21-10-1999 06:52									#1
	Meddler sees strange icon effects Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

This question is somewhat advanced and not at all something someone who just leaves the game alone and plays it will see. I hope I get an answer from the design team or a representative!

I have been fiddling about with graphics and icons trying to put in my own units into the game. Basically, I have tried to replace an animation with another one. For instance, I wanted to put in "sectoids" into the Extended game as I like XCOM. I replaced the "explorer."

So, I entered the stats in Rules.txt, got everything working right with ownership, use, assignment, etc,etc... Then I went to the graphics. I got an animation from the Fantasy game - that trolllike monster cuz it looks kinda like a tall grey sectoid. I figured out which animation each unit was and replaced the explorer animation... it worked!

Then I replaced the picture of the explorer in the .bmp with the very picture of sectoids from the XCOM scenario released on the Fantasy Worlds release. So, I got the picture of the sectoid bunch in the civilopedia and the city build screen. Okay, so far, so good.

Now here's the problem. I still get the old "explorer" picture in the city screens to do with support and who is present. And strangely, when the animation is at rest, it turns into the old 'explorer'! When it gets active and moves, poof! Turns into the trolllike stand-in for the sectoids, but at rest, back to the explorer.

So, there seems to be three sets of graphics coming into the game. One from the .bmp, one from the animation, and another for the city screens and icons-at-rest from somewhere else. Where else are pictures coming in from? I can't seem to find out how to replace these last pictures with my new unit.

	21-10-1999 09:50									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

To save you from hunting through the forum archives I quote from a previous post by John Possidente -

"The units.bmp is used for build menus and other pop up items. The static frame used on the map does not come from units.bmp at least not initially. The static frame is first looked for in static.spr if there is no static.spr then it should look to the units.bmp file. So in addition to renaming the unit*.spr files so they are not used you will have to rename the static.spr file in each directory as well so your static frames fall back to the units.bmp file.

If all of those files are missing and there is also no units.bmp in the game folder, the game falls back on the old units.gif.
It's just there as a last-ditch safety net.

To Summarise :

The static image of a unit comes
from:

(1) the unit##.spr file, or
(2) static.spr, or
(3) units.bmp in the scenario folder, or
(4) units.gif in the scenario folder, or
(5) units.bmp/units.gif in the game type folder
(game type being original, scifi, or fantasy), or
(6) units.bmp/units.gif in the Civ II ToT root folder.
The game looks for these in this order."

	21-10-1999 10:06									#3
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Thanks a lot! I appreciate your help. I'm glad it was something simple. To tell you the truth, I replace a lot of my units with my own creations, something I've been doing since I first got Civ II, and it was driving me nuts with all my "new" animations reverting to wierd and not appropriate graphics when they stopped moving. Thanks again!