Working on my Bug Hunt scenario, I thought I'd pass along my technique for making complicated graphical changes for TOAW3.
Here's my technique.
A. First I determine what kind of tile file I need to mod. There are bascially two types: Surface tiles like grass, mountains, arid, etc., and tiles which overlay on top of the surface tiles like cultivated, roads, cities, etc.
In this case I am making "furniture" for my Bug Hunt Scenario and am using the cultivated tile set because it overlays.
B. Next you need to convert the tile set to "24 bits" because the graphic files in TOAW will not allow you to directly paint over top of them. So I normally open the file, and save to "alt graphics" with 24 bit color.
C. Now off we go. I want to make a Table, so I open my scenario and I place 3 cultivated tiles where the table will be. It looks like this:
D. Now I open paint and I begin to do the table. This is the tough part. Notice there are 7 steps.
1. Make the table.
2. Copy a surface hex for the game.
3. Place the surface hexes in the same arrangement as that in the game.
4. Copy and paste the table onto the hexes.
5. Copy the table/hex at least 3 times (because at least 3 hexes/tiles will need to be modified.
6. Copy/paste the surface hex such that each part of the table is isolated.
7. Cut away the surface so that each piece of the table is left isolated.
E. Now we need to place the 3 table images on the cultivated tile so that they appear in the game. Look first at your room with the 3 cultivated hexes. Now look at the cultivated tiles .bmp and identify the 3 corresponding images.
Here they are circled in red:
F. Now we copy and place each of the 3 pieces of the table onto the cultivated.bmp like this:
G. Now we need to move the images about until they are exactly placed on the cultivated.bmp to appear like we want them. Note, to do this, each time you make a change to the .bmp file, you must restart the game editor for the file to take effect. It's a little tedious, but you learn quickly how to move back and forth between paint and the game, adjusting the images until they all fit correctly.
H. When you are finished it looks like this:
Well.. That's it. Graphic mod complete.
Don't be afraid to mess with the graphics, just remember to always save them to the altgraphics file so they don't overwrite your original files.
Cya!
Ray (alias Lava)