Icons for Terragen files

These icons are for use with Terragen files (terrain - TER, atmosphere -ATM, surface - SRF and world - TGW files). You can see a screenshot of the ZIP contents below.
The icons are large size (48 X 48 pixels), so they can be used at any icon display, including the large size desktop icons, that you can select from "plus!" desktop settings.

screenshot

The file to download is tericons.zip (about 28 Kbytes).

Help

Find if your system settings support 16 or 256 colors in icons. In general, only Windows 95 doesn't make it easy to change the color depth of your icons from 16 to 256.
1. For any 32bit Windows version (98, NT, ME, 2000) except for 95: Right click on an empty space on your desktop and choose "properties" from the menu. Go to the "Plus!" tab and place a check on the "Show icons using all possible colors". This changes the icon color depth from 16 to 256 colors.
2. For Windows 95, the Plus! pack offers this choice. If you don't have Plus!, you can either change the values in the registry, or download a free program that does this for you: It is part of the collection "The Iconcity Collection" by Craig Blair at Winsite and is called iconcolor.exe.
3. NOTE: The 16 or 256 colors do not refer to your screen resolution (desktop->right click->properties->settings->color palette), which should be at least at 65k colors/16 bit/many colors, if not true color, to work properly in Terragen. If your screen resolution is at 256 colors or less, you are stuck with the windows palette and you can't do anything useful with Terragen. In the latter case, these icons will not look good, because they use 16 or 256 colors from the 16 bit range (optimized palette).
4. UPDATE: Windows XP can use 16 bit (650000) colors. This doesn't mean that 256 color icons can't be used as well.
Then choose if you want to use the 16 or 256 color icons (the 16 color icons' filenames end in -16). The 256 color icons look bad on a 16 color setting.
Open Windows Explorer (open e.g. "My computer"), select from the menu: view ->options->file types.
Scroll down in the little window of registered file types to see if your file is listed - they are listed alphabetically by description and not by extension.
If it is listed (this is possible if you have used Terraview or other programs that register Terragen file types, anytime in the past), mark it with your mouse and press the button "edit". On the new window that appears, press the button "change icon".
If the file has an icon assigned, you will see under "file name", the file where the icon was taken from - also whether this file contains any other alternative icons you could use.
If it does and you like one of them better, highlight it with your mouse and press "ok" and "close" on the 3 subsequent windows to close them.
If the file has no icon assigned, it will be shown with the default windows icon and you will be presented with the program's executable or a windows system file under "file name" on the "change icon" window. Then you must press the "browse" button to search for an icon in your hard disk(s). After you choose one icon, close the windows by saying "ok" to everything.
You may have to press F5 to refresh your display and see the new icon.
If the file is not listed among the registered file types in the options window, you must press the button "new". A new window will appear "Add new file type" with a lot of fields for you to fill. Write a brief descripion that you see fit, e.g. for atmosphere "Terragen atmosphere settings" and the associated extension. You don't have to write the mime type or any actions, unless you have a program that opens this kind of file.
Currently Terragen reads TER, TGW, ATM and SRF files, but if you associate Terragen to open them, double clicking on one of these files will only start Terragen, not open the files (might be convenient sometimes). It could be useful to assign scripter.exe (in the Terragen directory) to open Terragen script files, if you don't use something else, like Notepad.
You might have a terrain browser or editor, though and you would like to assign a new action -open- and the application used to perform this type of action.
Once you finish with all this, you can change the icon for the file as above.
If you can't change the icons (or any icons for that matter), or your icons begin to look strange, it is likely that you have a corrupted ShellIconCache file (it is in your windows directory). You must open a command prompt, go (type "cd" - space and the directory name, for example: cd windows) to the directory where you found the file with Windows Explorer (you must have chosen from view -> options to view all file types) and type:
```
attrib -r-h ShellIconCache
```
press "enter", then
```
del ShellIconCache
```
and press "enter" again. Close the command prompt window. Reboot and your problem should be solved. You will know it works if your desktop icons appear one by one, as if your system is searching for the correct ones. It might take two attempts in certain cases.
For some reason, deleting the file with explorer doesn't work; it is remade at the next reboot, just as corrupted.
If you want to make your own, render your favorite Terragen scene at a resolution of 100X100 and save it. Then use Irfanview to open the BMP, choose "image-> resample". Choose a filter that gives you satisfactory results and a - square - size, either 48 X48 or 32X32 pixels. Then go to "image-> reduce color depth" to make the image 256 colors and save as an ICO file.
To save the view from one of Terragen's windows, press alt+print screen, when that window is selected. The image is in the clipboard. All you have to do is open any paint program (even MSPaint) and paste the image. After you crop out all the irrelevant parts, you can resample, reduce color depth and save as an icon.
By the way, saving an icon in true color, might distort it and is only supported in Windows XP. Also, just renaming an (appropriately sized) BMP with the extension ICO, might work, but chances are the image will not look good; it might be distorted, banded or some parts will be unexpectedly transparent, since the file is not in the correct icon format.

Use of these files is free, but you may not claim them as your own, unless modified beyond recognition.

Use any files downloaded from this site at your own risk; I check for viruses, but the Web is a dangerous place. You are responsible for checking downloaded files for viruses. By downloading you agree to clear the author from all responsibility of damages to your computer and data.

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