Portrait frames & Avatar"s shape

[BC]

I have a couple of questions about Exult Studio. I've been having trouble when editing the Avatar. How do you choose your frame when giving NPCs new portraits? Also how can you make changes to the Avatar's shape permanent? When I change the Avatar's shape it returns to normal when I reload a saved game. It also reverts when casting certain spells.

[marzo]

How do you choose your frame when giving NPCs new portraits?

Via usecode.

Also how can you make changes to the Avatar's shape permanent?

You must edit the avatar's sprite, not simply change the shape.

[Vasculio294]

Since i haven't use the Exult Studio! From Experience! You could use the U7wizard. But using a npc skin crashes during the making of the blacksword! Mostly because the regular npcs lack the amount of frames and animation that the avatar has. Sad i know!

[BC]

How can I edit the Avatar's sprite? I'm using Windows so the edit dialog option in Exult Studio does not work. Is that the only way to edit a sprite?

[marzo]

The edit option requires that you have Gimp installed and that you set the appropriate path in Exult Studio's preferences. You can also export each frame (right-click and choose export), edit in your preferred graphic editor and import it back.

[marzo]

Yikes, wrong answer there. It requires Gimp if you are using the Gimp Plugin only. I *think* that you can edit with other tools, but I haven't tested.

[BC]

I have Gimp and the plugin. I didn't know there was a config file or the like for Exult Studio, if there is I can't find it or any documentation on it. The plugin readme didn't mention anything about it either.

I found this in the Studio Guide:


Note:Edit... doesn't work on Windows system. It stores the shape as PNG file in GAMEDIR/itmp/ (e.g. blackgate/itmp). If you manually open the file with an image editor of your liking and then save it, ES doesn't read the changes back.



I'll try exporting and then importing frames individually, but its a lot more work than just editing the whole shape (or changing it in the Studio). I have edited things extracting them with expack, I just haven't managed to make importing work yet.

[BC]

Vasculio,

Is u7 Wizard still being added to?

I thought it hadn't been updated in a long time. He doesn't give update dates so I can't be sure. Nothing appears to have changed, but I don't remember it having a GNU licence. I seem to remember more NPC editing features being worked on, such as editing conversations.

Does it allow editing of the art files? Didn't you say you made a new portrait in another post?

[Natreg]

u7 wizard got a GNU licence long ago, I think it´s programmed in pascal.

It allows you to save the pictures and edit them later with whatever program you want, but not sure if it supports exporting them back.

Also it has a usecode decompiler, but I think it doesn´t work well with Serpent Isle (the usecode decompiler must be used with commands in a msdos window)

[marzo]

Note:Edit... doesn't work on Windows system.

Strange, than, that it works on my computer I do use Gimp, though, which might help. And I do prefer using ipack to extract/import graphics.

[Vasculio294]

Author: BC (---.cambrg01.md.comcast.net)
Date: 07-05-05 19:52

Vasculio,

Is u7 Wizard still being added to?

I thought it hadn't been updated in a long time. He doesn't give update dates so I can't be sure. Nothing appears to have changed, but I don't remember it having a GNU licence. I seem to remember more NPC editing features being worked on, such as editing conversations.

Does it allow editing of the art files? Didn't you say you made a new portrait in another post?

I haven't check back with that page about the same time, i stop visiting this site.

Exult Studio is better! But i'm still having trouble editing?

[drcode]

I think ES has a small preferences dialog where you can set the image program (but I'm at work, so can't check). Otherwise, ES uses the same "exult.cfg" file as Exult.

[BC]

Ok, I looked at that and put in my full path. Now when I choose edit, Gimp loads. But it says, "opening 'c:\documents' failed: unknown file type". I've trying setting the file type to both png and shp.



Here is my path

C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\bin\gimp-win-remote -n


Anything I should do different?

[marzo]

Is Gimp open when you try to edit the frame? Also, just out of curiosity, what is the path where U7/SI is installed in your computer?

[BC]

Gimp was open at the time.

My paths are:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\Serpent\Ultima7

c:\documents and settings\administrator\desktop\serpent\serpent


I just tried editing with Gimp closed, I got an "error reading registry" message.

I guess this is what is causing U7 to crash on the loading screen now.

[BC]

Or maybe not. I get the same message trying to edit SI shapes and have no trouble running SI. I also still get the original message when the Gimp is already open.

[marzo]

The "error reading registry" is from Gimp-win-remote; it looks in the registry to see if Gimp is open, so has nothing to do with running U7 or SI.

The reason I asked about the U7/SI paths is because of the particular message you are getting ("opening 'c:\documents' failed: unknown file type"); I suspected that you might have installed them in a path with spaces, snd this is indeed the case. What happens is that Gimp (as all other Windows programs) break the filename at the at the space unless the filename is surrounded by double-quotes, and then think that the two parts are different filenames. If you move the game installation to a path without spaces, you will stop getting this error.

[BC]

That was it. The edit option is now working for me. Someone should remove that line from the Studio Guide. Its in section 5.1.

[Dominus]

I'll fix it (not remove it when I'm back home (I'll also mention the path problem)