BoP Medals
Medals live in the Frontres
directory. There is a big bitmap (286 * 288 / 256 colour) for the
main plaque and (however many missions you have) little 256
colour bitmaps for the "jewels". Each time you look at
the medal in the game it displays the big bitmap and then
overprints it with the little ones according to how far you have
got in the campaign. I would suggest that you use nice
descriptive names for them.
For the big bitmap choose a nice simple design to make it easier
to plan where the "jewels" will appear. Use your
judgement on what to make it look like but I would suggest a
shield, or a plate, or a plaque, or maybe a starmap with the
jewels slotting in to represent conquered systems.
Since the game seems to only add "jewels" for the last
15 this is the maximum you should plan for, and it also means
that if you have 15 missions or more that if you like you can
simply edit the "normal" plaque to have your design in
the centre.
For the little bitmaps you
can either repeat the same little design, or if you want the work
use a different design for each. There are three methods
possible:
Firstly if you have chosen to use a modified version of the
"normal" plaque as your main medal you can simply edit
the "normal" jewels, either drawing over them, changing
their colour balance (if that is what you did to the plaque, you
can get some nice effects so it looks like a different metal), or
blacking out the "metal" surrounding the actual
"jewel".
Second if you are using a new plaque you can draw your
"jewel" and then adjust the size of the picture so that
the "jewel" is at the same co-ordinates in the little
picture as it should be on the plaque. This could be tricky to
get right though (I haven't tried it).
Thirdly if you have a paint package that supports layers then you
could draw (or import) your "jewel" and then position
it by eye, reduce the layer with the plaque to 0% visibility, and
then crop and save the required area. I have unfortunately found
in my experimentation's that a nearly black outline appears
around the "jewel" which seems to be a result of
reducing the colour depth back down to 256. You may have to
either go around the "jewel" with true black colour or
use the layers option to only produce guide-points and then paste
a copy of your "jewel" over the top.
There are two list files to
edit to make the game use your bitmaps.
The first is Campawds.lst which has a list of the bitmaps to be
used as Campaign Awards. It has a definition of its format at the
top. Change the number of Campaigns, put in a comment for the
name of your campaign, its number, and names for the big medal
and the little "jewels" (not the filename though
probably similar).
The second is Top.lst, which you may or may not have been into
before. Here is where you define what the names you have added to
Campawds.lst for the bitmaps actually mean. Add lines showing the
filename, the name you have chosen, and then 1 (I do not know
what the "1" defines but it is used for all the Rebel
and Imperial lines defining their medals).