Looking for the <tgafile> for angels

[Huzurdaddi]

I'm trying to mod in a couple of new angels with the same spirtes as the current angels. Does anyone know what the tgafile name is for built in units? Is there some convention?

[Thilock_Dominus]

Open dom2 in windows mode. Don't resize the window. Click the angel so you get into the unit description. Take a screenshot.
Now you have the angel. Open the screenshot with your prefered paint program. (I'll recommend Gimp).

That's a way to do it.

[Huzurdaddi]

Well that's a solution. It's a little ghetto though.

I'm sure that there is some convention used in the game itself. Perhaps something like UNIT#a/b or something like that.

Actually I suppose it is possible that you can not reference the built in game graphics. That would be a pitty and your solution would be the one to use.

[Thilock_Dominus]

check here: http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/
At UNIT DB there's a list of the units ID.

[Kristoffer O]

Huzurdaddi: The sprites are not in tga format in the game. To make modding possible the game can read tga sprites, but in the game the sprites are stored in trs files. This is a format used by Spooky sprites (made by JK). Currenly there is only one way of extracting tgas and that is the one described by thilock.

[Huzurdaddi]

Bummer. But makes sense.

Might I suggest for Dom3 a modding command much like tgafile which is able to reference the interal sprites. That way lamers like me who like to code but are not into the pixel thing can make 'new' units?

And thanks for responding. You guys are really good at support. Few development houses are this good.

[Thilock_Dominus]

I could "extract" the angel for you if you like.

[Amos]

Kristoffer, could you create the sprites for Dom3 in .tga format?

[Kristoffer O]

No, but we might enable sprite extraction in Spooky giving you files called 1.tga, 2.tga, etc.

Sprites are not named. They just have a position in the sprite files. It was never intended to be user friendly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

You would have to sort by yourself, but with the allunit game you could find the current number of the sprite. Hmm, on the other hand the units ar unsorted at times. It would take some scrounging. 3000 sprites is a lot to go through.

[Huzurdaddi]

How do you get the attack animation with the screen shot method?

I suppose I could pause at exactly the correct time and then attempt to get the right size. Is this what you do Thilock?

[Huzurdaddi]

Oh and I really don't want you to go through the trouble of extracting 3000 files. It's too much work. I just wanted to make an angel summoning spell ( bye, bye Telestic Animation no one loved you! ).

I suppose Telestic Animation would be useful for Ermor were it not so high up the research tree. And maybe if you are getting dominion crushed it would be useful. But I think that a lower level ( 4? ) spell that could conjure a single angel for something like 5 astrals would be more useful ( Zen's Angels that is the garb and attack really help ).

[Endoperez]

Huzurdaddi:

I have been using that method when I have needed to get graphics from the gam. I have had both Dominions and Paint open, tried to zoom the lone attacker to about the same size as his spr1 open in the paint, then screencaptured etc.

I normally get a test game just for catching that sprite, and sometimes I make a quick mod that adds that unit type a ranged weapon like Mind Burn. That makes it much easier to catch him alone.

[Thilock_Dominus]

You can also (as I do) make your own attack .tga files. A good way to this is using the option called 'rotate the layer or selection' in gimp. Just mark eg. the arm and rotate it. Sure you need to patch it and make some minor adjustment afterwards, but the result is rewarding http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif