Yet More Mod Questions

[Endoperez]

I used Redguard in my Nation Replica. It was in the banner, but I easily extracted it, changed background and shadow and zipped it. Check this post's attachment. Only #spr1, but that should be enough for most purposes.

To get unit's Spr1:

Run Dominions II in window. Alt-Tab if it is already running and is not windowed. From visual options, put Filter off and Opacity to 100. Then choose the unit which image you want. Take screenshot (Prt Scr key after F12 in my keyboard) and paste it into graphics program. Remove DomII around the unit. Remove background. Recolor shadow. Save as targa.

If you use MS Paint, the following is the easiest way to remove the background and recolor the shadow:

Choose eraser. Choose "color chooser", and click on the black background of the image. The second color can be anything, white goes well. Use eraser with right mouse button. It should only replace the main color with the second color, that is, background's black to white. You have to use this twice because background has two types (hues?) of black. Do the same for shadow, but use magenta as the second color. Its in lower line of colors, in about middle. Now recolor all white to pure black. The image looks almost the same, only the shadow is now magenta, but it works in the game.

Change picture's size from Ctrl-E. Save as bmp, use IrfanView or similar to convert to tga.

If the game used filter or the opaque wasn't 100, you will have many more blacks in the background. Take a new screen capture.
You could try to recolor the almost-black background to black without going white between, but might miss some almost-black pixels.

[tinkthank]

Hey thanks -- I just saved that text and will try it out at home.
One question: When you say, choose the unit, you mean select it like you were recruiting it? I ask because I think the spr1 is the "normal" pose, and spr2 is when it attacks, but to get the spr2 I would have to make a screen shot of it on the battlefield in action, and I am not sure I knew how to do that.
Well anyhow thanks so much for all your help!

[Endoperez]

I meant that you have to have the info screen with stats, item slots, special abilities etc. open. This can be opened from recruitment, battle orders, battle etc.

[Endoperez]

Oh, and about spr2: you have to take the screenshot in battle, without background and without grid ('w' and 'g'). Be sure you are as close to the earth level as you can go, and compare the battle sprite to the general sprite you should have open in a graph. edit program. That makes it much easier to get the picture close to the right size.

[tinkthank]

OK thank you very much.
After doing some more tests, it looks like I actually cannot do more than half the things I wanted -- my mod will end up making a fairly vanilla-flavored nation without other forms of modding capabilities (castle defense bonus, terrain-coupled abilities, summon allies, etc.); I will work on it, but quietly, and without pretense of finishing it for a while. But thanks for the help until then!

[Gandalf Parker]

http://www.dom2minions.com/~minion/icons/
They are there individually and as a complete zip at the end of the list.

Those are only spr1 since no one has figured out how to mass-grab spr2. Its also abit out of date without some of the latest editions. For spr2 the difference is usually very minor so since you are editing changes anyway its usually easier just to edit the attack-move for spr2 also

[Endoperez]

Tinkthank, I think I know how you can get units with Summon Allies! In Dom:PPP, most pretenders that now get automatic units had "Summon ally". Those units still exist, they just aren't available in the pretender choosing screen. If you find few that summon units that are not used anymore, you can easily mod those two and add the former to your nation's recruitables (#reccom).

Atleast Moloch (120, devil), Father of the Serpents (Horned Serpent).
Many uniques also had this ability, atleast Arch Devils and all Elemental Royalties, but I believe all those have been replaced.
Also, you could replace unit(s) that are rarely used, like Draconians and Draconians Chiefs.

Replacing Ermor would give you many summoning spells, and unholy priests without unholy spells might be a possibility if they reanimate Ermorian undead. And you might just change some unit and everything that uses it, like Wolf, Call of the Wild, Howl, Werewolf and Wolfherds. Call of the Wild and/or Howl could either be changed, removed or made national spells, Werewolf and Wolfherd would be two units that can summon the unit that would replace Wolf.

I'm sorry I can't come up with anything else, it might help if I knew what you were doing...

[tinkthank]

Hm, thanks very much!
I really dont want to mod too many units that can pop up in a game, and certainly none of the units which belong to other playable nations. Therefore I may und up sticking with modding TC, as odd as that will be.
(I had wanted to do a nation of nomadic horse-worshipping plain-dwellers loosely based on the Dakota Oglala religion and culture as told by Black Elk; I wanted to give them a Fort Defense Bonus of -.5 or more, since they should be bad at defending castles, and one of their mage-priests as well as their scout should be able to summon eagles (black hawks are fine); I also wanted them to have a "tracking" ability, but that is out of the question; I also wanted to give their holy warriors mistform, but that is a no-go; for flavor, I think I will end up making their four elemental mage-priests shapeshifters (eagle, bear, serpent, horse). Almost all units of the nation are stealthy (0 to +5), almost all are mounted, almost all use shortbows, almost all have high morale, and almost all have exceptionally poor armor -- so without some sort of extra flavor and very good mages, I think they will end up being a fairly boring nation which no-one will want to play except stealth-lovers, bless-n-priest-lovers and tree-huggers.)

[Endoperez]

Maybe you should go for Pangaea. The sites aren't very fitting, but there are few very good reasons:

Pangaea is currently a stealth nation, and has good, fast, "mounted" sacred units.
Pangaean Heroine Harpy Queen auto-summons Harpies.
Pangaea has multiple special summon spells in its "Carrion Woods" theme. That theme also has lots of units no other nation can get, although I don't think Manikin/Mandragora constuction spells can net you them.

By changing Harpies yo your Eagles you can easily get what you want. If you want to keep heroes, you can replace Pan and Maenads, and make Harpy Queen summon slightly better harpies or something entirely else. If you don't care about heroes, you can make Pan the scout (would only work in turmoil though), Harpy Queen the mage-priest that summons eagles, and Maenads and Harpies to the Eagles that would be summoned.
You can either have Eagles replace Harpies in the recruit, or #clearrec and not add eagle/harpies.

You can use Valley of the Horse Brothers as one of their starting sites, and replace Horse Brother commander with one of their commanders. They could turn out elsewhere, but that site fits your nation and Glowing Hill (Van in Dom:PPP, Daoine Sidhe in DomII?) already does this for other nation's special unit.

Also, please check this post if you already haven't. It is Duncanish's idea about Indian nation: "I've been tinkering with a nation based roughly along the lines of various Native American nations. But, the fantasy twist, it's a nation of shapeshifters. Fans of the White Wolf book line, Werewolf: The Apocolypse will recognize all of these things, as it's drawn from their line. "

[tinkthank]

Hey, thanks for all of the help.
I did check Duncanish's post -- I think we may want differing things.
I am making little or no progress. I DLed Gandalfs handy spr1s, but when I open them, save them as .tgas and use them as references in my mod, activate the mod, and load up my nation to test, the game crashes with a NGF: bad tga. I may be creative enough but just too stupid for this....