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Solved How to change Flags settings

Captain Armstrong

Captain Armstrong

Shipbuilding Coordinator
Storm Modder
Right, so I apologize in advance if I offend whoever made the merchant ship flags, but why do france and portugal, for example, fly blue and green striped flags at the mizzen? They should fly national colors, with maybe a different kind of pendant, because not only is it difficult to tell nationalities from a distance as it is now, i can find no historical basis for these flags. So I was wondering where I could find the code to change this, and at least fix flags that can be replaced with others in game. for example the british red ensign could become England's trade ship flag (I know the EIC one is actually historical, but it was the East india trading company, not the West india trading company, by no means did they have a monopoly in the carribean as well as the indian ocean! ) So if anyone knows where I could find the code to fix this, that would be great! :onya Maybe with alittle help I could make the pendants unique instead for countries like Portugal where we only have one type of national colors ;)
 
I believe this would be purely a texture project; no need to change any code whatsoever. :no
The flag textures for all nations and periods are in RESOURCE/Textures/flags.
The ones you'd need to change are merflg# and merpen#, for the merchant ensigns and pennants respectively.
The number on the end represents the game period in which the flags are used, and each flag texture displays flags in this order, from left to right:
Holland, Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, America (if applicable).

I think most of the flags are historically accurate for each period, particularly the naval ensigns, but the merchant ones are less clear.
Some flags like the British Red Ensign and EITC flag are in the perflg# textures, if you were wondering.
(Note the perflg# and perpen# textures don't use the same order as the regular merchant/navy flag textures.)
 
Thomas the Terror did all our current flags and they should be historically accurate, including the merchant ensigns that don't look like the national flags.
 
The merchant flags are actually not all that realistic, as far as I can tell. I am mainly concered about the last period, the french and portugese flags are the worst IMO, because they look similar at a distance and they arent realistic.
I think french merchant ships should simply fly the tricolor, and french naval ships the current tricolor ensign (though this is not accurate for the entire last period either, In Napoleon's time the Naval Ensign was replaced with the Tricolor too)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ensigns

Portugal is harder to find information on, and I have found an example of the green and white striped flag ingame, though it seems to be the flag of merchants from the portugese city of Oporto http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/pt~hist.html
I might change it to one of these flags, simply so the nationality of a ship is easier to identify http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Portuguese_flags

The flag currently ingame for British ships is the historical flag of their East India Trading Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company As much as the POTC movies want you to believe that EIC ruled the world, they really didnt, though they rule nearly all of india. However, that is on the other side of the world, they didnt historically have much influence in the caribbean.
I plan to replace it with the Red ensign, which is the current flag of British merchantmen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ensign It wasn't their official flag at the time of the game, merchant ships had a choice between several ensigns I think, but this is easily identifiable and it is hard to be mistaken with an american flag. I am considering using a simple Union Jack as well.

As for American Merchants, the current flag with just the stripes was used by merchants during the revolution, but not afterwards, so I will change the period 6 merchant flag to be the same as the Naval one.
I dont know howhistorically accurate spain's merchant flag is, but it is easily identifiable as spanish, looks nice, and I see no reason to change it. :onya
 
I would be against making merchants and naval vessels fly the same flag. They're very useful for identification.
 
well maybe different pennants? its not much use to have a merchant flag when you can't tell what country they are from. There are only a few nations where this will come up, ill see if I can figure out some variations
 
Indeed I agree that keeping the flags for merchant and navy ships different is a good idea.
 
I think I have found a way to give merchant ships and navy ships different flags and still be realistic, here is what I have so far.
flags.JPG
If you cant tell from the picture, the order is as follows:
period 4 merchant flags
period 5 merchant flags
period 6 merchant flags
period 5 personal flags
period 6 personal flags
I want to switch the "dont tread on me" flag (red and whit stripes with snake on it) with the Aubrey flag (white ensign with a 4 leaf clover) because the first is a flag from the american revolution so would fit better in that time, and the Aubrey flag would fit better in period 6, because the series takes place from 1800-beyond 1815. I thought the Aubrey storyline was set in period 5 (which should be changed anyway) but would it be a problem to remove the Aubrey flag from the period 5 personal flags?
 
There are some interesting flags there. The four leaf clover I like because I have been lucky more than good. And decades ago in my misspent youth I was 1st chair French horn for 5 years.

More variety is always good.
 
Captain Armstrong said:
I want to switch the "dont tread on me" flag (red and whit stripes with snake on it) with the Aubrey flag (white ensign with a 4 leaf clover) because the first is a flag from the american revolution so would fit better in that time, and the Aubrey flag would fit better in period 6, because the series takes place from 1800-beyond 1815. I thought the Aubrey storyline was set in period 5 (which should be changed anyway) but would it be a problem to remove the Aubrey flag from the period 5 personal flags?
Click to expand...
I don't think Aubrey's flag should be moved unless the storyline moves as well. That defeats the purpose of it being Aubrey's flag. :razz
Bear in mind that the M&C storyline was only placed in its current period because a) there was no other storyline in that period, and b) the main quest doesn't exist yet.
So until such time as we get either a WIP M&C quest OR a finalised Select Storyline interface (with free play options for any period etc), I doubt we'll be moving the M&C storyline.
 
Agreed with Armada; we should keep Aubrey as-is for now, unless we decide to do away with that storyline altogether.
 
Looks good to me, except that Period 5 now has two US flags and Period 6 has no US flags.
Maybe you could swap the Serapis flag for one of the Period 6 flags, to balance things out?
 
well the latest screen is for personal flags only, so if you want to fly american colours you of course still can, its just not an option to fly a revolutionary war flag in period 6 as a personal flag( thats why i changed it so there are two for period five, they are both flags flown almost exclusively during the american revolution.)
 
Ah OK, that makes sense. Leave it as-is for now, then. :onya
 
So all thats left to do is to convert the .tga files back to .tga.tx and I can test them ingame! But i dont know how to do that. :shrug
 
In TX Converter, find the folder containing your TGA files on the left hand side, and find RESOURCE/Textures/Flags on the right hand side.
Back up the original TGA.TX files you want to replace before starting. Now select one of your TGA files in TX Converter, and click 'Convert'.
In the window that appears, select '32bit (24bit colour)' under 'Output texture format for without alpha channel images',
and select '32bit (8bit alpha, 24bit colour)' under 'Output texture format for with alpha channel images'.
Leave the rest of the settings as they are, and click 'Convert'. Repeat for the other files.

Those are the standard settings for high-quality results, but Pieter mentioned something about using the compression settings in some cases.
I think he's on about using the 'DXT5' option for both with and without alpha channels, so maybe you should try that instead.
 
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