't stand

)
[This message has been edited by Chris B (edited March 21, 2001).]

Immortal Wombat · March 22, 2001, 17:31

WOW, I'm beginning to change my mind about these AoK units.
I decided to start doing the crossbowman like you suggested and I spend the best part of an hour making the 10 shots of the facing-3 attack animation - it was hard work.
All the pictures use both pure white and pure black, so that all needs taking out, and then it needs resizing to (1.1)^3 times its normal size, pasting into the blank tiff and saving.
Its very dificult, and I have 150 more pictures to do!!

This could be very slow progress, as im not the most patient person on the planet (to put it mildly).

Oh well, I'll keep going, for this one at least.

May take quite some time....

usprez2020 · March 27, 2001, 01:41

I could use some new units. I'm making an African colonisation scenario. I noticed the Oryx scenario for CivII has some good units. I'd do it myself, except I'm completely illiterate when it comes to art and graphics. Thanks in advance.

Immortal Wombat · April 14, 2001, 04:45

UPDATE:

I'm looking at hacking the gamefiles in Baldurs Gate to get some more fantasy units.

usprez - what units do you need? (no promises though)