Switching out default units
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@Hepps
That's what I was after...
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@Joe-Pants BTW good to see your name again on the forums.
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Looks like that did it. I guess the properties file isn't crucial to be in the downloadedMaps folder.
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@Joe-Pants said in Switching out default units:
I guess the properties file isn't crucial to be in the downloadedMaps folder.
It is just for comparing the installed map-version with the current one on the server to inform about updates.
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OH I'M SO HAPPY!!
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@Joe-Pants said in Switching out default units:
Thanks! I'm not trying to use older map files, just swap out unit pngs. When I unzip and add the units, the Properties file also changes and the game can't find the spinning globe zip, nor can it find anything in the doc images file. Not certain why it's happening like that.
Welcome back! Did you spot any of units of yours in that map?
If you don't intend to push a change to the original in the repository, I suggest rather making a mapskin, for your case, leaving the original as is.
The mapskin path should be:
downloadedMaps/world_at_war-*skin
with "*" meaning anything.
Then, you can also share it, of course.
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@Joe-Pants I really like the new infantries, especially since that the basic and ubiquitous NWO/WAW infantry is really not good (but it is at least decent, since it gets zoomed so much that it becomes fairly indistinctive), but the risk here is confusion with the elite and marine units.
I wonder what the Italian and Romanian armours are representing, exactly. I think the current, shared, one is not bad, albeit surely not very good, either, but the new ones seem nice, and diversity is good.
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@Cernel, there was a point maybe five years ago where I went bananas with unit images. That screenshot is just the tip of the iceberg - I have elite units, marines, long range units, pretty much anything that was available at the time. The Italian and Romanian Tanks are based on actual units used by those coutries, or by an associated country. I'll make an attempt to load "JoePantsSkin" or something like that.
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@Joe-Pants Yeah, I'm sure of that. I was just asking what model exactly; I've especially no idea about the Romanians; that looks like a French tank.
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@Joe-Pants If you are planning on a formal skin... I'd make the suggestion to flip the direction the Britsh and French units are facing.
And Dutch for that matter.
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@Hepps I suppose he decided to have all Axis and all Allies facing one or the other side, and prioritized Germans facing the Russians. Or maybe he's just depicting the French as not very willingly to fight... The British can go both ways, cause Africa.
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@Cernel is right, I wanted to standardize so all the Allies face left and all the Axis face right. It's cool for the US vs. Japan and for Germany, Finns, & Romania vs. Russia, but it is a bit odd for France and Britain.
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@Cernel You have a very good eye, it's a Renault R35. According to Wikipedia France imported them to to Poland, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia just before the invasion of Poland.
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@Joe-Pants I'd add that if its pretty clear the units are better than the default, I'm pretty open to just updating the base map. @Cernel was the last person to make some improvements to the WaW units so if you can convince him then you have my vote. Here is also the map thread if you'd like to discuss it there: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/145/world-at-war-official-thread
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@redrum Yeah, well, if he makes a list in here, like the automatic list you get in GitHub when push changes, I can quote and give my opinion as like/indifferent/dislike over the current. It would also help if knowing exactly what the images are representing. Though the main concern is that if you make 1 infantry image per country, then it is likely hard to tell the elite and marine apart, unless you do it like @Hepps did in RSoC, or something, while there is not this concern at all for WAW40 (the ice's mod), that I see it is actually what he's playing. For the images themselves, it is very easy to get something better than the very blurry one used (that has the arguable value of being the traditional infantry of NWO, that is referenced in the WAW map itself, that was actually why I decided to leave it alone).
Theorically, of course, the best would be the opinions of the players. A mapskin could help with that, I guess.
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@Cernel Just for the sake of clarity here's what the US Infantry, Elite, and Marines look like. They're different but the special troops also have a symbol similar to what paratroopers get:
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@Joe-Pants Yeah, they are certainly very distinctive on their own, but I think the issue may be that, in the moment you have 14 different players, it may be challenging to memorize them all twice or trice. I'm not a fan of using symbols to tell units apart; that is what the images themselves should be doing, possibly, and here for this map they are not really viable, anyways, due to how zoomed the images are and how little space there is in some territories, especially the circles, where overlapping other units might hide the little symbols.
Well, the marine currently has only 1 image for all the Allies and another 1 for all the Axis, so here I'm assuming you would make them different, like you did for the infantry.
Personally, I think that all countries having marines should not have elites, as the marine makes the elite virtually obsolete, but that would be a gameplay relevant change.
For the integrated country roundels (TWW style), I'm tendentially neutral on that, and it would be best if the user could switch them on/off, but I know that TripleA doesn't support that well enough. If always showing them, I suggest doing it with (always true) unit icons.
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@Cernel I'm actually against roundels TWW style, because they make the images harder to eventually retouch (for example, recolourizing), especially if the roundel itself is not provided, for any future images to be added, but I'm neutral on the matter if the roundel is not part of the images themselves, but an icon, or if the same image without the roundel is provided, for each one, within that same skin (the original map, if we are talking about the original skin).
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Anyways, I want to make clear that, even as not a player of the map, I think it would be a major graphic advancement to get rid of those bad looking infantry images, substituting them with something better. My concerns are purely on the side of distinctivness, thus playability. My suggestion for anyone who would want to provide a set of infantry, elite and marine, so that each player (15 with Neutral) has a different kind of them, is to distinguish by the mean of pose. For example:
- having all infantry holding the gun on their bellies while advancing,
- all elite standing up and having the gun ready to fire,
- all marines about to launch a hand granade.
In any case, the images should be distinctive enough not to need any additional symbols (I already don't like the red dots, and strongly suggest those remaining the only case).
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@Joe-Pants I started doing the same thing: revamping all the units and adding a few of my own. That was two years ago and I managed to finish most of them. I chose to standardize them rather than having them be unique for each country (other than by color); but I, too, faced the Allies one direction and the Axis the other.
I created an "Engineer" unit, depicted by a shovel-in-hand instead of a rifle (which was slung over his shoulder), and required it to be present within any territory where structures were to be built. The Marine's hunched low. The (regular) infantry stand tall with rifle aimed. The Air-bourn Infantry have the chute pack on their back and rifle held firmly at their waist (plus an open chute in the lower corner). I even added a splash of color to the rifles and such; giving them wood stocks, etc.
But, that was two years ago and about the time my sister got me into playing World of Warcraft. So, the project fell to the wayside and failed to get finished.
December 7th rolled around again, though, and (unlike last year) it has prompted me to play once again. Luckily, everything's still intact and I just have to pick up where I left off. Even so, I'd love to find a repository of unit png's and such.SK
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