01-11-2004 00:21									#1711
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Love those tanks Fairline. please continue to post MGE versions PLEASE!

	01-11-2004 00:42									#1712
	Remove this text

The MGE versions are easily made by changing the palette in PSP.

Saving a bmp palette first may be needed.

Or just changing to ToT!

	01-11-2004 01:40									#1713
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

They need a bit of tweaking with the colours however pre- and -post pallette loading; I'll post MGE versions soon.

	01-11-2004 02:13									#1714
	MGE Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Sooner than I thought:

Attachment: fairline mge russian tanks 2.gif
This has been downloaded 245 time(s).

	01-11-2004 02:15									#1715
	ToT Put an end to popups!

...and some POS tweaks to the ToT versions:

EDIT: Deleted - see Catfish's post below

Last edited by fairline on 01-11-2004 at 22:49

	01-11-2004 07:18									#1716
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Me rikey very much

	01-11-2004 15:28									#1717
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

No stopping this chap!

There are no better tanks in the CIV2 community!

	01-11-2004 17:13									#1718
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: Originally posted by fairline EDIT: What is it about png files that makes them seem so dark when viewed on 'Poly?

I had this problem before, but now I know why. It's not Poly, it's PNG (with gamma setting) + Internet Explorer. PNG files may contain a gamma setting which can be used by various applications to adjust mid-tone brightness to levels consistent with the platform on which they're displayed. For example, PCs use a higher gamma level than Macs, meaning that the same graphics would appear darker on the latter. If the PNG file's gamma setting is used correctly, the application should adjust the levels accordingly. As far as I'm aware, the darkness problem only occurs with IE and not other browsers. If someone attempts to copy/save picture as… your PNGs from IE they will get the ****ed up versions. Blame Microsoft.

The Horsa I posted earlier doesn't suffer from this problem. Why? It's got no gamma setting. If you save your PNGs in PSP, Photoshop or MS Paint, these programs will apply one. I use PNGout to convert my bitmaps to PNG and it strips out this setting. Not only is the gamma problem avoided, but PNGout applies superior compression. The downside is that it can take some time to process files like Civ2 graphics – probably because those magenta and purple backgrounds are highly compressible. Solution: use PNGout or attach a ZIP containing the bitmaps as you did before.

I've attached your Russian tanks, converted to PNG using PNGout. IE users should see a difference. How did I get the originals? I saved the webpage and grabbed the PNG out of the files folder (thereby bypassing IE).

	01-11-2004 17:21									#1719
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Catfish, you are a graphic wizard, sir!

	01-11-2004 22:14									#1720
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Nice one Catfish

	01-11-2004 22:46									#1721
	Testing... Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

pngout created png. Hopefully without the gamma correction problem.

EDIT: Wrong. Again. See below...

Last edited by fairline on 02-11-2004 at 13:02

	01-11-2004 23:28									#1722
	Inflate your Upload Space

That JU-88 and B-25 are the best I've ever seen. Great work, Gareth.

Keep 'em coming.

	02-11-2004 00:22									#1723
	Increase the size of your Attachments

The aircraft simply rule, it has to be said!

	02-11-2004 03:25									#1724
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quote: Originally posted by Exile That JU-88 and B-25 are the best I've ever seen. Great work, Gareth.

I agree. Too bad they can't be used for MGE.

	02-11-2004 03:31									#1725
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

One of the many advantages of ToT - Better units!

	02-11-2004 06:20									#1726
	Actually . . . . . Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Yes, those PNGs CAN be use with MGE. I've done it before now.

All you have to do is fiddle with them a bit. Re-size the rectangle and let my graphix prog take care of the details. I seem to recall that saving the image as a BMP solves the problem neatly.

	02-11-2004 08:41									#1727
	Re: Actually . . . . . Suffering from ads?

quote: Originally posted by Exile All you have to do is fiddle with them a bit. Re-size the rectangle and let my graphix prog take care of the details. I seem to recall that saving the image as a BMP solves the problem neatly.

And what program would that be specifically?

	02-11-2004 11:56									#1728
	Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: Originally posted by curtsibling Catfish, you are a graphic wizard, sir!

Not really. It turns out that this is a pretty well-known problem amongst web-designers.

quote: Originally posted by fairline Hopefully without the gamma correction problem.

Nope, still too dark. It's command line stuff here, not drag-and-drop (just in case ). By default PNGout uses the /k0 option which removes all unnecessary chunks – including the gAMA chunk responsible for gamma levels. You should have something like this:

pngout fairline_spotbollock_tanks.png fairline_spotbollock_tanks.png

This will overwrite the original one and wipe the gamma setting. It's the same for converting bitmaps. I'll attach a fixed version again.

quote: Originally posted by jimmywax And what program would that be specifically?

Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop should do nicely.

	02-11-2004 13:00									#1729
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

quote: Originally posted by Catfish Nope, still too dark. It's command line stuff here, not drag-and-drop (just in case ).

Ah, thanks Catfish - I did indeed just drop and drag the bmp onto pngout. Oops. Always pays to read the instructions first I suppose

quote: Yes, those PNGs CAN be use with MGE. I've done it before now.

Phenix: The issue isn't whether you can use the png file - you certainly can if you load up the MGE 8-bit palette, tweak a few colours and cut and paste into a smaller MGE slot. The problem is png files appear much darker when posted onto a website when viewed with Internet Explorer, as Catfish explains above. If a viewer subsequently right-clicks and saves a png, he/she actually saves a darker version of the original graphics file. This is all made doubly confusing by the fact that the png file I originally create prior to posting has the correct brightness when I view it in psp....

BTW, I already made MGE conversions of these ToT gfx:

	02-11-2004 13:32									#1730
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

quote: Originally posted by fairline Ah, thanks Catfish - I did indeed just drop and drag the bmp onto pngout. Oops. Always pays to read the instructions first I suppose

If you're allergic to command line programs you could try PNGGauntlet which incorporates PNGout. It uses a GUI. I've downloaded it, but yet to try it. Looks like it's got batch processing.

quote: Originally posted by fairline If a viewer subsequently right-clicks and saves a png, he/she actually saves a darker version of the original graphics file. This is all made doubly confusing by the fact that the png file I originally create prior to posting has the correct brightness when I view it in psp....

That's because you're downloading (edit: I meant copying. The original file is downloaded to the browser cache. You would then copy the messed up version from IE.) the abused altered version from the webpage.

BTW, I suspect Exile's talking about resizing the Ju-88 and B-25, but just in case...

BMP is the standard graphical format for ToT. The reason we're posting them as PNGs is file size. These PNGs are 24-bit, compressed (better than ZIP with PNGout) and lossless. BMPs are uncompressed and the file size is huge by comparison. The PNG icons can be pasted straight into a ToT units.bmp file. After you've loaded the Civ2 palette (for older versions) it doesn't matter whether you save it as a GIF or a BMP (except GIFs are much smaller uncompressed).

	02-11-2004 20:20									#1731
	Put an end to popups!

Thanks Cat. Now can you fix up the JU-88 and B-25 too?



About my graphix prog; No idea what its name is. I got it as part of my scanner package. There are no less than two other graphix progs on my comp. The original one that I used is a mystery. No idea where that one came from, but the third one came with a webcam package and its too cumbersome to use. It does bad things too. The scanner-package-graphix prog though, seems to do just about anything I need it to, although figuring out how to make it perform was a mystery at first.

You guys all know these minute details about your graphix progs and that's cool. I'm just shooting in the dark.

	02-11-2004 22:16									#1732
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Without permission I converted and resized these fantastic units to MGE compatibility. If you mind, Gareth, I'll remove them immediately.

Attachment: fairline-ju-88-b-25.gif
This has been downloaded 232 time(s).

Last edited by Eivind IV on 02-11-2004 at 22:22

	02-11-2004 22:54									#1733
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by Exile Thanks Cat. Now can you fix up the JU-88 and B-25 too?

Phenix, I'm already working on reduced-size versions of the Ju-88 and B-25 for Curt - I'll be sure to send you copies when finished. It's not simply a case of size-reduction (about 85% of the original in this case, using pixel-resize rather than smart-resize ); there's a lot of post-reduction work to make the re-size look presentable.

	02-11-2004 23:01									#1734
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Ah, posted before the page had loaded Eivind's resizes - they aint too bad, although they came out green when I loaded up the civ palette into the ToT originals. Did you use the ToT versions I posted as pngs without removing the gamma-correction feature? They look pretty dark (and brown ) so I'm guessing you did

	03-11-2004 00:08									#1735
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You got me there! And they do indeed look a bit brown. That damn "lesser-civ-version" (as you so eloquently put it ), -palette

Want me to remove them?

	03-11-2004 00:39									#1736
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I stick to regular Bitmaps - And avoid all that PNG palaver!

Here is something from my current efforts -
A Gotha 229 fighter/bomber, tweaked from Fairline's B1 Spirit...

	03-11-2004 02:37									#1737
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Nice

	03-11-2004 02:45									#1738
	Increase Your PM Length

And before I am asked to - Here is the MGE version too!

Attachment: gotha2.gif
This has been downloaded 205 time(s).

	03-11-2004 04:07									#1739
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Very nice!

	03-11-2004 05:10									#1740
	Suffering from ads?

@ catfish: Do you use PSP 8 to apply those textures? I have a copy of PSP 7 that is actually kind of a pain in the arse to use. I usually get frustrated and switch back to my old, old, old version of Adobe photoshop. I'm not sure if it is easier to use or if it just has fewer features to confuse me.