Or:
I'm not sure either

This guide is aimed at showing how you can edit unit and building colours in Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert Remastered. For this purpose, I've made a little tool in Excel[docs.google.com] to convert between regular HSV and the weird HSV used in these games. First, I'll show you which files you need, where you can find them and how they're built up.

EDIT: A word of caution; after fooling around with my Excel sheet a bit more, it doesn't seem to work as reliably as I'd like (or had thought). It's still better than anything else you'll find out there, though, and it does work, but the resulting values may not be perfect and need some tweaking.

Of course, this guide is also still useful for anyone who wants to get into modding faction colours.

The file you need to edit is called either CNCTDTEAMCOLORS.XML or CNCRATEAMCOLORS.XML, of course depending on which game you want to mod. You can extract these using a tool called OSBIGEditor from the folder XML in CONFIG.MEG, located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\CnCRemastered\Data. I've included them here as a download (though note that, if this guide is a bit older already, these files might not be up to date anymore): TD[drive.google.com], RA[drive.google.com]. If you're not sure what to open these XMLs with, I use Notepad++.

In these XMLs, several Classes are defined. In TD, you have one for GDI, two for Nod (because Nod's buildings and units of course have a different colour) and one Neutral. In RA, you have two for every campaign faction (one for if you're playing against that faction, one for if you're playing as it), one for every subfaction, NEUTRAL and a faction named JP (actually no idea). You also have the skirmish colours, of course: six for TD and eight for RA.

In TD, GDI is defined as GOOD, so editing the class GOOD edits GDI's faction colour. Nod is BAD: here you can edit a BAD_UNIT and a BAD_STRUCTURE class, so you can separately change Nod's unit and structure colours.

In RA, the Allies are GOOD, and again editing that class changes the Allied faction colour. In RA, you also need to edit GREECE, though; as mentioned above, campaign factions use different colours for when they are your faction or your opponent's faction. The Soviets are BAD and USSR.

The areas that seem to effect the colour in a meaningful way are <X> and <Y> in <HSVShift> and <Z> in <InputLevels>. <Z> in <HSVShift> appears to have something to do with the way the brightness is applied; making it negative makes the light areas in the faction colours dark and vice versa, making it (from the top of my head) 10 erases all differences in brightness (it becomes opaque, and quite ugly).

<X> and <Y> in <HSVShift> change hue and saturation respectively, <Z> in <InputLevels> changes the brightness (or value). You can use an HSV colour picker[alloyui.com] to choose a colour you want, or you can use image editing software to find the correct HSV values from an image, for example. For my tool, I've used a hue scale with a maximum of 360. Inkscape uses 255, so I thought I'd mention that.

You may also want to edit <RadarMapColor>, which should be self-explanatory. The RGB values here really are just RGB, except with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 1.

Alright, so pick a colour. Have it? Download this spreadsheet[docs.google.com]. Open it, and you will find a spreadsheet with four main areas where you can enter values, marked by boxes. I've also picked a colour: simply the green from Google Spreadsheets (H: 138; S: 81; V; 50).

• Enter your hue and saturation in the boxes on the left (those on the right are for converting back from the game to regular HSV), I will enter 138 there;
  
• Next, enter your saturation, mine is 81.

Now you will see two values in XYZ: for me, the X value is 0.008333 and the Y value -0.985000; add these where you want them.

For the Value (or brightness), things aren't as quick and easy. You can see what I know in the second tab, as well as an experiment I did. What I'd just do is pick a random number, most likely between 1 and 10, start up the game and see if it's too dark or too bright. Then edit accordingly (0 is white, 100 may be black, but the change in between isn't linear or exponential). I've included a Value "converter" I made for converting to a Z value from 0 to 10, but it seems to always result in a too dark colour.

Next, if you want to change the radar colour, you can see what RGB values your colour has and add them to the second converter. Note, I used RGB with maxima of 255; you can easily change this by editing the 100% values from 255 into your maxima.

Alright, so now you have a properly edited XML file. Add a folder to C:\Users\-YOURNAME-\Documents\CnCRemastered\Mods in either Tiberian_Dawn or Red_Alert. In it, you need a ccmod.json with the following information (see other guides for more detail):


In this folder, make the folder Data, and in that folder XML. This is where you can put your XML file.

Now, start up the game, select your mod and see if it works!