Sins Forums
Hi, I had a gravity well bonus problem (which seemed to cover every bonus affecting gravity wells) but now I wonder how you create a map icon for galaxy forge maps, can someone please reply, I want to make maps with icons. And I look like a noob without map icons.
What do you mean by map icon? The map picture? The planet icon in the Galaxy Forge? A planet bonus icon?
Well I've only ever gotten it to work right in a mod, but I can tell you they're TGA images, 177x92 pixels. I'd try putting the picture in the Galaxy Forge folder and putting the image name, no file extension, in the "browsePictureName" field.
idk how to save TGA format files, but I believe I can get a PNG file up.
What the heck are you using for an image editor? 
Paint.net, Gimp, or photoshop is a minimum. The first two are free, and I know paint.net and I think photoshop support TGA natively.
Photoshop is a thousand dollars, do you think my parents would even let me have a hundred?
Didn't you say you were at teenager in the other thread? You could probably use the student edition at around $150-200. But in either case that's why I told you two great free image editors that will work great for everything but texturing models.
177x92 .tga and save it to a mods Textures folder or the game install directory Texture folder.
eg
C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Sins of a Solar Empire - Trinity\Textures
You can also fool the game into thinking it has a .tga. I like making software do stuff it tells me it can't.
If you have a jpg like MyMap.jpg
rename it to MyMap.tga
place it in a Textures folder
I think it works with png but it's been a while since I tested. Also cant remember if it accepts spaces in the image name.
My Map.tga might bork
My_Map.tga with underscore is safe always but I do like Ironclad and use this method always
ThisIsMyNewFile.file
There is no extension in the map picture label which means it can accept tga or dds format. If the root directory has a MyMap.tga and you want to use a dds compressed picture like MyMap.dds in your mod dir, you will need to put the extension on the map picture link to tell the engine which one to load.
EDIT: People use Gimp for texturing models, like Thoumsin, I put a little info from Thoumsin on the texturing page for texturing models in Gimp.
soase.x90x.net?i=model/tools.html Gimp links here
soase.x90x.net?i=xsi/Texturing.html
- open your .dds in Gimp
- colors > components > decompose ... rgba and decompose to layers option
- on the new pic created, remove the eyes icon before each of the color channel, you can maybe activate the chain icon in front of each color channel if you fear change these channel by mistake... be sure that only the alpha channel is selected... make your edit work...
- colors > components > recompose ... change made on the second pic alpha layer will be transfer to the first pic alpha channel...
- save
I just used GIMP, besides, my parents are in a financial crisis and spend VERY LIMITIED, it is exactly what is keeping me from sins rebellion, I bought diplomacy/entrenchment years ago. Not a dollar for me.
It seems every game is no price, no dice everywhere!
It there a tutorial on how to add custom planet icons/main view icons etc to the Planet Icons.tga file?
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