Different Infantry on each different theatres.
Submitted by ArgCmdr

This is something quite simple to do, all that you would need to do is sacrifice (OR NOT, read at the end) some snow frames for some buildings, which in fact can be fixed with the rest of the palette colors:
This method consists on using the two unused color lines to sistematically have one differently colored infantry per theatre. All you need to know is how to make infantry SHPs, and how to edit JASC palettes.

I explained how to modify JASC palettes thousands of times, but one more time doesnt hurt. After you convert the .pal file with XCC mixeer to a PAL (JASC) one, it will become plain ASCII text. Open it up with wordpad and...

(Header) JASC-PAL
(Version) 0100
(Nº. of Colors) 16 or 256
Palette Data RGB Parameter, separated by spaces and each color divided by being on different lines. RGB parameters also limited to be 0-255.

Code Example:
JASC-PAL
0100
256
0 0 255 ;(plain blue)
255 0 0 ;(plain red)
; (other 254 lines)

That done, you need to know infantry making, and have some skill on how to make it color flexible. This method is explicitly working for two factions in the game, you can use a line of 16 colors for each, on each palette. The main idea, is to use only the correspondant 16 colors for the soldier´s clothes, plus casual blacks, remaps, or skins and other color details, so that in other palettes those same colors can be replaced with another camouflage. For example, you have a soldier that you want to be green in Temperate. For that, you create 16 shades of green in one of these unused lines. Next step, is to upen unitsno, and replace the correspondant colors, with snowy camouflaged equivalents. So as result, you will get that, the unit, will have a green clothing on temperate, and a greyish on snow. (Remember that rehues work best, do not change the lighting so the infantry does not look better or worse on oneor another theatre). Then you do the same with other theatres. The good thing about this, is that you actually can create 4 runs of 8 instead of two of 16, hence have the ability to create more than one clothing type.

As the Read Below note says, you can actually avoid having to sacrifice snow frames, due to the AltArt logic, used in RA2 in the SEAL. It lets you have a different SHP file for snow. In this case, you can use a recolthing with the current unitsno colors, or a totally different graphic. Up to you, but its the best way to get through the sacrifice.

> Back to Tutorials