How to Edit Icons
 

A utility called 'Shp Ed' is used to edit game icons which are in SHP (shape) file format.

This utility can be found in the games GRAPHICS folder here:

WinSPMBT\Game Data\Graphics

SHP files can be exported as a BMP (Bitmap) image from the game using Shp Ed. Or BMP images can be imported into the game and converted to SHP files.

SHP files are found in the game’s GRAPHICS folder.

Each SHP file has about 30 to 100 Icons within it.

Collages
The icons are in collages (of about 35 icons in each collage) like this:

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/9494/mbtcoll.gif

There’s usually 1 to 4 collages of icons in each SHP file.

BMP files
Each icon is a BMP file 89x89 pixels (some are a different size, but most are 89x89 pixels).

The invisible part of the icon is a specific pink colour.

The BMP files can only use a specific 256 Steel Panthers colours (a palette).

Palette
Here’s the 256 colours:

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/950...lettesmall.png


Don’t use the above png image. I’ll attach a BMP image of the palette, where you can use an eye drop dipper to extract the BMP colours you want to use.

Editing BMP files
Use a BMP graphics editor (like Paint.Net, Gimp, or Photoshop) to create or edit your Icon.
1. Make sure the image is the right size (usually 89x89 pixels)
2. Make sure the icon is the right size (5 inches per pixel for most soft vehicles, 6 inches per pixel for most tanks)
3. Make sure you only use the approved 256 colours.

Once the BMP icon is finished, you are ready to add it to the SHP file.

Viewing Icons within SHP files
To view/edit SHP files you must use a SHP editing utility found in the Game’s GRAPHICS folder.

It’s called ‘ShpEd.exe’ (you can create a shortcut to ShpEd and put the shortcut on your desktop).

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/4791/shped.png

1. Start up ShpEd (Click on the Brown doors and they disappear, and I like to enlarge the window by dragging the bottom right corner).

2. Check/tick the 3 little boxes on the left hand side, called:
• Use Old Header
• SP-No Flash
• Use Full Pal

3. Click the bottom left hand button (the button has a mouse over msg: ‘load a color palette’). Select the file ‘WinSPMBT_Palette.pal’ and click open. This makes sure you’re using the right palette.

4. You’re now back in the ShpEd window. Click the top left button (Load shp File) then click ‘up one level’ to get into the GRAPHICS folder to select the shape file.

There’s about 100 shp files. Knowing which shp file has the icon you want to edit can be tricky.

There's an icon map called:
WINSPMBT_MasterIconList.txt
which can be found in the DESIGN folder here:
WinSPMBT\Game Data\Design

5. After you’ve selected a shape file, click the 3rd button on the bottom (view collage). This will show you the first page/collage of icons in the shape file (about 35 icons).
In the little scrollable window it tells you how many icons total are in the shp file, and it tells you what the number of the last icon you can see.
To see more icons in the shp file, you can change the “Image#’ in the left box to say ‘36’, then hit the view collage button again and you will see icons 36 to 70.

Editing SHP Files - A 12 step program

This process seems a little complex at first, but it’s just a lot of steps. Once you’ve done it a few times it becomes easy.

1. Use top button 1 in ShpEd to load the right shp file.
2. Use the collages to identify the icon # you want to change. In the example above, the ship is the 2nd Icon (the first icon is # 1 even if it's blank, which it often is), so change the ‘Image #’ to ‘2’ then click button 2 at the top (show image #) to load the Icon and you will see it displayed so you can check you have the right one.
3. Then use button 3 at the top (save shp image as BMP) to download that icon as a BMP file, if you want to edit the original icon. Or you can skip this step.
4. Then use button 4 at the top (load bitmap/BMP from disk) to upload your own 89x89 pixel BMP icon to the shp file.
5. Then use button 5 at the top (convert bmp to shp) to convert the BMP to SHP.
6. Then use button 6 at the top (replace image # with new shp image). This creates a new SHP file, but you’ll have to manually rename it in the next step.
7. Open your GRAPHICS folder in a window and find the file called ‘BigNew.shp’. Which is the new shp file you just created. Rename BigNew to Icon0036.shp or whatever shp file you were editing. You may need to delete, rename or move the original Icon0036 before you rename BigNew.
8. Then go back to the ShpEd utility and reload Icon0036 (because you need to load the new edited file).
9. Enter the Image # (of the icon you just uploaded in steps 2-6) then hit top button 2 (show image #). Don’t skip this step.
10. Then hit the button on the right hand side called ‘SP Fix’. A new window will pop up.
11. Hit the ‘Show’ button, on the bottom left, and your Icon should appear with a blue cross on it.
12. Then use the up and down arrows to centre the blue cross on the icon. When you have it centred, hit the ‘Write’ button on the very bottom left (If you can’t see the ‘Write’ button, just make the window bigger). This positions the icon in the hex.

You are done!

If you get stuck, feel free to ask questions, or try this site here for some useful tips and pictures of the process:

http://www.vojska.net/eng/games/steel-panthers/editing/

Edit: When making/editing your own icons, I find it useful to load the icon into a SHP file, and view the icon in the game, because the icons in the game don't look exactly like the original BMP images. So a bit of testing and adjusting results in better game icons.


Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Hi,

Thanks for the great article. I've been trying SHPEd for years with no success. With such detailed instructions, I should be able to figure it out but my brain doesn't cooperate.

I'm trying to create a "future warrior" icon, just slightly different than the current infantry icons. I can't get any infantry icons to load for some reason.

I want to be able to add some small amount of armour to the warrior, to reflect future personal protection, but SP won't allow that if you use an infantry icon.

Any ideas? If there's a way, could I ask how it could be done?

Thanks again,

Beeg

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Because infantry use a special set of icons with 1-13 men, the cavalry variant has horses, gun crews have different amounts of crew etc.

None of those have armour (they are soft targets) - only vehicles have that. And vehicles don't have visible crew reductions on damage/different crew sizes. Vehicles get targeted by ATGM, and can be shot with AP ammo.

That is all hard-coded in the game.

You are simply trying the impossible there.

You could try SP3 - brigade command - as it had vehicle platoons with 1-5 elements (but your "infantry" could not load onto APC - only barges - and would be shot at by ATGM and HEAT as if tin jeeps). Or find a "moddable" mech type game.

Andy

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

If your icons don't look the same in your drawing program as they do when converted to a SHP it's because you are not applying the correct ( Icon ) palette to them before entering them into the SHP file. That is the ONLY way you get colour shift from the original to the SHP version.

The correct palettes for use with Paint Shop Pro can be found in...

Game Data/Design/Palettes

The palette we use specifically for Icons is

JASC_WINSP_ICON_PALETTE.pal

If you don't use PSP, you'll need to make one from your drawing program.

The palette you show in post one is the FULL palette with "flashing" colours and that is NOT applicable to Icon creation

Attached is a PNG of our Icon palette ( NOT any other SP knock off.. they are different, even the original SP is different than ours )any decent drawing program can make their own palette file from this as it only contains colours used for Icons in the game


Don

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

I use Ultimate Paint Standard 2.88 LE and Paint.Net 3.5.10. For those I have converted the icon palette file.

The Ultimate Paint compatible palette is available here:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...25&postcount=9

And also attached is the Paint.Net compatible palette. One limitation with Paint.net is that it only allows palette files that contain 96 colors. So I had to split the 256 color palette in 3 parts.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Actually I wasn't talking about the colours, but the shape of details in the icons.

When icons are on the game map they look a little different than they do in MOBhack or as a BMP in a Graphics editor.

In the game map, alternate lines of pixels appear slightly larger or smaller than their neighbours. Which is perhaps why icons look 'crisper' in MOBhack.

I've found it's most noticable when editing fine details like one pixel 'caliber' gun barrels, or with small icons like infantry.

And the game map of course adds shadow, which also changes the way icons look in the game.

Thanks for the PNG of your 'offical' icon palette though. I will use it.

For my first icons I didn't realise the game was limited to 256 specific colours and I chose colours from the several million available, and when I loaded my icons into the game, the game did a pretty good job of choosing the closest colours available, but my camouflage was definately no longer MoD approved ;)

Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

That sounds like a hardware issue most likely due to upscaling done by LCD monitors that are not running in their native resolution.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

There will be change going from one zoom level to another but at zoom level 4 ( 1:1 ) the Icon in the game should look exactly like the one in the drawing program with the exception of the dark shadow the game puts on

In this example the middle Icon is taken from a game screen shot. The one below it is right from PSP. Save the file and zoom in all you like with your drawing program. There are no differences EXCEPT the missing drop shadow

Don

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

There are some different colored pixels in the rear turret. ;)

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

That is because when you paste a turret onto the hull the "invisible" pink background shows through the rear storage bin and they have to be manually replaced and THAT is the ONLY reason why there is a difference between the two images

OK ? What you see in the middle icon is the engine grill work showing through becasue in the game , the pink background is invisible so to prevent the pink showing up in the example I filled the pink ones with green


Don

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Understood.

Regarding the use of Paint.NET for editing Steel Panthers graphics always disable the antialiasing (edge smoothing) feature when painting or you will get problems with the palette. Also the Resampling option "nearest neighbour" should be used when resizing images.

One problem I had when making diagonal graphics for the TERrain graphics was that by default Paint.NET's "Rotate / Zoom" feature always applied edge smoothing and there was no way to disable it. Then I found the "dpy" plugin pack and specificaly the plugin "Rotate/Zoom+" that solved this problem. It is an important plugin for anyone using Paint.NET to edit the TERrain files in my oppinion.
http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php...643-dpys-pack/

After installing the plugin you can find "Rotate/Zoom+" under the "Effects/Distort" menu in Paint.NET.

Hey Rosollia,

But I see the same issue in other people's screenshots.
Like this screenshot you posted:

http://i.imgur.com/2CFJi.png

The infantry in your above screenshot are not as 'crisp' or as proportioned as they are in Mobhack.

Here's a screenshot from my PC's MOBhack:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28868437/Fo...es/mobhack.png

Here's a closer comparison:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28868437/Fo...e.infantry.png

My 1920x1080 LCD doesn't have a problem rendering/upscaling the image in MOBhack, why would it only have problem within the game?

regards,
Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

They both look crisp on my 22" LCD monitor running at 1680x1050 resolution.

The difference is that the graphics in my screenshot have the added black bordering around them.
It might be that your display or even the graphics card has trouble when contrasted by that black border?
The colors might be "bleeding" into those black pixels from the surrounding light ones creating a fussy effect.

Idealy you should see a perfectly sharp infantry graphic with a 1 pixel wide border around it.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

I compared 'apples and apples':

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/28868437/Fo...om.compare.png

You and Don are right, there is no 'actual distortion' at the Zoom 4 level. The larger/smaller 'pixels' I saw must have been at zoom 5, or zoom 3. You can see it most clearly in zoom 5 above.

My graphics card and monitor display the icons exactly as you see above. There is no shadow bleed. Unless I'm only supposed to have a one pixel shadow? I have a 2 pixel shadow to the south, and a 1 pixel shadow to the west. As you can see above.

To my eyes - :eek: - the shadow must be what changes the perceived shape, detail and crispness of the icons. Just as framing the same art with different coloured or sized borders changes what you 'see'.

I'm not suggesting we should do away with the game added shadow. Only that when making icons it's a good idea to load them into the game during the design process, as they will 'appear' differently on the map.


Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Going back to what you wrote in post #12:
Is your game also running in 1920x1080 resolution? Reason I ask this is because LCD screens only have one fixed (native) resolution. In your case I assume it is 1920x1080. If any other resolution is used then there will be emulation/upscaling and the image quality will suffer.

I run the game in a 800x600 resolution and the image quality is alot poorer than it was on my old CRT monitor that was actualy capable to run in a real 800x600 resolution. One can get used to it though.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

I run the game in 1920x1080. But anyway, there's no problem with my graphics card or monitor, see post 14.

cheers,
Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

How do you, can you, change the names of icons. Will you please explain how?

Baie Dankie,

troopie

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

What names???

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

What I meant was renumbering them from one game to another. Taking say WinSPMBT .shps and putting them in an slot in WinSPWW2 or vice versa. Simply renaming copying and pasting the .shps can cause problems

troopie

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

....that's because the postion of the Icons in each game is different and that postion is hard coded.

If, however, you found a shp file from one game and found an unused series in the Icon files that matched hull/turret, hull/hull or hull/invisible turrets combination then you could assign the whole file into the new game.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Not all .shp files are available in both games IIRC. However, if you take a look at the Master Icon File, you will see what's free. For example, Icon0178 is pretty much freely available in both games, but is it included in both? If not, copy from one to the other and behold, 99 new icon spaces.

And if the .shp in the list doesn't appear to be available in either game, what I do is open any .shp file and make a small addition so that it saves as a "Bignew" file. Then renumber/rename that file according to what's available in the master list.

Richard H

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Hello, I have a boatload of sprites I'd like to test in SP. I'm having some success translating them into the palette, but getting them in-game is a bit harder:

For example, I want to replace one of the T-72 icons. I found the hull and turret (image #'s 59 and 60 in Icon0004). Loading my bmp into SHPedit seems to work, but after converting my bmp to a shp, then I can't seem to replace the icon.

All I seem to create is a SHP with just one image (my new one). I can never seem to get to the button 6 where I replace the image in the collage.

I hope this is something simple.

Also, does anyone here use GIMP for this? GIMP is great for translating my images to the SP colors, but saving a bmp that SHPedit can use does not seem to work. Paint.net does, but I think the problem is more than just GIMP's desire to create 32 bit BMP's by default.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

From the SHPEDIT HELP file. I have highlighted the step you have missed

Basic Editing

In the simplest case, the steps to replace an image in a shp file (foo.shp) would be as follows:

1. Use the Load Shp button to load foo.shp into ShpEd.
2. If foo.shp does not use the Panzer General palette, load the appropriate palette using the Load Palette button.
3. Type in or use the up/down arrows to adjust the image number to the value that you want to edit. (Use the View Collage button to preview several images to find the one you want first if you don’t already know the number.)
4. Press the View Shp button to display the image.

5. Press the Save Bmp button and save the image as a bmp file e.g. foo.bmp.
6. Use a paint program to edit foo.bmp and save as foox.bmp.
7. Use the Load Bmp button to load foox.bmp.
8. Click the Convert Bmp to Shp button to convert the image to the shp format.
9. Make sure that the correct shp file (foo.shp) is loaded and the desired Image # is selected. Press the Replace Image button. Doing this will make a copy of foo.shp that contains the revised image. The resulting file is always named “bignew.shp”. To use this file, it will need to be copied to the game’s shp directory and renamed (after removing the original shp file) to the proper name e.g. foo.shp.


After you change the first image you need to load BIGNEW then continue on from there and when you are done you rename BIGNEW to whatever SHP file # you started with but first you have to either rename the original SHP file or delete it

Also, SHPEDIT does NOT use Pallatized BMP's so don't use them

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Thanks! I got it working.

Is there any tutorials on-line for how to make quality icons? My image works, but is seems I need to do some work to make the details stand out more:
http://i.imgur.com/KH1bdUj.jpg
That's supposed to look like a T-64, but I can't really see any details.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

There's a thread over at this site that gives a lot of helpful advice about making good SP icons:

http://spwaw.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.ph...r=asc&&start=0

The thing I found most important is light.

Generally, the higher a feature is on a vehicle the lighter shade it should be. So the top of the turret should have the lightest colour.

When working on an icon, I will create a micro palette of the colours I'm using, like this:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8454/shadingq.png

Then choose a light shade for the highest feature and work down the palette as you work down the vehicle.

Look at the back of the Morris C8 FAT and the Kuebelwagen, notice how you can create a sloping effect by having a lighter colour at the top and then use darker colours as you move towards the rear bumper:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...s/sample.2.png

Notice the lightest colour on the open topped cars is the top of the windshield/windscreen (the highest point). Depth inside the cars is created by putting black or dark gray at the lowest point.

With SP icons always remember that the light source is coming from the northeast, so put the south and the west in deeper shadow. Notice the left hand side of the Morris C8 FAT is lighter than the right side.

Notice the tire behind the cab of the Bedford QLD 3 Ton, there's a tread pattern of light and dark gray, but the light and the dark gray both get darker at the ends of the tire to give the impression of being round.

Same with the mud guards over the Bedford's front wheels. The lightest colour at the top, which gets darker towards the front and back to give a round impression.

I used darker shades for features on the front deck of the Ford GPA (amphibious Jeep). Features create shadow, so should usually be darker, or a mixture of dark and light (like the MG turret on the roof of the Bedford cab).

Make sure you add dark shadow around the tank turret to distinguish it from the hull.

In fact you might want to zoom in on a similar tank icon (that you like) to the one you are making, and see what the artist did to make it look good.


Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Hi Cross, thanks for the info! I really like how you did the canvas on the trucks.

My problem is that I can't seem to turn already-made graphics into good-looking SP icons.

I'm playing a German long campaign, and slowly replacing the icons in game as I use them. I don't have the time for a full-blown mod, so just a little at a time. I've even brought out Close Combat 3 and tried replacing SP icons with those-results are mixed.

Usin GIMP, I can create an SP palette by indexing the colors of a picture of the SP palette by going to indexed mode from RGB. No problem there.

My problem is taking an icon I already have (24 bit) and then having GIMP color the image according to the SP palette. GIMP assigns colors based on luminosity, not what colors actually looks like, leading to some bizarre-looking icons.

I'm better off often letting SP translate the colors to the palette, but if I'm going to touch-up the icons using the techniques you describe, then I need an accurately translated image using the SP palette in my editing program.

Maybe GIMP is the wrong tool? I've seen some plug-ins for Paint.net regarding palette creation and image recoloring, but I was wondering what program you prefer.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Sam,

I’ve never used GIMP, but I’ve read a lot of good things about it. Apparently there’s no real difference between GIMP and Paint.Net in their capabilities, though there’s no doubt that each can do a few things the other can’t. GIMP supposedly has a much longer learning curve as it’s not as user friendly as Paint.Net.

As for applying a palette to an image, Paint.Net can do that, and I've used it, but I have no idea if it works better than GIMP.

Post a ‘before and after’ image that you put through GIMP, and I’ll put it through Paint.Net and we’ll see if PDN does what you want. That will save you installing PDN and the plugins only to find it’s no better than GIMP.

Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Here's an example of a Humvee I made. I loaded it into GIMP and told it to translate to the SP palette
http://i.imgur.com/vjqQv6v.jpg

And here's what it did!

http://i.imgur.com/n4wfY8B.png

The GIMP uses luminosity values and even messes up the pink transparent pixels! That should be a direct 1 for 1 translation there!

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Your original on the left, after applying the SP palette with Paint.Net on the right.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...s_on_right.png

NB. I removed the invisible pink from the SP palette in PDN, because I don't want PDN to use invisible pink for the hands of infantry etc. I just add the pink to the icon afterwards.
If you prefer to have pink in the palette it's easy to add, just make sure you check pink wasn't added to the icon itself.


Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

If you want to try out Paint.Net, it’s a free download here:

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html


APPLY PALETTE

The plugin to apply a Paint.Net palette to an image is found here:

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php...pdate-for-354/

Drop the plugins into the EFFECTS folder, and then after restarting PDN go to the menu: EFFECTS...COLOR...SELECTIVE PALETTE to use the plugin.

I will attach a copy of the complete WinSP palette (232 colours, not including invisible pink and the bright blue collage colour) to this post in a text file.

Put the txt file in your PALETTES folder which may be located:

MY DOCS/PAINT.NET USER FILES/PALETTES



SP Colours in Three Palettes <96

When manually selecting colours in Paint.Net you can only see 96 colours at time; so I'll also attach 3 palettes for manual selection:

Browns
Blues & Grays
Greens & Yellows

but I prefer to paste an image of the palette onto the canvas and just work from that.

Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

It certainly is cool to meet someone else with a passion for making small top-down military images!

Yes, I like Paint.net, but after finally wrapping my mind around GIMP, using Paint.net feels like using my mouse with my left hand! I'm going to need Paint.net because GIMP's been acting up lately--there are so many strange aspects to that program!

Here's an example of what I'm trying to do:

http://i.imgur.com/GLmnYS3.jpg

I want to translate some images to be in SP. I changed the paint scheme to be more SP friendly. It still looks too dark to me, but I'm just starting to learn. I must admit, this is a challenge with such a limited palette!

I'm planning to play a long campaign, and replacing each icon as I encounter it. Most of all, I want the game to feel like I'm actually playing with little metal miniatures!

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

I think you succeeded in making it look like a metal miniature. Looks good. You can probably lighten it up by playing with the brightness and contrast, and then reapplying the SP palette.

Cross

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Andy OR Don,

Is there any CHANCE you guys will CONSIDER making Cross's edited icons part of the next game patch? I think it would be great for making the game look better as it's already one of my favorite games.

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

No. If that's what you want you know where to find them.

Don

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Well at least you gave me an answer....I guess your answer NO is based around NOT enough players wanting this? Or it is NOT worthwhile to add into a patch?

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

READ WHAT I WROTE........ if you want the mod..... you have the option to DL the mod in the section of the forums we provide for people to post them.....simple .....Yes ? If 10,000 players wanted the mod they are free to DL it and install it

Re: How to Edit Icons
 

Great tutorial Cross, thanks.