Confederate flags

[Philippe]

The American Civil War scenario in Pride of Nations is using a very interesting but probably misused Confederate flag.

The Confederacy used different national flags at different points in time. They started out with the Stars and Bars, which, especially at the scale these games are played, looks far too much like the Union flag.

Because of the visual confusion they adopted the Stainless Banner in May 1863. The Stainless banner was essentially a white flag with the Confederate battle flag in the upper corner next to the flagpole. Although the troops at Gettysburg would have been marching under the battle flag (what people conventionally think of as the Confederate flag -- a blue St. Andrew's cross on a red field with white stars on the cross), the national flag at this time was actually the Stainless Banner and they would have been using that as well. There are many Harper's sketches by contemporary artists who showed it being used on the battlefield.

Towards the end of the war people started worrying that the Stainless Banner would be misinterpreted as a flag of surrender, especially when the wind wasn't blowing and the red battle flag portion was covered up. Less than a month before the surrender at Appomatox the Confederacy started using a new flag, the Blood Stained Banner. The Blood Stained Banner was essentially the Stainless Banner with a thick red strip on the end, so that there could be no mistaking it for a flag of surrender. Surrender, of course, was what was on everyone's mind at that point.

There's nothing wrong with using the Blood Stained Banner in proper context (e.g. when the South is on the verge of surrendering), but the problem with it as a flag is that it is really an exercise in vexillologist obscurity. While there are problems with using the Confederate battle flag (which is the way AACW handles it), at least it was a flag that was in current use throughout the entire period. The Blood Stained Banner was only in use in a few places for a few weeks (and in some cases less than a month). They probably didn't have time to issue very many of them.

The ideal situation would be to have multiple flags for the Confederacy that would change depending on where they were in the war. I wouldn't really like looking at the Stainless Banner at the begining of the war, but I suppose that wouldn't be as awkward as looking at the Blood Stained Banner throughout. But really, the best solution would be to just use the Battle Flag which everyone expects to see anyway, and leave obscure flags like the Blood Stained Banner for people like me to obsess over and put in mods.

[yellow ribbon]

to sum up, you would like the other flags used in game

the very issue is known already from AGEODS American Civil war (a different game)

and was art-modded by users superbly
you find a mod to change color of American units, as well as flags

I should be available in the AGEOD ACW forum

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=21021

and i remember it was also adapted for PON from some fellow gamers , i just remember user "WIS" did some further art-modding, but am not sure for the rest...

so one can change it within seconds i guess.

[Philippe]

I'm actually more familiar with AACW than I am with PON.

And the one thing I've modded more than anything else is flags. I haven't done much with the Ageod games, mostly because I haven't needed to. But I did offer Hobbes a few flags for one of his (brilliant) early WIA scenarios. And I've made mods of the different Confederate flags for victory locations in the HPS ACW tactical games.

If it were just a question of coming up with a good bitmap, JPEG, or PNG file (with or without transparencies), I wouldn't bother whinging about this and would just go out and make a mod (and post it).

Unfortunately these flags actually move. I just broke down and got the game last night so I don't even know where to look to find the flag files (probably the same place as the other Ageod games). But I'm not interested in modding per se, only in the end result. The problem is I don't know how to make flag animations, and though it's something I would be interested in learning in theory, right now I don't have the time (unless it's really simple and doesn't involve downloading animation programs which I don't have).

If the flag animations are merely produced by the program rotating through several static flag images, I can cook up the images without a problem. But if there's something else involved, I'm stumped.

[PhilThib]

If the flag animations are merely produced by the program rotating through several static flag images, I can cook up the images without a problem. But if there's something else involved, I'm stumped.

Yes, this is the case...vey basic and standard