has anyone worked upon the graphics or is planning to do so?

baranek · Post by **baranek** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 3:58 am

hi,
i was a great fan of spI at the time beeing...
so...is anyone working upon improving the graphics - adding a higher resolution primary;

if there is a project running i would like to contribute if i can.

cheers
baranek

p.s. great improvement - thanks to all of you which keep this game alive!

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 5:49 am

Nope, WYSIWYG, we are stuck with the palette, and the res. AFAIK!

I am still making a few icons though, you'll see updates peridically. I would like to have 1 more zoom level in, but the powers that be say no.

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

David boutwell · Post by **David boutwell** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 6:37 am

Originally posted by Warhorse:
Nope, WYSIWYG, we are stuck with the palette, and the res. AFAIK! I am still making a few icons though, you'll see updates peridically. I would like to have 1 more zoom level in, but the powers that be say no.

Uhhh...What?? Are all of those acronyms in the manual somewhere, Warhorse??

What did you just say?!! I think that you've done a good job on the icons...I've noticed that your updates are even more detailed than the original ones. And I love all of the icons for obscure equipment that you are doing...Adds spice! Is there any chance that there will ever be any more slots in the oob's so that we can make use of all of those icons without having to create alternate oob's?

Kharan · Post by **Kharan** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 7:22 am

Hey Warhorse, can you do a motorcycle squad icon which has more than one bike? It looks kind of lonely now

. Is it possible to make it draw one bike per every 2 men, and decrease accordingly with casualties?

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 5:14 pm

Kharan, good point, I wish we could do that. I could redo the icon to portray 3 machines, but there is no routine presently, as with the cav, and infantry to reduce size, wish I would of thought about that while we were programming, doh!!

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 5:18 pm

David, way agree with you!! That is the single-most beef I have, the size of the oob's. The way SPWW2 did it was to toally rmake an oob, requiring a totally new editor to edit them in the process. I've messed with theres to see if there was some way to possibly do that with ours, but I'm not a programmer, unfortunately. And their game is neat, except I'm spoiled with our icon mix, and can't deal with the StuG III filling in for every SPG in the world!! Oh well.

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

baranek · Post by **baranek** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 6:07 pm

if understand the structure of the game the right way: all the units and terrain types are stored in .shp files;
what i do not know is how the programme uses these files;
so for the SPGs it should be like adding new shp-files and replacing the pointer to the new files and they should look different;
or am i mistaken?
as already said i dont know how the programme handles these things...

similar it should work for adding some more contrast to the infantry-squads which i would aprecciate as they tend to blend into the terrain a bit.

if anyone could help me with the color palette used and some details on how the programme handels these things i would like to experient a bit;

not sure if this is ok with matrix-games??
is it allowed to make modifications for personal use or not?

cheers
baranek

Supervisor · Post by **Supervisor** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 6:41 pm

The shape files are numbered to index to the OOB's. If you rerally want to dig into this , open them up using Fred Chlanda's shpedit program. It has the SP pallette anfd it is what all of the graphics gurus such as Warhorse uses to edit the files. Have fun

Originally posted by baranek:
if understand the structure of the game the right way: all the units and terrain types are stored in .shp files;
what i do not know is how the programme uses these files;
so for the SPGs it should be like adding new shp-files and replacing the pointer to the new files and they should look different;
or am i mistaken?
as already said i dont know how the programme handles these things...

similar it should work for adding some more contrast to the infantry-squads which i would aprecciate as they tend to blend into the terrain a bit.

if anyone could help me with the color palette used and some details on how the programme handels these things i would like to experient a bit;

not sure if this is ok with matrix-games??
is it allowed to make modifications for personal use or not?

cheers
baranek

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Grenadier
Matrix Games Technical Writer

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 6:53 pm

Baranek, yes the icons are all stored in shp files. If you go into the unit editor supplied with the game, there is a box on the right side of each country for icon, the number in this is each units number the program uses to portray the unit. There is a list supplied with the game, either in the main dir. or doc folder, called "icon data list 10-9-00", or something like that. Open this and you will see 1109 entries, with a series of numbers, name of unit etc. this is what the program uses to 'find' the unit. It's very complicated to try and explain here, if you are familiar with shpedit, and drawing bmp's you might be able to get a handle on it. It's really not very hard once you're used to the routine, but I've been doing this for a number of years now, so it's second nature, and can knock out an icon very quickly depending on detail. The biggest problem is the lousy 256 color palette, you only get one shade of red for instance, no shading, it'll show up as various browns!! So, I draw this really cool vehicle, like the Hungarian stuff, my pets, awesome camo, but once converted from bmp to shp file, the colors are totally different from what I used, so thats the best they will get!;-) Best thing for you to do is go to Fred Chlanda's page, download shpedit, back up your shp files and start experimenting!! You may make icons, just bear in mind that they might get overwritten or whatever, so always back up the files!! Hope this doesn't confuse you too much, but it's hard to explain it, I'm so used to just doing it, you know?!

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

baranek · Post by **baranek** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 7:15 pm

thank you for the information on this!

regarding the palette: is it the standard windows 256 right? (its quite some time i worked with this color set but i will do my best

)

on the first glance the editor looks pretty self-explanaritory...

not sure about the icon numbers though - the numbers of the editor (and in the index file) do not correspond with the icon file-numbers...could you provide a bit more detail on this topic?

cheers
baranek

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Wed Nov 01, 2000 8:12 pm

Originally posted by baranek:
thank you for the information on this!

regarding the palette: is it the standard windows 256 right? (its quite some time i worked with this color set but i will do my best )

on the first glance the editor looks pretty self-explanaritory...

not sure about the icon numbers though - the numbers of the editor (and in the index file) do not correspond with the icon file-numbers...could you provide a bit more detail on this topic?

cheers
baranek

Baranek, yes, another of the little intricacys!! If in the index file it says 0253 0_P-ERROR or something,(I'm at work, the list is not in front of me), this means icon0253.shp, icon 2(the number to enter in Freds editor to view), you must add 2 to the number in the list!! As I said, very confusing at first;-) If you want private E-mail me, I'll try to walk you through it!

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

Grumble · Post by **Grumble** » Thu Nov 02, 2000 12:49 am

"Uhhh...What?? Are all of those acronyms in the manual somewhere, Warhorse?? "
WYSIWYG: "What You See Is What You Get" Software development term.
AFAIK: "As Far As I Know"

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Thu Nov 02, 2000 4:11 am

Uhh, thanks Grumble, sorry about the abbreviations, I'll work on that!!;-)

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue

craig77 · Post by **craig77** » Thu Nov 02, 2000 5:54 am

I have been messing around with creating new icons. My artistic skills are very poor so I have been spending my time camo-ing some of the existing grey icons. When comparing SPWAW & SPWW2 I find that each game has some good icons and some poor icons. I have been taking the icons that I like in SPWW2 and using them to replace the ones I do not like in SPWAW. (example the Priest in SPWW2 is far superior looking). I have also been toying around with scanning top view colored drawings and putting them into the shp files. (They look very nice until I reduce the size of the scan. the detail quality is extremely reduced when I reduce the size of the scanned image).
Also I really dislike the PZ IV images in SPWAW. When compared to top view drawings and photographs, they only remotely resemble a PZ IV. So in this case I replace them with the Icons from SPWW2, which seem to be more accurate.
Now I should say that the guys who have been working on this project, in their spare time, have done an excellent job and my statements above should not detract from that. I am just trying to fine tune an already super game to suit my likes.
There is much artistic talent out there and those who have created or modified icons should make them available to everyone and to the fine makers of this game.

Warhorse · Post by **Warhorse** » Thu Nov 02, 2000 5:51 pm

You are aware there are camo versions of the grey in the game already, right??!! The Germans didn't use camo till Feb.'43, they had it in the '30's, but didn't use in combat when they went to war. Not even near done with the icons yet, will be quite awhile, I'm still working at redoing the Soviets, Just did the JS II, JSU 152, and the SU-76 last night. Also interestingly enough, that M7 was from the original set of SPWW2, I haven't done much with the U.S.!!! Have fun.

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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue