Brief Mod Sprite Tutorial

[NTJedi]

UninspiredName said:
remember to always put your sprites facing left. It's a simple mistake, but still something to keep in mind. My personal instinct is still to make them face right.

True... if the sprite is facing the incorrect direction GIMP can be used to make it face the correct direction with a simple click or two.
Very sweet free tool.

[Endoperez]

NTJedi said:

True... if the sprite is facing the incorrect direction GIMP can be used to make it face the correct direction with a simple click or two.
Very sweet free tool.

Gimp can do that... But so can IrfanView (which opens much faster) and MS Paint (which also opens much faster). Gimp is for creating the sprite; there are far better programs for tweaking things.

A backwards-sprite would make for quite an interesting hero, though.

[NTJedi]

Is it possible to create magic sites which produce negative gems each turn?

Will hidden magic sites work for recruiting creatures?
The modding looks like it's only possible to make magic sites for recruiting creatures used by nations starting with the magic site.

[Endoperez]

NTJedi said:
Is it possible to create magic sites which produce negative gems each turn?

Err... It might... I hope it isn't , but it might be. If the amount of gems were ever to go below 0, though, the game would probably crash.

Will hidden magic sites work for recruiting creatures?
The modding looks like it's only possible to make magic sites for recruiting creatures used by nations starting with the magic site.

Sites have to be found to allow recruitment. This is always the case. Otherwise, it'd be really easy to find out all those Crystal Citadels and Towers of Nexus and Kingdoms of Elludia and Alchemists' Guilds and Pypriphlegatons' and the towers of the three metallic orders, not to mention Sages and Lore Masters.

Only #homecom and #homeunit are available. Similar, non-restricted commands have been requested. See the list I composed in the modding wishlist thread; it lists (most?) other things missing from site modding.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

If your image is facing the wrong direction (the right direction is the wrong direction, of course) then you can use a number of image editors and/or viewers to fix this simply and easily. Since this tutorial uses The Gimp, here is how you can make your image face do an about face, quickly and simply.

To Flip A Right-Facing Image to Face Left for Dom III
-----------------------------------------------------
1. Start The Gimp.
2. File-->Open the picture file (steps 1 and 2 can be combined by double clicking on the image file to both start The Gimp and open the image, if you have set file attributes correctly.)
3. Image-->Transform-->Flip Horizontally
4. File-->Save

[Amos]

Sizes of canvas other than 64x64 and 128x128 might lead to loss of sharpness in game. I had this problem with a unit in Horror mod. This loss of sharpness might be useful for certain units. But if you want your units to be sharp be careful when you resize. Also, you can have canvas size larger than 128x128.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

Good tips. I think the larger the icon the better the image too, not just for canvas but the image itself.

I wonder how much it matters having outsize units? I bet it makes the battlefields a horror. if all units are 128x128, then the size 1 units would be really crowding eachother (not a problem with transparent canvases that are 128x128, I am talking the actual unit sprite).

I will check.