Ok, I've gotten a directory set up so that I can make files available to GC players and modders.  www.galciv.com/carielf

Just make sure that you have a bottle of asprin or other headache medicine on hand before using the tools.   Just keep in mind that we had to use pretty much the same stuff to make Gal Civ.

If any of you modders like Thrull have any suggestions of what I could add to the docs for people using the tools, let me know.

Ok this is what's currently there:

About Gal Civ Fonts.doc - some quick docs about GC fonts.

Data 1.05.zip - a zipped copy of a clean data folder from 1.05

Data v1-04-059.zip - zipped copy of a clean data folder from the version there, for any of you who haven't taken the plunge to 1.05 yet.

Font Gfx.zip - sample font gfx, in bmp format.  They would need to be converted to indexed pcx files before you could try encoding them as fonts.

M_util build.zip - this is the original, unmodified version of the program that we used to encode all of the graphics in Gal Civ.  If it's not a pcx, we used this (but it did begin life as a pcx)

Making a sample app.doc - these are the docs created by Mike Duffy, the person who created M_util and wrote a lot of the underlying code used in Gal Civ, LightWeight Ninja, and The Corporate Machine. (We call this code Pear and it's a layer between us and DirectX).

MUtil.doc - docs that I wrote about the same time that I was working on the ship encoder. It's more limited than Making a sample app.doc, but it has info more specific to Gal Civ.

ship encoder.zip - same as in the link in the ship encoder thread.  It's basically MUtil with the other part hidden, and I hardcoded all of the buttons that you'd have had to press if you were doing it with Mutil. This file and m_util build.zip are included mainly because they've been tested.  They both crash because that's just the way mutil is, but a reboot can usually clear up the problem.

ship encoder + mutil.zip - basically the ship encoder with buttons to let you switch between mutil classic and the ship encoder interface.  This way, you don't have to remember what buttons to press, but you can go into mutil classic mode to see the picture of what you just did, and maybe fool with the palette or whatever.

When I start work on GC2, I may put some more time into Mutil/ship encoder, like add windows to show your ships animating so that you don't have to load them into GC to test them.

GC2, as a side note, will allow for palette swapping, which will make your lives easier, assuming that you just want to change colors.