Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 5:18 pm Post subject:
Custom units
Hello everyone,
I was wondering how I could add in new units to customize my (sp only, no cheating) DTA experience. I already played with the Rules.ini to add the Badger as a Soviet unit and make it able to drop napalm.
Aside from the INI editing, what should I know when trying to modify DTA ? Does it work like TS/RA2 modding ? Is there anything specific to consider ?
DTA is a TS mod, so modding it like it's TS works, but you should know that CloakStop is replaced with TooBigForCarryalls. _________________ C&C community is rotten. QUICK_EDIT
CloakStop never worked in TS in the first place, so that's not really anything to worry about
But yeah, modding DTA is pretty much like modding TS as long as you take the added features into account (just take existing objects in DTA as an example in such cases). _________________ QUICK_EDIT
I don't have the time nor the knowledge for testing these out. But I'm sure someone could check? If SHP Builder is right, then these two should show up. I don't have any stats for it. So maybe just a Nod Buggy clone would work for now?
They are in the wrong format (unit not centered, no separate shadow frames) and in the wrong palette to work in DTA.
Extract a unit from DTA and look how it is done. Then change your SHP accordingly.
You can find the DTA unittem.pal palette in MIX\Cache.mix
In ecache02.mix you can find bike.shp which is a similar unit and shows you how to change yours. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
look at the DTA bike again. The first frame isn't exactly north (A quirk of the TS engine 32 facing hack).
Your shadows wobble and don't fit to the unit.
If you want the unit remappable, you have to use the purple color range in the bottom left of the palette.
Those look usable, although the icons have a transparent outline (in other words, the outer pixels of the icons use color #0), which might cause slight graphical glitches ingame.
I also notice some slight wobbling for both units between certain frames (for the infantry it's mostly when it fires and during the death frames).
Is there no way to automatically center all frames without having to fix them by hand when converting graphics from Dune? _________________ QUICK_EDIT
If there is some setting in Image Shaper that can center the sprite without causing it to wobble around; then I'm all ears. It does have a "prevent TS wobbling," option, but that hasn't really done much for me.
I'll try to adjust the Sardaukar. A few frames look chopped.
If there is some setting in Image Shaper that can center the sprite without causing it to wobble around; then I'm all ears. It does have a "prevent TS wobbling," option, but that hasn't really done much for me.
That's not possible.
Dune has all images perfectly cropped around the object and stores offset values for each frame, telling the game how this frame needs to be adjusted to fit to the other frames.
Without those offset values, Image Shaper can't know what the main center of the unit is and how to position it correct in the image.
A human knows the head of an infantry has to be centered in each frame and extrusions like a long weapon can go far to the side. A program that simply centers an image according to the topleft and bottomright most pixel would not keep the head in the same place.
See attached image
If there's any other units, like the Fremen, or the Carryall, or some effect, let me know.
We could possibly put the Sardaukar to use, but I don't think any of Dune's other graphics would be fitting for DTA's graphical style. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
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