Upgrades Mod

If you have the desire to modify SR2010 here is where you can discuss and share your designs and ideas. NOTE: Mods are a change to the original program and are not supported by BattleGoat Studios.

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Balthagor
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Upgrades Mod

Post by Balthagor »

While development for Supreme Ruler 2020 continues, there are times that we use SR2010 as a sort of "chalkboard" for ideas we're discussing. Some recent discussions on upgrades and map clutter inspired me to create this quite mod. It's quite rough in the sense that I've ont tried to make the graphic size changes precise and the new roads are not always pretty, but it does change the look and feel of the map a little and I'd be interrested to see what ppl think.

http://www.supremewiki.com/index.php/Upgrademod

This mod replaces some of the existing facility and city graphics and includes a new set of road graphics (I already noticed that roads and rails no look too much alike, I may address this in a later version, if I have time.)

Roads; They are now thinner slightly and mostly black. Question is, those this help or hurt their appearance on map? Does it seem to have any effect on the "map clutter"?

Cities; Since cities below 250k ppl have little supply, production or defensive bonus value, are they really as important strategically thinking? City pics for those below 250k have been reduced in size, reduction increased as city size decreases. The idea is that now instead of a player trying to keep control of a region with 100 cities, they have 20 important cities and 80 secondary cities. Thoughts on this change?

Upgrades; Since Agri, Water and Timber products are very common and usually not contested commodities, I reduced the size of these upgrades as well. I also pulled the base off of the Agri upgrades to try and make them "attach" better to the map. Mines seemed to stick out of the land too much. I noticed how small mines are on map in Civ4 and deciced to experiment with reducing their size as well. Comments?

This mod overwrites existing files so if you would like to be able to uninstall it after, back up your /Graphics folder before installing.
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Re: Upgrades Mod

Post by BigStone »

Balthagor wrote: Roads; They are now thinner slightly and mostly black. Question is, those this help or hurt their appearance on map? Does it seem to have any effect on the "map clutter"?
Can't hardly see the difference between roads and railroads. It could be my eyes or monitor though ...
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Post by Balthagor »

Yes, I already mentioned that, but ignoring the rails, how do the roads look? Since it's more an experiment than a mod I didn't take the time to redraw the rails (I might do that if I find the time).
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Post by BigStone »

IRL highways are more wider then railroads .Perhaps you can do something about that ?

And since we are talking about graphs ... could you also do something about those bridges ?
They seems always be orientated from top right to down left ...

No big issues ... but if you are experimenting.... :wink:
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Post by Balthagor »

BigStone wrote:IRL highways are more wider then railroads .Perhaps you can do something about that ?
That will be tough since the new road graphics are only 3 pixels wide. As I mentioned, I'll give it a look if I have time.
BigStone wrote:And since we are talking about graphs ... could you also do something about those bridges ?...
No, not much I could do about that. That will have to wait for SR2020...
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Post by Balthagor »

Version 1.1 has been uploaded, roads changed a bit more and did change the rails. Still looking for feedback on the upgrade size changes.
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Post by Feltan »

Defect: The horizontal road graphic is a bit off. The center line is more like a cross than a dashed line down the center.

Opinion: Both road and rail graphics work fine. For the rail, I would make the two outside rail lines more distinct and perhaps have no fill in between. For the road, maybe the black outline is fine but I would prefer a grayish road in the center. However, this is just a matter of opinion -- any artistic effort is going to invite a lot of opinions. Like I said, they work fine.

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Post by Balthagor »

But what about the upgrades?! :(

And too be clear, I'm not trying to make the roads look nicer, just make them more visible against the various shades the imagery presents. On the new SR2020 imagery with the old roads, the roads disappear in northern Africa but are quite visible in Russia. With the upgrades mod on the new SR2020 imagery the roads disappear in Russia but are quite visible in northern Africa. The roads for SR2020 will be redone entierly, that is already the plan.

There are really two questions coming from this mod that will affect SR2020 development;

- Are roads better in a light or dark color?
- Are cities < 100k ppl being very small icons a problem?

Oh, and as far as the defect, I widened the center mark because it was disappearing at higher zooms. Again I'm looking at the mechanics of the graphics, not the graphics quality.
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Post by Eric »

Downloading it right now, thanks Chris, being a graphical upgrade, I guess it will be compatible with the spanish mod, am I right?

;)
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Post by Balthagor »

Yes, no compatibility problems with Spanish or French Mods.
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Post by Feltan »

Balthagor wrote:But what about the upgrades?! :(

And too be clear, I'm not trying to make the roads look nicer, just make them more visible against the various shades the imagery presents. On the new SR2020 imagery with the old roads, the roads disappear in northern Africa but are quite visible in Russia. With the upgrades mod on the new SR2020 imagery the roads disappear in Russia but are quite visible in northern Africa. The roads for SR2020 will be redone entierly, that is already the plan.

There are really two questions coming from this mod that will affect SR2020 development;

- Are roads better in a light or dark color?
- Are cities < 100k ppl being very small icons a problem?

Oh, and as far as the defect, I widened the center mark because it was disappearing at higher zooms. Again I'm looking at the mechanics of the graphics, not the graphics quality.
I am beginning to wonder if what I downloaded is what you intend for us to have a look at.

Working in the map editor, I see the new roads and rails (as I do in the game); however, in the "hex upgrade" section the pallette of building is different than what appears on the map. In addition, the icons on that pallette do not correspond to the icons that you place on the map (i.e., if you try to place a new small city you get a larger one). Some of the village icons on the pallette are simply not on the map at all. And, I see no size differeces.

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Post by Balthagor »

Feltan wrote:...Working in the map editor, I see the new roads and rails (as I do in the game); however, in the "hex upgrade" section the pallette of building is different than what appears on the map. In addition, the icons on that pallette do not correspond to the icons that you place on the map (i.e., if you try to place a new small city you get a larger one). Some of the village icons on the pallette are simply not on the map at all. And, I see no size differeces...
The pallette is entierly faked. Even in the original map editor no mod the city pics for a given size did not exist as one of the potential frames to be used. I've taken a few minutes to make new pallette pics and will make a 1.2 version next week to avoid any confusion but if you have the mod installed with all the files where they should be when you select a city in the pallette, the preview window above the pallette should show you exactly what you will be placing. Also, the 4 largest city types did not change at all, only the smaller ones. And there where always unused frames on most of the city sets. The way I tested it was played the Paris attacks mission without the mod for about 10mins then applied the mod and played it again for another 10 minutes.
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Post by Balthagor »

Version 1.2 has been posted. There is now a readme in the zip file with the details of the mod.
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Post by borg1980 »

Balthagor wrote:- Are roads better in a light or dark color?
- Are cities < 100k ppl being very small icons a problem?
IMO roads are better in dark color (as it is now in 1.2) and cities below 100k can be small (as it is). Graphic png files from 1.2 are a bit smaller than oryginal files - good news for game performance (but I think that some new small icons like mines or agricultures could be 'sharper' - they are IMO less visible than oryginal files).
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Post by Draken »

Balthagor wrote: - Are roads better in a light or dark color?
- Are cities < 100k ppl being very small icons a problem?
.
Finally got the time to download and test it...

First impressions: I like the new icons sizes (they really help to de-clutter the map, but not the colors of roads. I don't know if it because I'm used to the light gray or what, but the new road colors make the interface too dark for me...

I'll keep playing with it for a while to see if I can get use to the colors...
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