10-06-2003 08:00									#1
	Time for a stupid question - ToT Got spare money?

Is there ANY way at all to control the placement of the health bar in Test of Time? If there's no in-game method, is there a utility that will do that for me? Now that my scenario is starting to take shape, I want to fix stupid problems like this

	10-06-2003 08:32									#2
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No , but...

1) You can change its appearance. See the thread here -> "Improving Unit Colour Visibility"

2) Ask Mercator. He's written a Sprite Editor (A sprite editor is born!) IIRC, the unit key lies atop the sprite. You might be able to lower the unit key (it is in an awful place) by using a 'shorter unit'. Is that possible, Merc? I'd love to try that if it's not too daunting.

	10-06-2003 16:55									#3
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Yep, that's true... While all sprites are originally 64x64 pixels. You can really make them any size you want.

The sprite is always positioned against the bottom and left edges of a square. So while you could, in principle, make a giant 256x256 "monster" unit, only the lower-left 64x64 would look right and the rest of it will be screwed by the surrounding graphics.

You could make, say, a 64x32 unit. Which would then be half as high, and accordingly, the health bar would appear half as high as well... But that will only be the case for that one particular changed sprite graphic.

Now I think of it... About the extra-large graphics looking screwed-up... Maybe that can be used to hide the health bar.
That is, if you would change a unit sprite to 128 pixels high, the health bar should appear one square too high. But then it might actually be obscured by the other unit/terrain graphics, essentially hiding it from view.

I'll have to test that... I have a funny feeling it won't work and will just look ugly.

	10-06-2003 20:55									#4
	Tired of ads?

It certainly sounds worth investigating. Maybe it will work, with enough transparent 'pink' in between. If they're bigger, will it mean fewer units are available?

	11-06-2003 00:05									#5
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quote: If they're bigger, will it mean fewer units are available?

No, since it will only work in the sprite files. You can't change the size of units in the units.bmp file.

So to get that to work you'd have to use the "Static.spr" for your unit graphics.

	11-06-2003 01:44									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

I posted my findings in this thread in the ToT forum.