Dark Rain Dark Rain

GalCiv Graphic Editing Suite ( release )

▼

GalCiv Graphic Editing Suite ( release )

from Stardock Forums
This a repost from the general forum thread. Here's to hoping it'll put some life back into the mods forums ^_^.

So, what is it? A lot of galciv files are in a special format specific to galciv and were impossible to edit except with Mutil, which is very hard to use and prone to random crashes. There's three tools in the suite that will allow you to faily easily modify all those graphic files you couldn't change before.

If you want to see an example of a modification along with screenshots of the tools, you can visit my website : Link

Of course, there's a link to download it too.

I'm hoping we'll see a lot of new original mods created with this tool. I imagine I'm not the only one who's tired of "new" anomaly that use the same graphics as before and random events being the bulk of the mods created for galciv.

Ships will be much easier to create now, heck ships with idle animations will be easy too. Not only that, suns, interfaces, planets etc are all easy to modifiy now.
7,784 views 63 replies | Pinned
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top
=)

gonna try to make an EA Omega Class Destroyer mod when I have more time. including rotating mid-section. :HOT:
Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top
Nice program! thank you very much. :D

I can't seem to open the Deathknight file though.. Somethin' about the color depth not being supported. Nothing serious.
CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top
but it works ingame, right?

uploaded the Vorlon Dreadnought and the White Star too. ^^
Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top
The suite has been update to version 1.4. Get it at : http://graphix.galciv.org/

Only the sprite editor has changed. The was a bug which prevented you from saving SS.SPR1 from startscreen.mtd.

For those wondering, it's not added support for 16 bit sprites. I've just fixed a special case of file that happens only in that file. I had thought I'd had taken care of it but since I never tested it before, it was buggy.

I'd like to thank Martin Dobias for pointing that one out and giving me precise instructions on how to reproduce the bug.

Have fun modding!
[Message Edited]
Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top
Trinox : Yes well, galciv sprite format support 16 bit and 8 bit pictures. I've only reverse engineered the 8 bit file format. I'll surely get to the 16 bit format someday but since so little of galciv files use it, I don't feel like I'm in much of a hurry ^_^.
Reply #31 from Stardock Forums Top
Update to version 1.5 .As usual, you can get it from : graphix.galciv.org

An encoding bug has been fixed, I'm not too sure how it slipped past me for so long since it was a fairly big encoding error. I'm pretty sure it was there from the start but I still have suspicions it was introduced in version 1.4 .Anyways it's working now, thanks to Horst.

Remember folks, if you don't report bugs, I can't fix 'hem!
Reply #32 from Stardock Forums Top
Edit : yes, the bug was something I introduced in the last version, I just checked, sorry for that!
Reply #33 from Stardock Forums Top
Cool

gave it a quit try and found there were no problems

Thanks for the excellent tools
Reply #34 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok, new update, version 1.6 is done.

-It now support 16 bit sprites.
-A major strip import bug has been fixed. Any image sequence you imported using the strip import didn't use error diffusion as it's dithering method but instead always used the closest color dithering method. That and the images you saw until you saved didn't correspong to the closest color dithered versions.
-A very minor bug in the palette editor has been fixed. When reloading a new palette, the color being currently edited stayed the same if you were editing the color index 0.

Ok, as for the future a new update may or may not be close because I'm going on a two weeks vacation soon. Because of this, I've released it even if 16 bit support hasn't been tested as much as I'd have liked to. Of course, as far as I can tell it's working perfectly. The update assuming there's no bug will be a menu to switch the color depth from 8 bit to 16 bit or 16 bit to 8 bit. Oh yeah, I might even get my ass in gear and get that movie import working.

As usual, get it from http://graphix.galciv.org
[Message Edited]
Reply #35 from Stardock Forums Top
Id like an option to replace strips instead of having to delete old and create a new one. if I want to keep the original order of strips/frames I end up redoing all 3-4 parts of a ship file if I changed just 1 thing. :p
Reply #36 from Stardock Forums Top
You need to keep the order of strips only if you're using the gfx mod folder which is buggy to begin with.
Reply #37 from Stardock Forums Top
ok im confused about the whole mod thing... im a newb at this so help me please... i downloaded the White Star mod but it doesn't work... what do i do after i download it? thanks
Reply #38 from Stardock Forums Top
You need to keep the order of strips only if you're using the gfx mod folder which is buggy to begin with.
End of quote


well I keept the order and used the mod folder without any problems. :D

ok im confused about the whole mod thing... im a newb at this so help me please... i downloaded the White Star mod but it doesn't work... what do i do after i download it? thanks
End of quote


put the .mdl in the .zip into your galciv\mod\gfx folder. go ingame and ensure that mods are enabled in your option menu. then the ranger class graphic should be replaced with the White Star.
Reply #41 from Stardock Forums Top
ah yes sorry. you need to place a copy of the ranger.mdl in the mods\gfx folder and open that with Dark Rain's toolset. then replace the .spr1 and .pal_ file inside the .mdl with what came with the mod.

I wouldnt touch MUtil at all. its a piece of garbage imo. ;p
Reply #42 from Stardock Forums Top
Mutil is not so much garbage, just hard to use. no copy paste support is my major grip. Other then that it works well.
Reply #44 from Stardock Forums Top
Great job on the ships German or not. ;)

I run a website called NeoTech Gaming Network, we support a few games, Galciv is the main game we focus on. I have placed your work in my downloads. If this is not okay with you let me know. http://www.neotechgaming.com The site is down at the moment should be back online later today if you want to stop by. Excellent work anyways. :HOT:
Reply #45 from Stardock Forums Top
thx and dont have a problem with that

edit:
oh and Iam still planing to do a couple more ships from B5. but with temperatures at 30+ °C and me just having finished exams Iam gonna relax a bit first. ;)
[Message Edited]
Reply #46 from Stardock Forums Top
Great program- a couple questions though-

Does anybody know how to rotate an image 45 degrees and kkep the whole image? Using Irfanview, it cuts off the top and bottom of the image that rotated out of the orginial image size. This happens with both JPEG and GIF images.

Also, saving the files saves them as sprites (.spr). Can you save them as .mdl/.mtd so the game could read them?

I know to many people these questions seem stupid and there is probably some really obvious solution that I don't see just because I'm me and... Anyway, I just downloaded the program and am still learning.

Thanks!
Reply #47 from Stardock Forums Top
you mean like if the picture was black and you rotate it you will have white spaces where it turned?

if so you should use Dark Reign's tool, you can set a color that will automatically fill the gaps when rotating.

[Message Edited]
Reply #48 from Stardock Forums Top
No, how do I explain this...

It's like trying to rotate a picture while not rotating the frame. If you rotate a picture 45 degrees but leave the frame alone, the picture won't fit anymore. That's what's happening- the image is rotating but not the background. It is chopping of all of the "picture" that doesn't fit in the "frame".

Reply #49 from Stardock Forums Top
you could use Dark Reign's Easy Ship Rotator and copy and paste the 45 degrees part of the strip generated by it.
Reply #50 from Stardock Forums Top
I figured it out- thanks for your help.

However I could use your help at http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GM&id=186823#186997 also.