You could create a new png for a particular theatre or theatres and load this as a mod. It'll pop up instead of the stock portraits. Just load that as required. Appears you can only use 1 png named the same. A problem if you run out of space. Might be best to stick to overall commanders and corps only if you want to cover a long period of campaigns. Depends on how many portraits you have. Existing png is fairly large.
The naming conventions if this is set in stone might mean revisiting the OOBs tho.
Last edited by Crikey on Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks Crikey. One of the nice things about Gettysburg was the ease of adding unit commander portraits. We had Napoleonic commanders down to brigade level in many cases for just about every nation you can think of and adding them was fairly easy. There was plenty of space to add 100s.
Its another aspect of the way WL was designed that demonstrates that in many ways its a backward step from GB. A real shame.
Portrait Mods might be the way we'll have to go but even these don't address the issue of wanting a sandbox game quickly or a scenario generator-built battle in a hurry. Its yet another step to have to consider. *sigh*
HITS & Couriers - a different and realistic way to play SoW MP.
Much less space and it's a fair bit of extra work, yes.
The portrait PNG is 2048 by 2048, and the portraits are 90 by 116. You'll have to do the math but you can get a lot on there. Perhaps most of what you hope for if sticking to particular command levels?
If you prefer a module approach to KS you could even set up portraits for each major campaign...which players activate as necessary. You'll be able to get everything in, hopefully.
Last edited by Crikey on Mon Oct 12, 2015 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I make that 374 slots. The Gettysburg version of the KS Nap mod has 928 portraits in it and we still lack many from the period up to 1806 and the minor nations.
The whole mess is just a lot more work than before.
HITS & Couriers - a different and realistic way to play SoW MP.
Yep. I'm finding the new system challenging but it's where we are. I'm hoping familiarity will help me speed up over time. Am plodding through at the moment. Well, a slower plod than my usual snail like pace.
Sounds like you may have to restrict your command levels or go down the module route. However, I'm wondering if there's a way to increase the png size, say to 4096 by 4096 and amend the co-ordinate xmls doc accordingly. Something to consider.
Jim - I thought I'd found a fix re: default portraits but it appears not.
So, more questions I'm afraid.
1. Is Col L (portraits) of OOBs obsolete? I can't see that these match up with the portraits.png at all.
For example Drouet is listed as (0-3), which doesn't tie in with the location of his portrait on the PNG. In effect, everything is controlled by the ref in SoWWL_Images.xml.
2. So, this brings me back to my original problem. If a character portrait isn't listed in SoWWL_Images.xml what determines the default picture used? My test seems to show that every default points at the British portrait even though you have French and Prussian portraits on the png.
The co-ordinates xmls doc mentions default inf, default cav, default arty but only once. So no Brit default, French default, Prussian default etc. Is this an oversight or is there another determining factor?
I'd hoped to be able to rely on defaults to allocate 3 different national flags to relevant forces in OOBs.
Last edited by Crikey on Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
1. Yes Column L is no longer used, but it was more trouble to take it out than leave it in. The current system is as described above.
2. As I said before, I personally don't know. Pakfront and Norb were working together to get the defaults showing up and I do not know the details of how they did it. If your testing shows that only the first row is used, then that is likely the solution they ended up with. Looking at the unitstatus.layout file it appears to me that they put in the default images by branch of service and then the image is overwritten if a commander portrait exists.
If this really bothers you, you might be able to make a mod with smaller portrait sizes. The size is defined in SOWWL_Images.xml and if you set this up as a mod you *should* be able to specify your own portrait sizes. You would have to redo all of the existing entries at the new size as well as add whatever new ones you would like to add.
Happy modding.
-Jim
"My God, if we've not got a cool brain and a big one too, to manage this affair, the nation is ruined forever." Unknown private, 14th Vermont, 2 July 1863
A2. Yes that was my reading. But thought I'd check. I appreciate this isn't your baby.
Does it really bother me? No, but it niggles that I spent six hours trying to get this and other stuff to work which would have taken less than an hour in the old game. Not so happy modding. That said, I appreciate your need to evolve.
The solution is I don't use default portraits and allocate individual 'portraits' to all command levels to avoid the defaults triggering. That'll work for the mod in mind albeit it's more work.
Thanks for the heads up.
Last edited by Crikey on Wed Oct 14, 2015 10:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
