Any guide to making flags?

[JadeKing]

Does anyone know of a site that explains how to make the flags used in this game? I would like to continue the work of RyanCrierie's flag mod, but got nu clue where to begin

[ericbabe]

To mod flags you'll need to look at Data/AcwFlags.txt in a spreadsheet program.  The columns indicate which types of units can have these flags assigned to them during the game.  There are many rows labeled "unused" and new flags can go in these rows.

Graphics for the flags can be found in the folder Gfx/Flags.  New flags should be added to each of these files:

ACWFlags.pcx               -- flag on the command boxes
ACW_Flags_Strat.pcx     -- for flags on the strategic map
ACW_Flags_Tiny.pcx      -- smaller version
ACW_HWFlags.pcx         -- flags as they appear in detailed battle

You'll also need to add alpha channels for the flags in these files in the exact spot that the new flag appears in the above corresponding file:

ACWFlags_a.pcx
ACW_Flags_Strat_a.pcx
ACW_Flags_Tiny_a.pcx
ACW_HWFlags_a.pcx

An alpha channel is just a grayscale value that determines how transparent the pixel is going to be.  A value of (255,255,255) is perfectly opaque, (128,128,128) is 50% transparent, and so forth.

All the files are layed out on a rectangular grid, though the size of the grid varies from file to file.  It should be easy to figure out the grid size for each file.  The empty black rectangle in the bottom right of each file corresponds to all the "unused" rows in the AcwFlags.txt file.

The flags are numbered from left to right, top to bottom.  So the first flag in the upper left hand corner is 1, the flag immediately to its right is 2.  Going down a row adds 30 to the flag number since there are 30 flags in each row.  This number corresponds to the id column in the AcwFlags.txt file.

I generally found it was easiest to do many flags in the biggest size, then select the entire image and re-size it to fit the other three sizes, copying and pasting over the old files appropriately.  Much easier than scaling each flag separately four times.

Hope this helps.  Good luck modding!

[JadeKing]

Thanks for the reply. I will try looking into it, and see what I can make of it.