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VPA
Screen Colors
=================
VPA provides great flexibility in displaying various kinds
of information. You can define colors to used to display
various groups of objects on the map or to write text in
multiple information screens.
All color values are defined in VPA.INI.
VPA first looks for VPA.INI in the current directory (from
where you run VPA), then in the game directory. This way
you can customize some colors for one particular game or
another by creating VPA.INI with some new colors in the
game directory, while the rest of the colors (not specified
in that custom VPA.INI) will be read from the main INI file.
Screen colors are specified in a special
section of VPA.INI named [Colors]. This is how it looks
(comments on the right are added for here only, they are
not present in VPA.INI):
[Colors]
These are numeric values for all colors. You should specify
numbers in VPA.INI.
| Black
= 0 |
Dark
Gray = 8 |
| Blue
= 1 |
Light
Blue = 9 |
| Green
= 2 |
Light
Green = 10 |
| Cyan
= 3 |
Light
Cyan = 11 |
| Red
= 4 |
Light
Red = 12 |
| Magenta
= 5 |
Light
Magenta = 13 |
| Brown
= 6 |
Yellow
= 14 |
| Light
Gray = 7 |
White
= 15 |
These
are the colors for:
| PlanetInfo |
=
10 |
planet
info screen |
| OldPlanetInfo |
=
2 |
old
data in planet info screen |
| BaseInfo |
=
9 |
starbase
info screen |
| ShipInfo |
=
3 |
ship
info screen |
| StormInfo |
=
2 |
ion
storm info screen |
| WormInfo |
=
5 |
wormhole
info screen |
| NeutralPlanet |
=
15 |
neutral/unknown
planet on the map |
| WeakStorm |
=
2 |
weak
ion storm on the map |
| ModerateStorm |
=
14 |
moderate
ion storm on the map |
| DangerousStorm |
=
4 |
dangerous
ion storm on the map |
| Wormhole |
=
13 |
wormhole
on the map |
| FlyPath |
=
5 |
ship's
fly path on the map |
| TowPath |
=
14 |
ship's
path under tow on the map |
| Trace |
=
5 |
ship's
trace on the map |
| DistLine |
=
6 |
distance
line on the map |
| Message |
=
3 |
text color in the message screen |
| HighLight/ |
=
14 |
highlighted
text colors in the |
| HighLight_ |
=
15 |
message
screen: text between pairs |
| HighLight* |
=
13 |
of
"/", "_" and "*" |
Also color profiles
are defined in VPA.INI. Color profiles are used to define
colors for planets, bases, ships and mines belonging to
different races. Color profiles are defined like that:
Profile = ProfileName,PlanetColor,BaseColor,ShipColor,MineColor
Profile = Own,9,11,2,3
Profile = Enemy,14,12,12,5
Profile = Ally,13,10,3,3
After the "Profile" keyword and
an equal sign, there is profile name followed by numeric
values of planet, base, ship and mine colors. Three color
profiles are defined here. They are the default profiles:
"Own"
colors are used for the player's race
"Ally" colors are used for the player's teammates
in team games
"Enemy" colors are used for all other races
When you run VPA for the first time for
a particular game, it auto-creates a file named VPACLRn.INI,
where "n" is your race number. For example, if
you are playing Robots and your teammate is Colonies, and
you have both the RST files UNPACKed into the same directory,
VPACLR9.INI will look like this:
RACECOLOR1 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR2 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR3 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR4 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR5 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR6 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR7 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR8 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR9 = OWN
RACECOLOR10 = ENEMY
RACECOLOR11 = ALLY
VPA automatically assigned "Own"
colors to you, "Ally" colors to your teammate,
and "Enemy" colors to all other races.
Of course, you may wish to change it (for
instance, if you have allies, who are not your teammates,
e.g., you don't have their RST files). Then you can manually
edit VPACLRn.INI and assign any colors you wish to any races.
You can also create your own color profiles.
To do this, just add another "Profile = ..." line
to VPA.INI and assign the new profile to any races.
For example, you wish to paint Crystalline
planets Green, bases - Light Green, ships - Light Magenta
and mines - Light Gray. This is what you do:
VPA.INI: Profile = Crystals,2,10,13,7
VPACLRn.INI: RaceColor7 = Crystals
Just
don't forget to backup your custom VPA.INI when you install
a new version of VPA, because the distributive contains
the standard VPA.INI file. See VPA
FAQ on "Custom VPA configurations and new versions
of VPA".
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