Blank unit file/Faction specific units?

[Linamints]

I could've sworn I stumbled onto the graphics file for in game units at one point but I'm having an insanely hard time finding it again if I did.
i was wondering if anyone knew which file it was and if there was a blank one floating around somewhere?
I checked the downloads and didn't see anything like that in there.

Also, I am doing a custom AC faction set for my brother who is curious about the game. He is a big fan of the anime series Zoids and I'm trying to make it fairly accurate. I tracked down the sprites for the different faction's units in the shows/games, however they are supposed to be region specific. I wanted to do custom graphics for each faction but was wondering if there was anyway to make it so they only show up in certain factions and not others?

[Geo]

It looks like the file you're looking for is named "units.pcx".

As for unique faction units, the only way is to link them to a tech, give that tech to the home faction, and to ensure no other factions gain this tech disable tech stealing, -trading, and the planetary datalinks, in the alphax file and/or scenario editor when creating yoyr scenario.

[Linamints]

I saw that one, but it seems like it only has the native life forms and a red missile thing.
In particular I'm looking for the sprite sheet that controls the patrol scout and other non native units.

[Buster's Uncle]

Those are individual .cvr files, and no one knows how to crack them.

[Flygon]

It's not so much that nobody knows how, so much as that it'd require a lot of effort. And there's simply much better investments that effort can be put into. Arguably, even remaking the Caviar based assets in a more modern sensible format from the ground up would take less time and effort.

[Buster's Uncle]

Someone who did that would be like a god to the modding community...

[Linamints]

I can so  agree with that XD, they'd have my eternal praise at least. Is it possible to make any custom graphic with the unit.pcx file then?

And Flygon if you have any pointers to get started I'd be happy to take something like that on as a personal project. I've only been able to find one viewer and it opened them in binary format.

[Geo]

... Is it possible to make any custom graphic with the unit.pcx file then?

Yes. Simply edit in your own graphics in the open slots, and/or paste over the existing 'native life' graphics with an editor like gimp.
As you probably already counted, there's at least 10 slots to put in your own graphics. Maybe more, but I haven't looked into how the game manages the appearance of 3 different progenitor ogres from the same row in inits.pcx

[Linamints]

Will do, but then how do you tell the game where to pull the correct image from/ what tech makes that particular unit?

[Geo]

Will do, but then how do you tell the game where to pull the correct image from/ what tech makes that particular unit?

In the Alphax file, #units section. Look it up, and check the native life/ogre lines. Just before all the zero's, you see either -1, or a positive number. The positive number refers to one of the 10 slots (0-9 IIRC) in units.pcx, the -1 tells the game to refer to the caviar file(s) and 'assemble' the unit accordingly.

[Kilkakon]

In LE I used the "starting tech" thing to give people starting armies. Eventually they can discover the other ones but not for a while.

[Geo]

In LE I used the "starting tech" thing to give people starting armies. Eventually they can discover the other ones but not for a while.

Yeah. It's too bad the game doesn't accept 'closed loops' in the tech tree.

[Kilkakon]

Yeah true. I made the base tech for the branching point "inter species society" though so it almost makes sense.

[Yitzi]

Yeah. It's too bad the game doesn't accept 'closed loops' in the tech tree.

What happens if you try?  (I'm guessing some sort of hang or crash as it attempts, and fails, to assign a level.)

[Kilkakon]

Unsure--I know it doesn't like unavailable starting techs either as AIs will constantly try to trade for them. It isn't possible to do it as well as in like Civ 2 or something from memory