What are 'high-res' units?

April 10, 2000, 02:20

Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere - I did a check and I couldn't find anything. I noticed in a few of the other threads other Civ players have mentioned using new 'high-res' units. What are these, and where can I get them from?

mindseye · April 10, 2000, 21:17

Thanks for making the referral, Smash!

By the way, I think we are now only a few days from HiRes version 2. I finished the final revisions over the weekend and wrote the README. I'm in the middle of one last game start-to-finish to insure everything looks and acts correctly.

Stay tuned!

- mindseye aka Tim Smith

Smash · April 11, 2000, 00:34

http://apolyton.net/cgi-bin/civ2files/file.pl?id=224

Neon Deon · April 11, 2000, 00:48

Does a high res Mutant Gator come with version 2???

HyperElite · April 11, 2000, 01:45

Sounds cool - I'll be downloading it then.

Campo · April 11, 2000, 09:10

quote:

Originally posted by mindseye on 04-10-2000 09:17 PM
By the way, I think we are now only a few days from HiRes version 2

I just downloaded the existing version yesterday and was going to install it tonight. I guess I'll wait for the new one.

What's involved in the installation?

Steve Clark · April 11, 2000, 11:31

Tim: I just got done playing my first game with the HiRes v.1 graphics and have these comments. I really love the units, but playing zoomed in a little (per your suggestion), it makes the terrain graphics quite chunky. Also, I could not for the life of me see the difference between a mountain, gold and iron. The squares by themselves are somewhat distinguishable, but tiled together on a map, the differences get lost. After a few turns, I switched back to the standard terrain but kept the great unit graphics.

Smash · April 11, 2000, 13:55

Hmmm....I think HiRes terrain and units are pretty good.It takes a little getting used to.I love the look of roads on grassland or hills.The "Marlin" is nice also.The modern units are very cool.

thats the beauty of this game.You can change almost anything.I've substituted a couple of my favorite units

Now to see how hard it is to make the whole mod MAC compatible

mindseye · April 12, 2000, 04:09

Neon Deon:
Sorry, no hi-res mutant gator, but for you I am trying to include a crash dummy.

Campo:
Installation is simple, just copy the files over the existing - after backing up the originals, of course! All is detailed in the accompanying README.

Steve -
(1) Yeah, the terrain is really optimized for "standard" zoom level. I'm hoping you only need to zoom now and then until you are accustomed to the graphics and can recognize them at a glance. I almost never need to zoom beyond "standard" (and I only have a 15" display at 800x600), but then again, I've been staring at these things for hundreds of hours. Let me know how this works out for you with version 2.

(2) Re: Gold & Iron, well... <ahem> on version 1.0 I plain old screwed up. You're right, there is no difference. In version 2, Gold is represented by a gold ingot, Iron is an Iron Age spearhead. It think you will find them easily recognized.

Version 2 is a significant improvement: some of the units are improved, some are new, the mountains, hills, & railroads have been re-done from scratch, the rest of the Microprose terrain has been replaced including coastlines and ocean, new resource icons, dialog box textures, city screen, and my favorite: all-new super-detailed cities.

Smash:
Included with version 2 are over one hundred alternate units, primarily from the 20th century - hopefully I will have covered some of your favorite alternates! As for the Mac version, I would be very interested in knowing what would need to be done. Is it a simple matter of converting graphics formats?

Thanks all for your comments!
- Tim aka mindseye

[This message has been edited by mindseye (edited April 12, 2000).]

Steve Clark · April 12, 2000, 14:51

Thanks Tim for your reply. I am becoming a big fan of your work. One other thing I forgot to mention about terrain is that is was very difficult to see the difference between grassland squares and grassland with shield squares. I really look forward to v.2.

mindseye · April 13, 2000, 00:10

Smash -
2 is almost ready. A busy work week and Steve's suggestion (below) might push it to next weekend. I can save from Photoshop into pict format, but will more than that be needed for a Mac? I don't think the file will have the "resource fork", will it? Maybe I can send you an sample for you to test?

Steve -
I really disliked the original grassland resource, it was too prominent. The grassland tile appears in such abundance that I thought I'd use the grassland resource icon to break up the pattern and give the large grassy expanses more texture. For these reasons, I used a very subtle approach, which I did not change for version 2.

However, your comment makes me wonder if I shouldn't include an alternate symbol for those who prefer something a little more obvious? I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the feedback!

- mindseye
[This message has been edited by mindseye (edited April 13, 2000).]

Smash · April 13, 2000, 00:47

No.Photoshop doesn't work.You still need to use a conversion utility.At least it didn't work for me.I'm far from a photoshop expert though.But I did try the save as .pict with it and it didn't work.

Smash · April 13, 2000, 00:56

Is 2 ready?

actually, something like HiRes is not too difficult.
.gif must be converted to .pict

.wav to .aiff

rules.txt are fine as is.

there are programs that do this by the easy "drag and drop" method.

events.txt is another story

mindseye · April 15, 2000, 07:46

Steve -

Do you have an email address? I'm ready to go, but I'm still waiting to hear back from Apolyton (Sven's email address is invalid, Markos hasn't answered yet). In the meantime I made the Grassland Resource a bit more prominent. Drop me a note and I will send you the file - I'd like your feedback.

Thanks!

- Tim aka mindseye
yoohootim@hotmail.com

geofelt · April 15, 2000, 18:57

I tried the hires graphics and liked it. I agree that the grassland&shield combo it too subtle. If a more defined version is available, I would like to get it.

mindseye · April 18, 2000, 09:05

You got it! By popular demand, the Grassland Resource graphic has been changed for version 2 to make it more obvious.

I'm still working with Apolyton to schedule the official release. I'm having a hard time contacting Sven (keeper of the download database). His email server keeps bouncing my messages back, I think it rejects mail from .hotmail addresses. I've notified DanQ.

Smash · April 18, 2000, 22:13

I've had a little sneak peek at the new HiRes and it looks great.Got some beautiful new resource icons and some terrain changes...well I won't say too much and ruin the surprise but if you like the first you'll luv this one.

Dino the Dinosore · April 22, 2000, 17:18

My day job is Mac programming, so I checked with my Mac resource editor, and the various .pict files that come with the Mac versionof CIV2 (like UNITS.PICT in the support folder) do not have resource forks, everything is in the data fork. I also tried using Photoshop to open the .gif files and save them as pict files, but the resulting files don't work correctly, altho within Photoshop they look fine. I'm not a Photoshop or graphics expert either, so I can't help more.

Smash · April 22, 2000, 22:42

you have to use a conversion utility.Such as SoundApp for sounds (.aiff) and clip2gif for graphics (.pict).

drag and drop-poof! converted file ready to use