Helping A Newbie With His Faction

[Flux]

  Hey all, I just found these forums. I haven't been playing AC for that long, but after I played my fair share of games I thought it would be cool to try and make my own faction. I used the template called "FACTION" in the folder that has everything to run AC. I have the quote for when you select the faction, the base names, and the plural/adjective and leader name working.

Ron of the Followers - paranoid
"Isolation is the only way to peace"
[He spends his time] laughing like a maniac and plotting our destruction
Capital: Followers Keep

In order to keep from repeating the tragedy
of Earth, the only way to stay safe from the
atrocity that is war is to keep to ourselves
isolated from one another. Then we can truly
achieve piece for all mankind.
^
^        -- Follower Ron
^           "The Reason for Peace"
"I will not tolerate an enemy, pledge blood truce or regret it."

Beyond that I'm not really sure what to do. It uses the Gaian art for bases, and the Gaian picture. Did I mention it uses the Gaian audio file for my opening quote?
Anyway, what I want to do is change the emblem, the picture, and use one of the base graphic packs I found or at least change it from the Gaian one. I also want to change the gender to Male, and remove the opening audio.
Sorry if that is a noob question compared to some of what is here, but I am really a beginner when it comes to this stuff.

--First post woo--

[Buster's Uncle]

Woo indeed! 

Check the Graphics thread, stickied above in this forum.  It's a bit of a slog to find everything, but I've posted tutorials about how to do everything I can think of, artwise - I'd rather empower you with graphical skills than take care of it for you, even if the latter is less trouble.  Please post questions at will, and/or your work in progress.

We were all newbs once, and it's great to meet a new modder.

[Flux]

Okay so I finished the template for my faction.
I do not know how to implement it into AC though.
Also it is a JPG. I thought AC used PCX?

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes; you need to save it as a .pcx.  What program are you using for graphics?

-If you don't have the .txt part ready, at this stage I usually temporarily replace the graphics for an existing faction, and have a look at a old gamesave with a lot of that faction's bases.

You're a quick learner, if you can in here not knowing how to do any of the art stuff.   

[Flux]

I am using Paint.net.
I will try to test it out on an old save like you suggested.

[Flux]

Alright, turns out Paint.net does not support pcx.
EDIT:
I did finish the .txt for it, using the FACTION txt file as a template. Everything there seems fine except the gender is female still.

[Buster's Uncle]

My best suggestion if you want it done soon without spending money is to download GIMP.  Then follow the instructions in the tutorials for making a transparent background and pasting into a fresh copy of blank.pcx.pcx and saving as Followers Nation.pcx.

As to installing the new faction, hold on a few minutes while I look for the files to quote from.  It's not tough, once you know how.

The gender is one letter in the first line one the faction info starts, like this example from hive.txt:

;
; Sid Meier's ALPHA CENTAURI
;
; FACTION FILE: The Protectorate
;
; Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 by Firaxis Games, Inc.
;
; ALPHA CENTAURI reads the rules of the game from this file at
; startup. Feel free, at your own risk, to experiment with editing
; this file. We recommend you make a backup copy of the original.
;

#HIVE
The Protectorate, The Dictator, Hive, M, 1, Shin, M,  1,  1, 0, 1, 0,

The "M" bolded and underlined in my quote of the beginning of the file tells the game Yang is a dude.  For Deidre, ect., it's an "F".  -Note also the "#HIVE" making up the line before.  That one trips up a lot of new faction modders.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay - find the following section in your alphax.txt file:

; First item is file name, second item is search key.
; These should always be the same except for debugging purposes.
;
#FACTIONS
GAIANS,   GAIANS
HIVE,     HIVE
UNIV,     UNIV
MORGAN,   MORGAN
SPARTANS, SPARTANS
BELIEVE,  BELIEVE
PEACE,    PEACE

;
; First item is file name, second item is search key.
; These should always be the same except for debugging purposes.
;
#NEWFACTIONS
CYBORG,   CYBORG
PIRATES,  PIRATES
DRONE,    DRONE
ANGELS,   ANGELS
FUNGBOY,  FUNGBOY
CARETAKE, CARETAKE
USURPER,  USURPER

;
; These are factions you want included in the startup list.
; These may also be chosen when a random faction is selected.
; First item is file name, second item is search key.
; These should always be the same except for debugging purposes.
;
#CUSTOMFACTIONS

Under that last line add so it's like this:

; First item is file name, second item is search key.
; These should always be the same except for debugging purposes.
;
#FACTIONS
GAIANS,   GAIANS
HIVE,     HIVE
UNIV,     UNIV
MORGAN,   MORGAN
SPARTANS, SPARTANS
BELIEVE,  BELIEVE
PEACE,    PEACE

;
; First item is file name, second item is search key.
; These should always be the same except for debugging purposes.
;
#NEWFACTIONS
CYBORG,   CYBORG
PIRATES,  PIRATES
DRONE,    DRONE
ANGELS,   ANGELS
FUNGBOY,  FUNGBOY
CARETAKE, CARETAKE
USURPER,  USURPER

;
; These are factions you want included in the startup list.
; These may also be chosen when a random faction is selected.
; First item is file name, second item is search key.
; These should always be the same except for debugging purposes.
;
#CUSTOMFACTIONS
Followers Nation, Followers Nation

-I believe it's not case sensitive, but try to make the "Followers Nation" match exactly in filenames and the "#Followers Nation" line in the faction txt.  (I don't know if it'll let you use two words for that...)

Let me know how it works out.

[Flux]

Oh no, I have the faction play in the starting list. It just is basically a re-named Gaians with a few modifications to the civ buffs.
Anyways, the gender thing is not like you said. Mine is like this:
; Factions -- Names & personalities
;
; formal, desc, noun, masc/fem, sing/plural, name, gender, ai-fight, ai-power, ai-tech, ai-wealth, ai-growth
;    title, characteristic, adjective
;    SPECIAL RULES, parameters, ...
;    SOCIAL PRIORITY, setting, result
;
; formal      = Following
; desc        = Isolation is the only way to peace
; noun        = Followers
; masc/fem    = masc
; sing/plural = plural
; name        = Ron
; gender      = M
; ai-fight    = -1,0,1
; ai-power    = 0
; ai-tech     = 1
; ai-wealth   = 1
; ai-growth   = 0
Weird stuff.
Also, I already had gimp but was not using it. Do I need to get rid of the purple backround and blue outlines?

[Buster's Uncle]

The one drawback to GIMP is that it has trouble with the transparent background if you do ANYTHING to it - so a simple [Ctrl]a, [Ctrl]c of your .jpg - switch to GIMP and paste it in, won't work.  You'll get solid blue boxes around your bases, ingame.  Loading it directly into GIMP and saving as a .pcx will probably have problems with .jpg artifacts messing up the background.  That's what blank.pcx.pcx is mostly for - the workaround.  It was created in Photoshop, which CAN handle the background.  You just need to paste your faction graphic into a clean copy without the OLD background.  (It's a simple Layer>Transparency>Add Alpha Channel, use the Select by Color tool w/ Threshold dialed down to zero to select the purple background>Delete, and paste then the lot into the blank and save with the new filename.

Attached is a copy of your avatar with transparent background and slightly blown up to fit.

[Buster's Uncle]

Anyways, the gender thing is not like you said. Mine is like this:
; Factions -- Names & personalities
;
; formal, desc, noun, masc/fem, sing/plural, name, gender, ai-fight, ai-power, ai-tech, ai-wealth, ai-growth
;    title, characteristic, adjective
;    SPECIAL RULES, parameters, ...
;    SOCIAL PRIORITY, setting, result
;
; formal      = Following
; desc        = Isolation is the only way to peace
; noun        = Followers
; masc/fem    = masc
; sing/plural = plural
; name        = Ron
; gender      = M
; ai-fight    = -1,0,1
; ai-power    = 0
; ai-tech     = 1
; ai-wealth   = 1
; ai-growth   = 0

BTW, that's not from the faction.txt - compare the Hive's "The Protectorate, The Dictator, Hive, M, 1, Shin, M,  1,  1, 0, 1, 0," with Deirdre's "Gaia's Stepdaughters, The Green, Gaians, F, 2, Deirdre, F, -1, 0, 0, 0, 1," lines, and note the "M"s versus "F"s in the respective files.

[Flux]

Alright, so I replaced Gaians, gaians2, and Gaians3 with my followers graphics but for both the Gaians and Followers everything is using Gaian textures.
Weird. I wonder why?

[Buster's Uncle]

It's probably something to do with the filenames - again, the #Followers line in the faction .txt, the filenames, and the line under #CUSTOM FACTIONS in alphax.txt have to match exactly.  I bet you're seeing the default graphic, which is identical to Gaian.

[Flux]

  So, I discovered the faction editor. I think using the GUI to set up a faction is a lot easier.
But, the graphics still show as Gaian. Everything else works now. Even the gender.
I am baffled as to why. I would assume the fac editor would add the correct names in text files and such.
Anyone know why?

[Buster's Uncle]

This is FacEdit you're talking about?  That thing is of the devil - buggy as heck.  I cannot recommend the nasty thing.

We need to talk a coder into fixing it...