Here's an example screenshot of what I am trying to accomplish (halfway through completion, see the nice looking soldier).
(Note: I am using a ZOOMINLIMIT of 50 by editing my MAPVIEW config file like in this mod post: http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 22&t=53256)
Step 1
Get Gimp a free image editor
https://www.gimp.org/
Step 2
Get the DDS plugin for Gimp at
registry.gimp.org/node/70
and install it.
Step 3
In the picture above I am editing the Archers@.dds file in the Fontenoy custom campaign I downloaded. You can edit any ones you want. You can edit the default, or the ones in the sub-folders such as ECW_ROYALISTS or TYW_FRENCH.
In either the custom campaign in your My Games/PSCAMP or in your main folder. MAKE BACKUPS!
In Gimp, I Edit the DATA/BATTLE/UNITTEXTURES/ARCHERS@.DDS
First Re-scale it in the Gimp menu: Image..Scale Image and change resolution from 256 x 256 pixels to 1024 x 1024 pixels. (You can even do 2048x2048 it didn't break my computer)
Step 4
Download a nice picture of a soldier or mini you want to use.
Open it in Gimp as well.
In Gimp use the Magic Wand tool to highlight all the white space surrounding the model we are going to delete.
Since we've selected the white space around the soldier, we want the opposite of that; which is just the soldier. Go to the 'Select' menu and choose 'Invert'.
Then Copy the soldier with CTRL+C
Step 5
Go to the ARCHERS@.DDS in GIMP and CTRL+V to Paste your soldier into ARCHERS@.DDS.
In the Top right menu you'll see "Floating Selection (pasted layer)". Right click that, and choose "To New Layer". This creates a new layer out of your soldier.
He will probably be huge, so we want to scale him using the scale button. Make sure "Keep aspect ratio" is checked. Make him the right size to fit over one of the soldiers.
Step 6
When done, right click on your layer in the top right menu, and choose "Merge Down". This permanently imprints your soldier onto the original image, and gets rid of the layer. DDS can give you errors with multiple layers, we don't want them.
Since we increased the resolution drastically, you will probably want to download much nicer flags as well to replace the low-res ones.
Step 7
DDS are very particular about being perfect squares, and sometimes the resizing and editing can cause some of your merged layers to be a tiny bit overlapping outside the perfect 1024x1024 square we want the image to be.
So for cleanup, go to the menu "Select" and choose "All". Then go to the menu "Layer" and choose "Layer to Image Size". This ensures that your layer in gimp will definitely never be larger than the Image size which we set as 1024 x 1024 and crops any sort of mess which you wont see, which could be dangling outside of your image.
Step 8
Go to File and choose Export As and save it as ARCHERS@.DDS and when the popup comes up, choose Compression: BC3/DXT5 and make sure Generate Mipmaps is checked. That is the format Pike & Shot uses.
You're done. You can use this as the texture of one of your units, or replace the ones in the game. You have to read the modding tutorials for that.