Forgive my posing this question, for it the answer must be somwhere in these forums, but I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone know where to change the Alliance and Empire backgrounds?

It's not a stupid question.

 

You can change the standard pic somewhere in the DLL's.. but it is easier just to change the background with your standard pic. Mail me, if you don't understand, and I'll explain you in dutch if you wish.

Download Resource Hacker and open the Strategy.dll file, look around in the bitmap tree, they background should be there soemwhere.

sitting at home with his almost completed map of strategy.dll ...

 

Yup, the first two Bitmap entries in strategy.dll are the GUIs for the Alliance

and the Empire (900 and 901).

I appreciate the help, but this is exactly where my problem sits. beside Resource Hacker, I have downloaded Resource Explorer, which let you search the bitmaps a lot faster. I have browsed the entire strategy.dll and the backgrounds I'm searching for are not there, nor are they numbered 900 and 901 (these are the "main view backgrounds").

 

To clarify things: the backgrounds I mean can be seen if you use the function "Autogenerate as an Alliance/Empire character" in Rebed. This is the same background you see when you open the encyclopedia in Rebellion.

Oops, our fault then. Are you sure they aren't in the STrategy.DLL? I can't think of any other place.

That makes an interesting problem, don't you think? Through ResHacker we can edit virtually anything in the game. And for some reason or other, these two backgrounds are nowhere to be found (at least, not by me, and I have checked virtually every dll in the game).

 

By the way, it is possible to change them by creating a picture with a different background than blue and loading this through Rebed. But still, one would think there's another way..., or is there?

I do not think those backgrounds are stored within Rebellion. Those backgrounds are built into the encyclopedia pictures so why to store them? Try to search the RebEd files.

Yup, that's what I just mailed ya

Thanks people. I sort of understand now. I guess it was just my lack of programming knowledge that caused my lack of understanding as to not storing such files in the dll's.