PRACX v1.10 Release

[hilton]

Ah, that is unfortunate. Strange for it to screw up at that specific resolution, though - 1366x768 crashes while 1360x768 (just 6 pixels narrower) does not, nor does higher resolutions based on some of the screenshots I've seen.

It's mostly a non-issue for me now; I'm just leaving my laptop at 1360x768. My screen doesn't scale resolutions unless they're smaller than 720px high - all it does is lose me 3 pixels on each side of my screen and leave Windows complaining I'm not at my 'optimal resolution'.

What file has the nutrient/mineral/energy icons? I might try some experiments. Even making them darker might do it for me.

[DrazharLn]

It is pretty weird. Glad you found a work around, though

I'm fairly sure PRACX reads the grey icons from Icons.pcx. I think you have to stick to the baked in palette rather than 24bit RGB for everything to work, but I don't really know.

[Buster's Uncle]

Booting up to check for sure it's Icons.pcx.  -A lot of that kind of thing for SMACX ends up being in files I find not the obvious ones.

I modded that one for scient about a millilion years ago for a negative resources thing he's never gotten around to implementing, and don't recall ever doing anything else with since, but easy stuff if you know how to mod the game art.  Let me know if you run into problems, hil.


What you might want is in ter1.pcx, for the main game screen terrain resources  - Icons.pcx is just a few buttons, not the resources you see in base screen.  I'll keep looking and get back to you.

[DrazharLn]

Nah, not ter1.pcx. It's the income icons (1 apple, 2 apples, etc) we want, not the resource bonus icons.

[Buster's Uncle]

[ninja'd - Draz m'boy, you in my tech-house now.  Watch and learn.  ]

newicons.pcx for the base screen resources view.

Just in case you don't already know how to navigate the palette issues, you need to open it twice and do all the work in one copy you'll paste overtop the untouched one to save.  In GIMP, first thing with the working copy, Image>Mode>RGB, then Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel, finally, Fuzzy Select Tool w/ Threshold: turned down to 0>click on the background pink>delete.  Now you can begin fiddling with the brightness of individually-selected parts (box-select the resource icons one row at a time or all together but you probably don't want to do that to everything in the entire file at once) and copy/paste the whole thing once you're finished into the untouched copy and save.

Some of those hoops aren't necessary to jump through in Photoshop, but I'd have to refresh my memory which - all are in GIMP.  Working with the indexed format of .pcx files and the limits of the SMACX palette is a bit of a pain, but no big deal for what you want -note that minor enough changes in shade and hue will default back when you paste into the original palette of the untouched copy, so you might have to do a bit of trial and error and playtesting. 

-If you decide to completely replace anything, it's a little more complicated, but I'll talk you through it, no problem.  The shade adjustment you propose ought to cover the originals fine without a glitch.

[DrazharLn]

It's not newicons.pcx for this case. Hilton's talking about the greyed out icons that Plotinus added to the base view.

Proof attached.

[DrazharLn]

I had a bit of a look at the assembly code that's causing the crash at 1366x768, but I can't see what's going wrong. One of the .exe modders might be able to help, so I'll post a new thread for that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Wow.

There's some room for improvement, there.  Give me the right file, PRAX version, so I don't have to root for it and let's see what we can come up with that's a little better-looking for future upgrades.  I'm serious, if those black outline things weren't shooped in when the red letters were added.

[DrazharLn]

Heh, the black outlines are just badly drawn Ds. Check out the Icons.pcx attached to the last post.

Clean PRACX version attached here.

[Buster's Uncle]

Why in the world did he make everything murky blue?  Suggestions about that?

I can make it absolutely anything that fits in the boxes and the palette allows...

[DrazharLn]

You clearly haven't looked at my customised version yet. I leave these little jokes for you, and you just ignore them.

So rude.

I imagine Plotinus was going for the standard UX convention of greying out interface elements that are off/disabled. I think it works reasonably well.

I don't think we want anything fancy, just the same as newicons.pcx, but clearly and elegantly indicated as unused. I think monochrome and greyish is fine. Feel free to experiment with different solutions, though.

Hilton's suggestion of a darker "grey" isn't such a bad idea. Just has to be visible enough on all the different terrain types.

[Buster's Uncle]

I did, too - it was already open and I just didn't notice the joke, assuming you'd marked it up previously for something else.  I have bathed this month and put on a clean shirt yesterday - I just checked and think I smell fine.

Multitasking and going to have to go AFK to start supper soon, but I'll do something simple to make it more obvious -probably lighten them but add a thin(ish) black outline- and post before I go to bed.  I may try several things.

[DrazharLn]

[Buster's Uncle]

[ninja'd - Draz m'boy, you in my tech-house now.  Watch and learn.  ]

newicons.pcx for the base screen resources view.

Just in case you don't already know how to navigate the palette issues, you need to open it twice and do all the work in one copy you'll paste overtop the untouched one to save.  In GIMP, first thing with the working copy, Image>Mode>RGB, then Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel, finally, Fuzzy Select Tool w/ Threshold: turned down to 0>click on the background pink>delete.  Now you can begin fiddling with the brightness of individually-selected parts (box-select the resource icons one row at a time or all together but you probably don't want to do that to everything in the entire file at once) and copy/paste the whole thing once you're finished into the untouched copy and save.

Some of those hoops aren't necessary to jump through in Photoshop, but I'd have to refresh my memory which - all are in GIMP.  Working with the indexed format of .pcx files and the limits of the SMACX palette is a bit of a pain, but no big deal for what you want -note that minor enough changes in shade and hue will default back when you paste into the original palette of the untouched copy, so you might have to do a bit of trial and error and playtesting. 

-If you decide to completely replace anything, it's a little more complicated, but I'll talk you through it, no problem.  The shade adjustment you propose ought to cover the originals fine without a glitch.

Correction: for Fuzzy Select Tool, read Select by Color Tool.  I'm only just now starting work, but the first one I want to try is a pretty easy job.  Stay tuned.

[hilton]

I do think a little darker grey would suffice. Or perhaps just outlines of the icon (apple, sun, diamond) with black-outlined grey numbers in the middle. To me, at least, the current light grey icons seem brighter than the green/blue/orange icons. They should be darker or more clearly not in use.

Another solution might be to keep the unused icons in COLOR, but draw over them with the fog of war graphic, either masked to the icons or the full tile.

PS. If it's possible I have one other request - when in base view I am always looking at the city size. Unfortunately it sometimes gets covered by the resource icons. Is it possible to have the game draw the city size icon in another location, maybe at the top left corner of the base tile view and doubled in size?