Helping A Newbie With His Faction

[JarlWolf]

I can help you with your faction graphic if need be... just upload it all in zip file. I can work with it- I made my own custom faction and helped others in past so I know what to do.

And as another note- I used face edit for ALL of my factions. But there is a lot of tricks you have to do- primarily having backup copies of your graphics and then after loading/editing your faction ingame, you have to overwrite the faction graphics of your faction with your backups. Faceedit does a weird bug where it kills any custom graphics and replaces it with stock Gaian graphics... so keep that in mind.


As for the blue box problem, that is because the palette of your faction bases wasn't actually "clear," as in it wasn't truthfully transparent. BUncle gave me a blank faction thing in GIMP a long time ago... I typically cut out and lasso tooled the bases and graphics with great care and focus and then pasted it onto the palette..

[Yitzi]

Alright, I guess I'll do a little progress update.
TXT File - Complete (Although strangely, although it didn't before, everything has a -2 behind it)
Graphics: WIP (the followers file is done, but followers2 and 3 both are still using default textures.)
The bases have blue boxes around them.

Finished-o-meter: 
(7/10)

Your datalinks still have the Hive's stuff.

It looks like a fairly serious powerhouse, to be honest.

[Flux]

To:
Yitzi: You mean OP? Yeah, maybe so. Possibly a little much. But since it will probably be the faction I use the most, I won't complain about that. I can always just raise the difficulty when I'm playing SP, right?

JarlWolf: Yeah, I would appreciate it. When you have 1 layer (I think) and a certain shade of pink is the transparent color, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me why that isn't clear. I'll put the files as an attachment, although I feel bad about myself just giving it to someone else. Oh well.

BUncle: Hey, thanks for the help. It certainly is a welcoming community.

[Buster's Uncle]

It is a pleasure to spread the big knowledge.  I feel pride whenever I see someone I taught doing art modding - without me having to do the work.

[Flux]

  Although a bit off-topic, I'd like to say I made my first contribution to the AC community.

Um, maybe a bit of a waste of a post.
Anyway, if you want to check it out I have it posted on fanfiction.net. Titled "Pirates of Alpha Centauri"

EDIT: I took the suggestion from BUncle.

[Buster's Uncle]

 

You should post it here: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?board=14.0

[Flux]

So I just played an ENTIRE game of AC on Specialist, just to see if I liked my faction.
I won by ascent to transcendence.
TXT file issues - None, although judging by my ending energy credit reserve of 1 1/2 trillion credits I may have put in a wrong number there.
Graphics issues - Only the smallest bases have a graphic for defense, and blue boxes appear.

I'm surprised, it was a lot of fun to play as them... Even if they did Planetbust the majority of Chiron.
Now, what was the deal with the blue boxes again? I seriously don't know why they are there.

[Buster's Uncle]

Blue boxes happen because GIMP can't handle the transparency - did you make a blank faction file w/ original SMAC pink background yourself?  If so, there's your problem.  Even though you replaced whatever was on the original with the identical background color, GIMP does something with the color slots that causes the game to not register it as transparent.

Hold on - I'm having a look at your .zip posted above right now...

[Flux]

Yeah, the only thing I changed from that ZIP since is the lvl 1 defense isn't glowing yellow.
I made my graphic by putting my images over a renamed morgan graphic.

[Buster's Uncle]

'Bout to post a walkthrough of the fix w/ screenies - please stand by...

[Flux]

'Bout to post a walkthrough of the fix w/ screenies - please stand by...

*Standing by

[Buster's Uncle]

  Hafta size/crop the screenies and upload, but it'll just take a few minutes.

[Flux]

  Hafta size/crop the screenies and upload, but it'll just take a few minutes.

...You okay in there? It's been more than a few minutes...
I hate to seem impatient, but I have a feeling you got sidetracked.

[Buster's Uncle]

Naw - it just takes a lot longer to organize all this info than to actually do what I'm demonstrating, which took less than a minute.
Okay, I opened your file:


Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel:


Select by Color Tool w/ threshold set to zero>select background (Note the red arrows):


[Delete]


[Ctrl]a(selct all)>[Ctrl]c(copy)>Switch over to Blank.pcx.pcx:


[Ctrl]v to paste


deselect and save


Blank.pcx.pcx file: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=65


Your shields problem is because you didn't place all the shields in the shield rows.  See this tutorial, towards the end: http://alphacentauri2.info/My%20Custom%20Factions/Custom%20FactionsPage2.htm#Faction%20Bases:%20Making%20&%20Placing (All my tutorials are in one place on that page, incidentally.)  Note that I talk about only having to place shields once, and copy/pasting over the seabase rows.  You'll probably get a lot of use out of the file below: 

Bare Shields file:  http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=64

[Flux]

Hmm. That looks simpler than I would think. I have a feeling I will use the shields alot, but I did already have that file. Thanks for including it anyway.
I like your tip about the simple water seabase platforms in your other tutorial you linked also. Lazy, but it looks alot better anyway.