Everything you ever wanted to know about banners!
OK...not the most earth-shattering of topics for a tutorial, but there were surprisingly few and sparse tutorials covering all aspects of this, ans I had to look in a lot of places to get it sorted, so I figured I would roll it all up into a single tutorial to save others the need to go looking everywhere!
In order to completely re-do banners, buttons and flags for a new faction there are many places to look and several files you will need to sort out. The only tools you will need for this is a trusty painting program ( I use Photoshop, but GIMP works just as well ) and a text editor. Notepad is fine, but I would recommend kicking it into touch and using notepad+ purely because it has a line-number facility!
Lets start with the banners on the strat map.
These are made up of 2 components. The basic colour of the flag, and the logo that sits on top. For my example, I am going to set up the Beast Master faction in my mod with a new set of banners and buttons.
First, we set the background colour. The faction I am replacing is Russia. All work should be done in a 'mod' folder, or else you will over-right the original files. I am assuming you know how to do that...and if you don't there are tutorials that show you how!
First, go to the DATA folderin your mod folder, and find a file called:
descr_sm_factions
Open the file, and search down until you get to the faction you want to change. The entry for Russia looks like this:
The important part for the background colour of the flag is highlighted in red. These are the RGB values for the colour. Now, for this faction, I want a nice bright crimson. So, after some tweaking around with the colour palette in Photoshop, I settle on this one:Code:;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; faction russia culture eastern_european religion orthodox symbol models_strat/symbol_russia.CAS rebel_symbol models_strat/symbol_rebels.CAS primary_colour red 12, green 30, blue 119 secondary_colour red 215, green 0, blue 0 loading_logo loading_screen/symbols/symbol128_russia.tga standard_index 17 logo_index FACTION_LOGO_RUSSIA small_logo_index SMALL_FACTION_LOGO_RUSSIA triumph_value 5 custom_battle_availability yes can_sap no prefers_naval_invasions no can_have_princess yes has_family_tree yes ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
The RGB values are outlined, and these are just copied in to the stratmap values in the text file. The new line would look like this:
The end result looks like this:Code:primary_colour red 249, green 0, blue 59
Now, you will notice the logo on the banner is not changed, and also that the flags flying over the cities with no troops in them are very definitely not changed. We will attend to that next!
The logo we have chosen for our faction is basically a set of nasty jaws. Beast Masters can't have a fluffy bunny for a logo...that just wouldn't do!
Create a folder in your mod folder called 'models_strat'. Copy into that the 'textures' folder from your main game files. These contain the flags that show up over the city. The file for Russia is called "#banner_symbol_russia.tga'
The file is actually a .dds file extension, but when we make ours we MUST save it as just a tga file or it will not show up. Don't know why...it just is!
When you look at the file you will see the main section, plus a 'pointed' bit at the bottom. This will appear on the END of the flag, not at the bottom. Make sure you save the alpha channel, as this is used to give the flag shape.
On the left is the stock image...on the right, our new one. We simply save it as the same name in TGA format with alpha channel, and we are done.
and in game, it looks like this:
Now, we just need to change the logo sitting on top of hte coloured start-map army banners. These are contained in a set of files found in the data/banners folder. Re-create this in your mod folder, and have a look at the files called symbols1 through to symbols8. Look for the logo that belongs to the faction you are replacing and open it in your chosen paint program. For Russia, it is symbol5.tga that we need to alter. You need to paste in the logo AND change it on the alpha texture as well. Once done, save your file as a TGA ...NOT .tga.dds. If you get this wrong, your file will just not show up. Save your file in the mod folder data/banner file, and there is your logo. Easy.
That completes the strat map banners.
Next job is to change the buttons and logos on the unit/faction selection screens.
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I plan to do a few more of these as I go along. I remember how annoying it can be to look for tutorials and find that you have to read 4 or 5 just to fill in the gaps!
