HELP, custom factions.

Okay I'll give it a go.

As far as Backgrounds download any background/wallpaper png file that is 1920x1080 and place into folder 

C:\Users\[Your Computers name]\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv3\Factions\LeaderBGs

Foreground pictures works best by cutting out anything else associated with the picture other than the image of the leader itself.  One can use many programs to do this one is Adobe Photoshop which you can get a 1 month free trial, or there are other free web based editors out there.  This picture also works best as 1920x1080 .png file.  Once this is done place in folder.

C:\Users\[Your Computers name]\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv3\Factions\LeaderFGs

Leader pictures should be cropped from the previous imaged and reduced in size to 128x128 .png file, then place in folder.

C:\Users\[Your Computers name]\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv3\Factions\Portraits

Finally Logos, any icon\logo image in .png will work again should be size 128x128.  Once you have a file place that in the following folder

C:\Users\[Your Computers name]\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv3\Factions\Logos

Last start the game and they will appear for your custom factions.  Note if you already have the game running you will need to restart it.

Thanks for the advice, your post is exactly what I was looking for. Have some Karma  .

I could not get the fore grounds to work with MS Paint.

I followed these instructions for just the leader portraits and they don't show up in leader pictures in the game.  Is there any trick to it?

Restart the game if you already have it running, make sure the files are 1920x1080 and png files.

I tried, no good.  The leader FG portraits have to be 1920 x 1080 also?  or just the backgrounds?

Thanks.

Both the Foreground and the Background have to be 1920 x 1080

Not sure if MS Paint will save the alpha channel, try using gimp or maybe paint.net, I know gimp can do it and both are available free and can be found with a google search.

I am in the process of trying both your suggestions.   Clearly MS Paint will not work with "transparencies" that are needed to put a portrait in front of a background.  Thanks for the suggestions.

No problem, I haven't used MS Paint for years. GIMP is by far the best free photo/image editing software but has a bit of a learning curve if you haven't used anything like it before and does a lot more than you probably need here. Not sure about Paint.net remember using it a couple of years ago before I found GIMP I would think it can do alpha since I remember it was much more capable than MS Paint.

MS Paint is shameful in this day and age as an image editor, (I mean Microsoft should be ashamed not you for using it).

Mine are already .png with transparent backgrounds but are smaller than 1920x1080.  I love gimp, but I have PS anyway.

 question, if I make the portrait 1920x1080, won't he or she completely cover the background.  Or do you make most of the image transparent, with a smaller character in the middle?

thanks.

Hi Charon2112 that's right you make a transparent 1920 x 1080 image with the actual character portrait as the only non-transparent bit so the background will show through behind them.

Agreed if you can afford PS it's the best.

This looked very helpful to me on transparencies, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_42i7osHug

Link to my entire factions folder with 45 custom factions mostly created by me some were downloaded from the faction design contest (4-5) although the core network was modified as it was causing the game to crash.

http://wikisend.com/download/592400/Factions.zip

Make sure you are saving them to PNG as well. JPG will not work