Changing unit icons?

[CaptainPeche]

I was thinking about adding some flavor to the game and changing the icons of USN, USMC and PHI units to a different color, but there are no unique .bmp files for these nations (check the pic for what I'm referring to)

Untitled.png (777.45 KiB) Viewed 306 times

I take it that I have to know the "codes" of the "nationalities' in question and I was wondering if anyone has any information on what those might be.

[Platoonist]

I take it that I have to know the "codes" of the "nationalities' in question and I was wondering if anyone has any information on what those might be.

Perhaps a developer will chime in, but I have the distinct impression that these are hardcoded. You can edit the color or look of an icon set but I don't think you can subdivide the set that is assigned by the game's code to a group of nationalities into seperate .bmp files.

[CaptainPeche]

I take it that I have to know the "codes" of the "nationalities' in question and I was wondering if anyone has any information on what those might be.

These are hardcoded. You can edit the color or look of an icon set but I don't think you can subdivide the set that is assigned by the game's code to a group of nationalities into seperate .bmp files.

Yikes.

[Platoonist]

Years ago, I recall a thread where the developers listed all the seperate nationality slots they would have liked to have added to the game. Germany, Manchuko, Thailand, the Indian National Army, Chinese puppet regimes, even Mexico. I got the impression that time, space and coding constraints meant paring it down to what was deemed the most neccessary. I've often wondered if that is the reason why there are so many spare icon sets in the art folder.

[CaptainPeche]

From a purely technical standpoint (I'm talking from my own experience, maybe the game engine is a complicated hard-to-understand mess of a code) it shouldn't be that hard to add those nations in the game (at least some of them, since there are three empty slots in the editor available), but properly simulating them is another matter. For example, Thailand joined the war late and wasn't too enthusiastic to actually fight for Japan, and one can only guess how that can be simulated. Then there are the Indians who should appear when Japan pushes inside India - another sort of new mechanic they have to add. It might be relatively easy to make now, in 2024, but back than it probably would be fairly difficult to implement.

That would've been a cool addition to WITP:AE 2 or something like that, but frankly speaking this map simulator is not going to be a particularly popular or well-selling game.