I have Paint and want to make a map/picture for the opening Story Screen for an AOE2 Forgotten Empires scenario. I am referring to the Screen that comes up when you click on a scenario's icon in its campaign screen to play that scenario. By default, either a big blank square or the designer's map appears on that first screen.
By comparison, in AOE1, designing a BMP map for a scenario could be simple. The main AOE1 folder had a file called something like "mapdefault.bmp". AOE1 had a 256 color palette, so to make a scenario instruction screen map, just needed to open the default map .bmp file in Paint, and then redraw it using colors that fit the Palette. The colors in Paint consistently either stayed the same or switched when you loaded the bmp file that you had repainted into your AOE1 Scenario Editor. So for example, white stayed white, but Green switched to a different color. So the simplest thing to do would be to just use the colors that stayed the same.
After you were done, you just resaved the BMP file under a new name in your AOE1 folder and then loaded that file using your Scenario Editor's Cinematics tab.
By comparison, in AOE1, designing a BMP map for a scenario could be simple. The main AOE1 folder had a file called something like "mapdefault.bmp". AOE1 had a 256 color palette, so to make a scenario instruction screen map, just needed to open the default map .bmp file in Paint, and then redraw it using colors that fit the Palette. The colors in Paint consistently either stayed the same or switched when you loaded the bmp file that you had repainted into your AOE1 Scenario Editor. So for example, white stayed white, but Green switched to a different color. So the simplest thing to do would be to just use the colors that stayed the same.
After you were done, you just resaved the BMP file under a new name in your AOE1 folder and then loaded that file using your Scenario Editor's Cinematics tab.
[This message has been edited by rakovsky (edited 01-11-2021 @ 11:55 AM).]