Re: Official Image Collection
 

Hello Mr. SJ:

I uploaded (not from my own PC) some files which have some new components relaive to X-Com mod which I would like you take a look to decide if you can include them in the image pack. Feel fre to change its numbers and position in the big 36x36 pixel image file (which is loaded in jpg format for compactness).

Please tell me what do you think about this work! Thanks!

Sorry: look in the Graphic/Data Thread!

[ March 03, 2003, 16:07: Message edited by: leo1434 ]

Re: Official Image Collection
 

I need BMPs, unfortunately.
Please have the minis and the portraits together in one zip. Add a credits.txt, so I know what to write. (Your name, sources if applicable)

As to your uploads, are you using a foreign language character set by any chance?
The upload you sent made a bunch of random character folders instead of a file.

Also, when you are working with mods (including graphics and text datafiles), be sure to place them in their own folder.
This prevents you from accidentally overwriting your unmodded files, and needing to reinstall the game.

What you should do is create a folder along the lines of
"C: \SE4\xcom-mod"
Create a "c: \se4\xcom-mod\pictures", "c: \se4\xcom-mod\data", etc inside of that folder.

This leaves your unmodded files intact.
In order to use the mod files, you merely have to change the value in path.txt from
"path := none"
to
"path := xcom-mod" (or whatever the modfolder's name is)

You can also use the modlauncher to automate that task.

Mlmbd:
My Last midterm is wednesday night, so I'll have time either thursday or friday.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

SJ, OK, Thanks! I will submit all the images Fri. I think there are some you are really going to love. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: Official Image Collection
 

SJ- Here is a submission for each part of the Image Mod.

Combat/Beams

Components

Facilities

Planets

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

[ March 06, 2003, 22:21: Message edited by: mlmbd ]

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Kodos:
Do you have a credits.txt for me to use?

Mlmbd:
Why did you go to the trouble of separating your minis with those red lines, Mlmbd?

I'm sure it must have been some bother for you, but it makes things even worse for me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif .
If you had simply left out the separator lines, I could have grabbed 15-20 minis at once and lined them up all together into the final BMP.

Even separate files for each mini would be less work for me to do, since then I wouldn't have to carefully outline and select each sub image to the exact pixel.

If you still have the separate files for those minis, I would much appreciate you uploading them.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

mumbles:
What exactly are the non-arcology facilities in your latest facilities submission supposed to be? I can't make heads or tails of them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Err there wasent one in the Zip? If there wasnt, they are all ripped from the Ur-Quan Masters and resized ,where needed, by me.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some of them are sort of satelite dish affairs, and some of them have a kind of inverted dish, like a shield or umbrella of some kind. They are colourful, but I don't think they're unclear.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

SJ, sorry for the red bars. I did explain it in the Read Me. Also told you to tell if you did want me to do it anymore. I won't! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Here is the zip with the three (comp, facil and planet) mini strips fixed!

Mini's

Fyron, the images are whatever you want them to be. The images are not blurry or miss colored. Maybe you need glasses. I'm sorry if you don't like them.

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I never said they were blurry or miscolored. Well... they do have an excessive number of colors in them, but that is a matter of taste, not of needing glasses. Of course I could use them for whatever I want to, but they must have had a basic design goal when you made them. I hope you didn't just randomly slap together shapes and textures, hoping for something that looked useable. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Fyron, <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I did. But I am not the modder that is going to use them. That is for him to decide. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I NEVER just randomly slap things together! And hope! Like I said, if you do not like them, don't use them.

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Ok.... what was the purpose of the images? What are they supposed to be? Please stop beating around the bush and answer this simple question.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

IDEA!

What say we make a TXT. file in all future Versions of the ImageMod, saying what the artist had in mind when creating their art?
Or we could make a thread for this.

Or both.

Or none.

Just an idea.
Be seeing you.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

That is unnecessary, really. I just can't see what type of thing those particular images are supposed to be, and so I was trying to get an idea from the guy that made them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Still. I cant make out quite a few components, and quite a few facilities. It would be nice.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

big imagemod submission:

http://students.uwsp.edu/kmusa047/imagemodsub2.zip

Re: Official Image Collection
 

As a modder, I start with a cool idea for a facility (or component, etc), and then I browse through the minis until something catches my eye.
I'll then pick out a few choices, and compare their portraits to decide the final winner.

Kodos:
You are missing the portrait for #4 (the red engine section)

Mlmbd:
I'm pretty sure I pointed this out before, but a lot of the detail in your beams are being lost due to cropping when SE4 animates them.
For example, the fifth and sixth beams you submitted have intricate details outside of the area that ends up visible in-game. And all of your beams have the fadeoff well outside that range as well.
It pains me to realize that your small beams are going to be 75% of the size of your Huge beams, and you've spent all that time doing the fancy edges that will never be seen.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Heres a better Version of my submission:
1047165305.zip

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Combatpack and ComponentPack are updated on http:\\imagemodserver.mine.nu\imagemod

I'm still working on the facilities and planets.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, but that does not help to determine what those things are supposed to be. If mumbled would just tell us, this whole discussion would end. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that they aren't anything yet.

They will be whatever the modder wants them to be.
The artist may or may not want to offer some suggestions for what it could be used for.

The first things that come to my mind are a talisman or a scanner.

PS: Fyron, if that was you downloading the new files from imagemod, try again. I had to pull the plug on your DL for a Last minute change.

[ March 08, 2003, 23:51: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Boo. I was almost done. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

I don't want to know what the facility is precisely, I want a general idea of what those pics are supposed to be. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You know, like an APB and an MB are both weapons. I don't want to know that one pic is an APB and the other is a MB, I want to know that the pics are weapons.

[ March 08, 2003, 23:55: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Lets see. You've got an administrative building... good for research, intel, anything involving paperwork, probably peaceful and quiet, from the landscaping.

Then you've a very beautiful pair of generic facilities... they would work well as weapons, or urban pacification centers, crystalline shield booster facility, any religious shrine. The wide one could easily be a spaceyard as well.

Simply amazing.
You need to relax, Fyron and don't worry about having everything perfectly defined.

I predict those first three or four facilities will see a lot of use in mods.

Besides, if you'd read the credits.txt, you'd see that they were intended to be arcologies for PvK. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Only the first 2 or 3 are arcologies. That is why I asked what the non-arcology facilities are supposed to be.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That implies that I am pent up or something, which is wrong. I am just waiting for an answer from mumbled, and you keep posting more and more of the same thing, which does not contribute to getting an answer from him. I still await his answer.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Well, if you want to know that badly, I guess we'll just have to wait till Mlmbd visits next.

I've got all but the planetpack updated now.

UM:
Not sure if you realize this, but many of your planet minis have distict day/night sides. With the random placement of planets, you will end up with silly things like the dark side facing the sun.
For portraits, day/night regions are perfectly fine, since the star dosen't come into the picture. For the minis its a different story.

Mlmbd:
The updated minis you sent do not match up with the portraits.
Can you check the zip and send the planets again?

(Just the planets, everything else is done.)

Re: Official Image Collection
 

My mirror is up to date, though I have run out of space, so there are no patches for the new Versions available.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

SJ, sorry, I don't know waht happened. But, here the Planets. You had told me about the beams. I just wanted to include a couple really big (seeming) beams. If they do not work, I will not make anymore images like that. Did any of the Round componet images look like what you had in mind for a 'Bug Eyed Scanner'? Or something along those lines?

Planets

Fyron, I am not beating around the bush. You said yourself, the first time I made a submission; "It is up to the modder what the images are used for". I was merely follow your protocol!
The exception being, any images I make for a peticular modder. I have run images by him/her to see if that is what they had in mind. If I were a modder (which I am not) I might use the images as a Radar Site, Listing Post, Shield Generator, Scanner, Shield boosting facility or a Shrine of some kind. OK?

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The box outlined in green dots is the part that you will see in game when weapons fire. It gets tiled top to bottom as it travels across the screen.
The red part usually only appears at the tip of the beam (the bottom 3 pixels of the green box cover the ones from the red part on the very next tiling.
Since pure black is masked, the red part will tile if the corresponding green-box pixels are black.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

SJ, I got it. I just made them so they would as big as possible. I will concentrate on smaller beams from now on. I have gotten the 'Huge' image thing out of my system! Was the second zip of beam images better?

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: Official Image Collection
 

I added both that you sent.
Your smallest beams in that submission were still as big as WMGs, though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

For the ones I made, I concentrated on special effects, and mostly copied other beams to make up for my lack of artistic talent.
The helix cannon, for example, uses knowledge of the details of the tiling pattern so it looks like there is one continuous spiral travelling down the main beam http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
The "Torpedo" beam uses the red zone to make a projectile, and the green zone to erase it and leave a smoke trail.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">See... I could not imagine a scenario in which you would make some images and have no basic purpose in mind. I just could not tell what that purpose was for those facilities. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

The Facility Pack 9 file does not have minis past 252, but the Portraits go up to 267.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Oopsie. The patch had the correct files, but I missed copying the new minis to the full install zip.

Updated facilitypack9.zip file is now 3,054kb

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Try turning on Best compression (or maximum) next time. I added the Facility pic to it myself, and got a file size of 2,817 kB. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

I've got the sizes down a bit now.

BTW,
How many people would like to see a RARed Version of the files?

Re: Official Image Collection
 

I posted another components addition a while ago, and it didn't make it into components 1.14. Here it is again.
http://students.uwsp.edu/kmusa047/components.zip

Re: Official Image Collection
 

3 thumbs up for RARs.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Have you herd of 7-ZIP. It producesses zip files that are much smaller than other zip programs, but they can still be read by any standard unzip.

The URL is: http://www.7-zip.org/

Its still in late beta but I have found the program very stable and have hand no problems with it.

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">WinRAR produces Zip files that are smaller than WinZip does. Most programs can make smaller Zip files than WinZip. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It also beats pkzip ZIPs and its native format 7z beats RAR but its not as standard as RAR so you would have to use a self-extrating EXE or no one could open it.

Anyway its just a though. Use it or not, doesn't matter to me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ March 10, 2003, 19:31: Message edited by: Ron Coit ]

Re: Official Image Collection
 

SJ, seems you missed 3 zips of facilities (50 images), I made. I combinded all 3 into 1. Do you want it now? Or would you rather I wait?

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Go ahead and post it. I can then download it and stick it into the to-do pile

Re: Official Image Collection
 

SJ, very well, Sir! Here is the file:

Facilities

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Ive noticed that many of the thumbnails are missing, this is especially vexing when trying to see what all facilities or components a planet/ship has without having to right click on each empty spot. If i had to guess i would guess this is caused by the empty spots in the new components pic. Is there a easy way to fix this?

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Not all image numbers are filled. The blank spots in the middle do not make a difference at all.

Are you sure you have the latest copies of the files? Check the main Image Modpack web page or my mirror to see if you do or not.

Also, did you replace the original components.bmp with the new components.bmp?

[ March 12, 2003, 20:53: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Thanks for the advice, it was the renaming that threw me for a loop. Aprreciate the help

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It also beats pkzip ZIPs and its native format 7z beats RAR but its not as standard as RAR so you would have to use a self-extrating EXE or no one could open it.

Anyway its just a though. Use it or not, doesn't matter to me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Can't you have WinZip compress them more?

Re: Official Image Collection
 

All of the new ZIPs will not require renaming.
On http://Imagemodserver.mine.nu/imagemod , I have updated the zips with that feature:

Combatpack 9
Componentpack 14
Facilitypack 9
Planetpack 9

WinZip (all the "zips" in fact) uses a decades-old compression method (Lempel-Ziv; from the 70's!).
The latest in information theory provides better compression algorithms.

[ March 13, 2003, 00:05: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Official Image Collection
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You can use the Maximum compression option of WinZip, sure. But, WinRar's best compression option makes better compressed (smaller sized) zip files than WinZip's does. This is why I always use WinRar to make my zips instead of WinZip. That, and it has a more "natural" method of viewing archived folders and such. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Official Image Collection
 

Here are some combo colony modules (rock/ice, rock/gas, ice/gas, rock/ice/gas):

1049475159.zip