Unit Shields

fairline · October 1, 2003, 13:33

This is probably utterly useless, but anyhow

Did anyone know that it's possible to change the civ2 unit shield size and shape? I was messing with a units file and noticed that if you change the red area of the shield sillhouette in the top right-hand corner of units.bmp, it has a corresponding effect in-game.

This is the standard shape:

fairline · October 1, 2003, 13:39

...and here's an edited one. Seems you can have any size or shape you want, as long as it's the same size or smaller than the green boundary delineation. If you remove all the red area you are left with the health-bar only.

Possible uses: erm... now you've got me. I suppose you can have rectangular national flags without the bottom of the civ-colour shield sticking out underneath, or how about Samurai-style narrow rectangular shields. OK, this discovery has absolutely no practical value whatsoever

jasev · October 1, 2003, 14:38

Quote:

OK, this discovery has absolutely no practical value whatsoever

But it's a very interesting discovery fairline

Nilat · October 1, 2003, 15:14

Well this information can be usefull in some situation... you never know...

Elok · October 1, 2003, 15:45

I think somebody else already discovered this; there's a sci-fi units pack out there that includes "Star Trek" shields in the shape of that weird logo that looks like a mutant caret.

Not that you haven't done some very clever innovating, you're just not technically the first to do it.

techumseh · October 1, 2003, 16:07

Amazing! You think you know everything there is to know about something, and there it is, right under your nose. Good work, Fairline!

DarthVeda · October 1, 2003, 16:57

I was fairly certain that this was common knowledge but just not useful?

fairline · October 1, 2003, 18:30

I guess nothing's new in civ really. Your right about it being useless as well

Palaiologos · October 1, 2003, 19:38

Well, if that makes you happy the unit that is depicted in your screenshots is really cool!

St Leo · October 1, 2003, 22:19

This was used in my The Little Big Ice Age That Could SDC4 entry.

Case · October 1, 2003, 23:00

If tried fiddling around with this for 'Appeasement and Agression', but it came to nothing. I was trying to add a wargame style XX to each shield to denote that the unit represented a division. However, the results looked awful

Boco tried something similiar in ToT and it also didn't work out satisfactorarly. It's a shame though, as it's a potentially very cool feature.

Boco · October 2, 2003, 17:44

I played with it a little more and kinda liked the result in ToT. Of course there's no accounting for my taste. Background contrast is important.

Sadly, this is the most I've done with El Aurens for over 3 weeks.

Plz note the GB. The unit represents the Armenian Legion.

Ecthy · October 4, 2003, 06:12

what does that GP stand for? doesn't it make the game crash because there's light pink where there should be dark magenta only?

fairline · October 4, 2003, 06:32

It's 'GB' and it stands for Gareth Birch. And no, it doesn't make the game crash; both the pink and purple colours are set to be transparent. Microprose used them to show where the unit base square would be in-game.

Ecthy · October 4, 2003, 06:52

I figured that much. OK then, must have mixed it up with an actual unit colour crossing the usual border of pink and purple. in that case, the game does crash.

fairline · October 4, 2003, 07:54

Nope - anything below the unit base just doesn't get shown in-game.

Ecthy · October 4, 2003, 08:48

oh, please, at least in earlier versions my game did crash if there as only one pixel of the wrong colour below the unit base

Catfish · October 4, 2003, 20:36

Quote:

Originally posted by fairline
Nope - anything below the unit base just doesn't get shown in-game.

It doesn't get shown on the game map, but it is visible in the menus and dialogue boxes. Never experienced crashes, though.

Case · October 5, 2003, 01:50

Civ 2 used to crash for me when I edited the units files with MS paint in Windows 95.

curtsibling · October 5, 2003, 02:30

My Civ only crashes when I have made a boo-boo in the text files.

Usually something massive like a missing comma!

Catfish · October 5, 2003, 03:04

I was referring to Ecthelion's comment. Yeah, Curt, I've also had crashes caused by typos in text files - I remember us discussing this before.

Edit: MS Paint is awful for game graphics. Case, it probably screwed your Civ2 palette.