Edited Wires.sym
Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2003 7:38 pm
I downloaded WiR 3.2 sometime ago with Pac War.
After playing Pac War for a halve year I decided to try out WiR.
Like Pac War a game with great strategic deep, but also like Pac War a
sure way to suffering and self-torture while you are learning the game.
However, I was very disappointed about the HQ function.
Because the color contrast between highlighted and non highlighted units is quit poor.
After finding out that GREDIT.exe is a tool to edit these icons and the way use it, I fixed this issue for me.
In this forum I found Richard W. Dionne Alternative Icons and WiR 3.3.
A good and impressive work. The only problem is that the zoomed in icons were still using the old color scheme.
I continued his work by editing the zoomed icons,.
Actually, I only changed the color of the zoomed ground tiles from sand yellow to a dirt/green.
On top I did some small modifications.
1. The border color of highlighted units was changed from bright blue to a more dark water blue.
2. The color of the HQ letters on HQ units was change from black to white for more visibility.
3. The icons of non zoomed cities titles was somehow missing streets? They have now streets.
4. Changed the color of fin units to much a darker grey color in contrast to the German units.
5. Edited zoomed rail lines cons a bit modified. You will probably not notice the change.
6. Gave zoomed cities icons a bit more coloring and rearranged the houses.
To install download the Zip-file below and extract it in your WiR directory.
The Zip includes the wires.sym (zoomed and normal map tiles and on map unit icons), wiret.sym (zoomed map icons),
three example GIF images showing the map in normal view, zoomed in and one picture showing the unit icon.
A primitive desktop icon for WiR and this text as rreadme.txt.
I used Richard W. Dionne Alternative Icons as base.
Copyright 2002, Richard W. Dionne.
For editing I used GREDIT.exe. There was no documentation how to use it or what this
program actually is. Took me 1 hour of experimenting to find out how it works.
If you want to edit the icons located in the *.sym files yourself, here what I have found out.
What is found where?
Air1.sym =Aircrafts icons
Tank1.sym =German tank and gun icons
Tank2.sym =Russian tank and gun icons
Wires.sym =Zoomed and normal map tiles and on map unit icons
Wiret.sym =Zoomed map tiles
PZes.sym and PZet.sym are remains of the original WiR and not longer used I think.
Start GREDIT.exe
It is a DOS program. It works on W2k and you will not see right now much.
Press Shift+R than type the file name and enter to load the icon file of your choice.
If you are running GREDIT.exe from a different directory that your WiR install folder you need to type the full path!
For now load Wires.sym.
What you see. In the upper part you see a collage of all icons stored in the file. Below on the left side are 2 small boxes and 1 big one.
The big box is were all painting is done. The upper small box previews how it will
look later in the game. The small box below of shows the current paint color.
To pick an icon from the collage use the following keys I, K, L and M.
When you have the cursor over the icon use SHIFT+G to load it.
With the arrow keys you can move the brush in the editing area.
The keys Home, End, Page Up and Page Down are used for diagonal movement.
To move the brush without painting over a pixel press O to toggle painting On/Off
To select a color press the keys from 1 to 0. Use Shift to get more choices.
Some colors look exactly like other but they behavior is different (explanation below).
When you have played WiR before, you have already noticed that the map change its color based on the current weather. With the Z key you can do this too.
GREDIT.exe starts in "Clear" weather mode.
Press one time for Rain/Mud, a second time for Snow, a third time for Blizzard and a forth time back to Clear weather again.
When you have two colors that look in Clear Weather the same,
they will look different depending on the current weather. For example the color SHIFT+4 and color 5.
When you load GREDIT.exe the first the color palette may look strange. Just press 4 times Z to fix it.
After you are done painting press SHIFT+W to update the icon collage.
Notice it will update the icon on which the cursor is currently over.
You can use this to copy one icon from one place to an other.
When you want to edit several Icons at once press SHIFT+V to enlarge the cursor in the collage area.
When you are finished press SHIFT+S to save. Type the file name and press enter.
Notice if this file already exists it will overwrite it without confirmation!!!
Hotkey List
SHIFT+R = LOAD FILE
SHIFT+S = SAVE FILE
SHIFT+V = CHANGE CURSOR SIZE
SHIFT+G = LOAD CURRENTLY SELECTED ICON/S IN THE PAINTING BOX
SHIFT+W = UPDATE SELECTED ICON/S IN COLLAGE WITH CURRENT ICON/S IN THE PAINTING BOX
Z = CHANGE WEATHER COLOR PALETTE
I, K, L, M = MOVE CURSOR
ARROW KEYS = MOVE BRUSH HORIZONTAL, VERTICAL
HOME, END,
PAGE UP,
PAGE DOWN = MOVE BRUSH DIAGONAL
O = TOGGLE PAINTING MODE ON/OFF
NUMBER KEYS = SELECT COLORS
SHIFT+NUMBER = MORE COLORS
SHIFT+Q THAN
ENTER = QUIT
After that I have some questions about the game.
Actually I quite overwhelmed at the moment
I wanted to play the '41 Campaign from the Russian side, but I don't know how I should setup the defense.
Maybe someone can give me some pointers.
Should I immediately move with the units from the Moscow, Orel, Kharkov and N.Caucasus HQ
to the Leningrad Kiev Railroad line? Placing them in the addicting Wood, Swamp hexes or better
on the Railroad hexes?
What is with the units from STAVKA, RVGK, T.Caucasus and Volga HQ? To the Leningrad-Kiev Front,
or better form with them already the second line?
Last question for the Soviets. What to do with the extra HQ's?
I was planning to place them near the Leningrad-Kiev Line so that each HQ has not more than 4-5 Corps
under control, all within 5 hexes. In addition, I wanted to give each HQ 3 extra unit as reserve.
Is this OK or bad, and does it matter which HQ I take. Makes it a difference if I use Kalinin, Steppes
or maybe Don HQ?
One question about the Germans.
How where should I place the 1. Div. Corps in the rear area to fight partisans?
If someone have written something like the PACIFIC WAR PLAYER CHECKLIST and TACTICS (version 11)
from Byron Inglesh please tell me where to download it. This checklist was so good that it cover with one exception every question I had.
The only one thing missing was the fake Monsoon in Burma Bases
from 1. March to 31.May. At first a really painful discovery.
Dragoon
The Matrix server seems to have problems. I couldn't upload the Zip file.
I uploaded it to a GeoCities account.
http://www.geocities.com/strange0012001/
Edit: New download link. Since my English skills improved by a small margin from the time I made this post, I used them to improve readability of this said post. For a good laugh checkout the readme.txt for an unedited version.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3b8tb9cpxqu9hcm
After playing Pac War for a halve year I decided to try out WiR.
Like Pac War a game with great strategic deep, but also like Pac War a
sure way to suffering and self-torture while you are learning the game.
However, I was very disappointed about the HQ function.
Because the color contrast between highlighted and non highlighted units is quit poor.
After finding out that GREDIT.exe is a tool to edit these icons and the way use it, I fixed this issue for me.
In this forum I found Richard W. Dionne Alternative Icons and WiR 3.3.
A good and impressive work. The only problem is that the zoomed in icons were still using the old color scheme.
I continued his work by editing the zoomed icons,.
Actually, I only changed the color of the zoomed ground tiles from sand yellow to a dirt/green.
On top I did some small modifications.
1. The border color of highlighted units was changed from bright blue to a more dark water blue.
2. The color of the HQ letters on HQ units was change from black to white for more visibility.
3. The icons of non zoomed cities titles was somehow missing streets? They have now streets.
4. Changed the color of fin units to much a darker grey color in contrast to the German units.
5. Edited zoomed rail lines cons a bit modified. You will probably not notice the change.
6. Gave zoomed cities icons a bit more coloring and rearranged the houses.
To install download the Zip-file below and extract it in your WiR directory.
The Zip includes the wires.sym (zoomed and normal map tiles and on map unit icons), wiret.sym (zoomed map icons),
three example GIF images showing the map in normal view, zoomed in and one picture showing the unit icon.
A primitive desktop icon for WiR and this text as rreadme.txt.
I used Richard W. Dionne Alternative Icons as base.
Copyright 2002, Richard W. Dionne.
For editing I used GREDIT.exe. There was no documentation how to use it or what this
program actually is. Took me 1 hour of experimenting to find out how it works.
If you want to edit the icons located in the *.sym files yourself, here what I have found out.
What is found where?
Air1.sym =Aircrafts icons
Tank1.sym =German tank and gun icons
Tank2.sym =Russian tank and gun icons
Wires.sym =Zoomed and normal map tiles and on map unit icons
Wiret.sym =Zoomed map tiles
PZes.sym and PZet.sym are remains of the original WiR and not longer used I think.
Start GREDIT.exe
It is a DOS program. It works on W2k and you will not see right now much.
Press Shift+R than type the file name and enter to load the icon file of your choice.
If you are running GREDIT.exe from a different directory that your WiR install folder you need to type the full path!
For now load Wires.sym.
What you see. In the upper part you see a collage of all icons stored in the file. Below on the left side are 2 small boxes and 1 big one.
The big box is were all painting is done. The upper small box previews how it will
look later in the game. The small box below of shows the current paint color.
To pick an icon from the collage use the following keys I, K, L and M.
When you have the cursor over the icon use SHIFT+G to load it.
With the arrow keys you can move the brush in the editing area.
The keys Home, End, Page Up and Page Down are used for diagonal movement.
To move the brush without painting over a pixel press O to toggle painting On/Off
To select a color press the keys from 1 to 0. Use Shift to get more choices.
Some colors look exactly like other but they behavior is different (explanation below).
When you have played WiR before, you have already noticed that the map change its color based on the current weather. With the Z key you can do this too.
GREDIT.exe starts in "Clear" weather mode.
Press one time for Rain/Mud, a second time for Snow, a third time for Blizzard and a forth time back to Clear weather again.
When you have two colors that look in Clear Weather the same,
they will look different depending on the current weather. For example the color SHIFT+4 and color 5.
When you load GREDIT.exe the first the color palette may look strange. Just press 4 times Z to fix it.
After you are done painting press SHIFT+W to update the icon collage.
Notice it will update the icon on which the cursor is currently over.
You can use this to copy one icon from one place to an other.
When you want to edit several Icons at once press SHIFT+V to enlarge the cursor in the collage area.
When you are finished press SHIFT+S to save. Type the file name and press enter.
Notice if this file already exists it will overwrite it without confirmation!!!
Hotkey List
SHIFT+R = LOAD FILE
SHIFT+S = SAVE FILE
SHIFT+V = CHANGE CURSOR SIZE
SHIFT+G = LOAD CURRENTLY SELECTED ICON/S IN THE PAINTING BOX
SHIFT+W = UPDATE SELECTED ICON/S IN COLLAGE WITH CURRENT ICON/S IN THE PAINTING BOX
Z = CHANGE WEATHER COLOR PALETTE
I, K, L, M = MOVE CURSOR
ARROW KEYS = MOVE BRUSH HORIZONTAL, VERTICAL
HOME, END,
PAGE UP,
PAGE DOWN = MOVE BRUSH DIAGONAL
O = TOGGLE PAINTING MODE ON/OFF
NUMBER KEYS = SELECT COLORS
SHIFT+NUMBER = MORE COLORS
SHIFT+Q THAN
ENTER = QUIT
After that I have some questions about the game.
Actually I quite overwhelmed at the moment
I wanted to play the '41 Campaign from the Russian side, but I don't know how I should setup the defense.
Maybe someone can give me some pointers.
Should I immediately move with the units from the Moscow, Orel, Kharkov and N.Caucasus HQ
to the Leningrad Kiev Railroad line? Placing them in the addicting Wood, Swamp hexes or better
on the Railroad hexes?
What is with the units from STAVKA, RVGK, T.Caucasus and Volga HQ? To the Leningrad-Kiev Front,
or better form with them already the second line?
Last question for the Soviets. What to do with the extra HQ's?
I was planning to place them near the Leningrad-Kiev Line so that each HQ has not more than 4-5 Corps
under control, all within 5 hexes. In addition, I wanted to give each HQ 3 extra unit as reserve.
Is this OK or bad, and does it matter which HQ I take. Makes it a difference if I use Kalinin, Steppes
or maybe Don HQ?
One question about the Germans.
How where should I place the 1. Div. Corps in the rear area to fight partisans?
If someone have written something like the PACIFIC WAR PLAYER CHECKLIST and TACTICS (version 11)
from Byron Inglesh please tell me where to download it. This checklist was so good that it cover with one exception every question I had.
The only one thing missing was the fake Monsoon in Burma Bases
from 1. March to 31.May. At first a really painful discovery.
Dragoon
The Matrix server seems to have problems. I couldn't upload the Zip file.
I uploaded it to a GeoCities account.
http://www.geocities.com/strange0012001/
Edit: New download link. Since my English skills improved by a small margin from the time I made this post, I used them to improve readability of this said post. For a good laugh checkout the readme.txt for an unedited version.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?3b8tb9cpxqu9hcm
About th 89th Soviet Army think this is more a OOB problem. 
In the meanwhile you might find