Custom Unit Icons

Custom unit icons

What are they?

When you zoom out in Spring, units will get replaced with icons. The default icon is the radar blip, but mod developers have the ability to assign different icons to units. The custom icon information is stored in gamedata/icontypes.tdf.

Icontypes.tdf

The custom icons specification, gamedata/icontypes.tdf, should look like this:

[icontypes]
{
	[default]
	{
		// Spring replaces missing or incorrect bitmaps by the radar  dot.
		size=1;
		radiusadjust=1;
	}
	[type1]
	{
		bitmap=icons/type1.bmp;
		size=2;
		radiusadjust=0;
	}
	[type2]
	{
		bitmap=icons/type2.bmp;
		size=2;
		radiusadjust=0;
	}
	// other type definitions may follow

}

"bitmap" is the location of the custom icon bitmap. If it is missing or incorrect, Spring replaces it with the standard radar dot. The transparent color for the bitmap is black (0,0,0). The bitmap will get blended with the team color, so there is no special team color channel.

"size" is a number that acts multiplier for the icon size. Default is 1.

"radiusadjust" is a boolean (0 or 1) that tells Spring whether or not the icon should scale with the unit radius. Default is 0 (false).

The "default" icon type is a bit special; every unit that misses an 'iconType' tag (see below) or has one that doesn't match a type specified in gamedate/icontypes.tdf gets assigned to the "default" type. If the "default" type is not specified, Spring will create it with the default values.

Icon unit tag

To assign units to a specific icon type, add the following line to their FBI file:

iconType=type1;

You can replace "type1" with icontypes defined in gamedata/icontypes.tdf. If the tag "iconType" is missing, Spring sets it to the icontype "default".