The icons for my custom units do not appear in the unit selection bar. Instead, all I get are blank boxes, I first noticed it happening to me in the demo version. I tried deleting the folder in /my documents/my games after installing the full version in an attempt to fix it. Now, not only am I still missing icons for custom units, I have also been winning the same four badges and repair truck after every battle.
What video card do you have, and what drivers for it? (are they the latest up-to-date ones). Also, do you overclock anything?
I have an NVIDIA geforce 8800 GT. I realized that I did not have the latest drivers installed, so I updated them. Unfortunately, this did not resolve the missing icon issue. Additionally, sometimes I get a custom unit that is not missing its icon, has the wrong icon, or its icon is mangled.
I don’t overclock.
There was a bug relating to this in the past, but it should definitely be fixed. Are you running version 1.013? that#s the latest one (check the top right of the main menu screen).
It might be a left-over corrupt icon from before the fix, which means it will be solved by deleting everything in this folder:
\my documents\my games\gratuitoustankbattles\design textures
They get rebuilt again immediately you run the game, and should be fixed then.
That worked, thanks a bunch. Do you have any idea on what to do with the four badges I keep winning?
UPDATE: Deleting the files in \my documents\my games\gratuitoustankbattles\design textures appears to only be a temporary fix. Further customizing the colors of various units seems to make the icons become mangled, chopped in half, or distorted. Some of the icons are just cut in half diagonally even after deleting those files.
is this only happening when you change colors of an existing custom unit? or are new units not getting rendered out correctly?
I’m assuming that the actual units themselves look ok when placed, and it’s just their icons that are garbled? Are they garbled everywhere (load dialogs, division manager…) or just on the bottom deployment-strip in mid-battle?
This problem occurs every time I create or modify a new unit. The unit icons are distorted everywhere. I actually checked out the images in the design textures folder and they are messed up or blank. Usually what happens is, I will create/modify a unit, the icon for that unit will disappear, and then several other seemingly random icons will become distorted.
This can be temporarily fixed by deleting the design textures. They all start becoming distorted again as soon as I start editing units though.
Blanked icons seem to happen most often to the units that I am actually editing. The next most common distortion are icons that are sliced diagonally. Rarely, there will be a third distortion in which the icon appears to have been “smeared”. The latter two distortions usually happen to icons of units that I haven’t touched.
Also, I am still occasionally winning items/badges that I have already unlocked.
This sounds like a fundamental problem with ‘rendering toa texture’ that the game uses, in your specific circumstances. Are you overclocking your video card/ it sounds like something is getting scrambled actually on the card. I don’t know anyone else having the same issue, so it’s mroe likely to be driver/card specific than a game code bug, tbh. Although i am happy to be proven wrong.
Is there any general corruption on the icons on the deployment bar at the bottom of battles? that also uses the same technique.
i’m not overclocking my video card. Yes, the icons on the deployment bar are also corrupted. It is entirely possible that the issue lies with my video card, are other people having the same issue that I am having?
The game re-saves a new version of all the icons whenever I use the editor correct? I wouldn’t know where to go from there since I don’t have access to the source code. I can just wait and see if anyone else begins to have this issue with the editor.
Also, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for taking the time to have a chat with me as you seem really busy with both customer support and continued game development.
The game only renders out those icons when you edit a design or create a new one, but if you delete them, they will get re-created. Once they are created correctly, they will just be used like any other image from the game.
Hmmmnnn. I have the same exact problem and also have an 8800 GT card. Deleting design textures folder seems to partially help but some icons are still missing from customized units and from default units. Seems this bug has a randomness to it that seems to favor customized units but not totally. No overclocking here either. I ran into some other unrelated problems occasionally with the Nvidia control panel not playing well with some programs and resolved the issue by experimenting with adjusting the settings as I feel this is a card/settings issue. I will see what works and what doesn’t and post up here when I can.
Small fix well sort of! Reading up on the .dds file format has brought me to the nVidia .dds photoshop plugin. Im fairly good at photoshop so I decided to give a go to actually open up the .dds files (design textures) of each unit missing its icon. Well opening up some of the culprits shows a blank black screen. So it seems that when these files are generated all that is made is a blank black screen. Sooo whats the fix? Well its not really a fix but. I go to design mode of one of the ships missing an icon, screen capture the image, import that into the blank screen dds file, then save as the exact file name and viollla, I have an icon finally.
Trial and error with the Nvidia control panel has yielded no results. And yes I deleted the design textures file after every setting change.
So its terribly annoying to try to play this game and having to read the description due to no icon present. So this bandaid solution will do for now but I hope some real solution is found so I don’t have to do this every time I create an new unit. BTW: Because this allows one to edit the dds file you can in theory make any icon image you want! Maybe units with a different color background can indicate some of the characteristics of that unit made instead of a description which needs to be read. I like to make tanks with different effects to shields,armor,and infantry ect But having different looking tanks is still difficult to remember and ascertain during a quick battle. A red background for infantry,a blue background for armor, and so on will making choosing units far easier as one only needs to remember the color background instead of what each unit looks like. Hmmm I thinks this could be a game suggestion? Hope this helps. If anyone needs any help creating icons for missing ones or just wants to create their own. Let me know and I can try to post up a video or some written instructions. This of course if the game developers do not have any objections 
Hmmm. i think somewhere I actually have an 8800 GTS card, so I might try and get that up and running and see if I can reproduce what is going wrong here…
Okay I downloaded the latest version of GTB. And a few more icons appeared but some still missing. So instead of deleting the entire textures folder, I would delete only the .dds files of those units without icons. After a few times loading the prog I now have all the icons present but am sure this random missing icon bug is not fully resolved but atleast its far more tolerable and usually is correctable by either creating your own icon dds file or simply deleting the dds file and reloading the prog until the icon is generated. Thanks.