This Topic (section) still under construction
New artwork
In the previous section I fixed many of my issues with CF by changing the Unit and Tile definitions and rebuilding the existing Maps. However even after some 'experiments' of increasing the 'playing area' (by 'padding out' the existing Maps with extra terrain) I was still left with a game that had a WW1/WW2 'feel' to it. Eventually I realised that this is because there are no rockets or missiles = and adding Missiles means generating new Unit artwork.
Adding Missiles to a game that was never designed for them is 'a challenge', however once achieved this showed how I could build my WW2 'scenario' maps (see Steves WW2 maps section pages)
The basic Missile definition
A missile is just a fast moving Air unit with the lowest possible 'armor' setting (1, as 0 crashes the CF code) and a decent attack value against the 'target' type (so AA Missiles have a power(air) only, Air-to-ground and Ground-to-ground missiles and rockets get power(ground) only and Torpedoes have power(ship) only)
The only 'problem' is that missiles have to be 'vulnerable', so they 'die' on 'impact' (i.e. are killed in the counter-attack) = and this means there's nothing to stop enemy units from 'shooting them down' :-) Hopefully, the long movement range of most missiles means they will reach a 'target' on the turn they are 'launched' (since Air units count all tiles as 'cost 1') and die in the attack, before the 'target' gets a chance to shoot them down
Carrying Missiles
To carry Missiles, a unit has to be defined as a 'transporter' (i.e. given a transslots, minweight, maxweigh values). To control what units can carry what Missiles, the weight of missiles has to be carefully set, as do the various transporter slots/min/max values. Needless to say, this means all the other Unit weights have to be modified (as do all the 'normal' transporters)
The only way to work out the various interactions of unit weight, translots/minweight/maxweight is to spreadsheet every Unit. You can Right click and 'Save link as' my Missile units spreadsheet here
Missiles types
In the end I went for the following types:-
Basic rocket - short range 'RPG' / 'Bazooka' / 'Panzerfaust' designed for infantry use against ground targets (so power(ground), power(ship) only) AA missile - short range air-to-air (or ground-to-air), power(air) only SAM missile - long range, surface to air power(air) only Cruise missile - long range air-to-ground, ground-to-ground effective against ships as well as ground targets (power(ground), power(ship) only) For more details, see my 'New Units' page
New Artwork
To generate new artwork, I simply started with the existing .bmp files and 'added' to them
When creating new artwork, you need to 'watch out for' the 'transparent' colour used in the Units .bmp Units should be defined in 'set of 4' (if you don't CoMET will 'fill in' the last row of 4 (at the end of the Units display) by duplicating the units from the start of the file). All new icons can just be added to the end of the bmp file (the display 'order' depends on the definitions file, not the bmp file)
Maps reference Tiles by their 'serial number' = the order in which they are defined in the definitions file (which is also the order in which CoMET displays them).
So if you want e.g. an extra Road or River tile, and want to 'insert' that 'next to' the other Road / River Tiles (when shown in CoMET), this effects the serial number of every 'up stream' tile ! This means when you insert a new tile 'in the right place' for CoMET you have to adjust the terrain settings ALL THE EXISTING MAPS (i.e. change the serial numbers of the tiles referenced in [map-raw] to match the new order in .tsrc definitions) To avoid having to change Tile numbers, some of the existing Tiles can be 're-purposed' (there are some unused tiles = see later), however (eventually you will end up having to 'insert', so I wrote a QBasic scrip to modify the [map-raw] of all existing maps (see later)
Maps reference Units by their (English) name, whilst CoMET shows the Units in definition order
This makes it a lot simpler to add / insert Units = except when you decide to change a name :-) To make it easy to change Unit names in the existing Maps, I wrote a QBasic scrip (see later)
BMP drawings
In each case I created the new unit/tile 'by hand drawing' the 'North facing' unit in 'blue'.
Many units (and some tiles) are 'symmetrical', so I only had to design 'one half' and then 'mirror' to get the other half. To get 'shadows' I adjusted the brightness (on that half) and then 'hand-tweaked' the result To get the (5) other 'facings' I simple rotated my 'North' facing' icon and tweaked the result by hand To get a 'Brown' (FNA) Units from the Blue (Empire) version, I copied the 6 'blue' units and used the 'Hue' adjustment sliders (in PaintShop Pro) For more details see my 'New Tiles' page