How to Build a Goblin in Exult Studio

[Shaun]

My brother and I are playing around with Exult Studio, and are planning on learning by adding little things to U7. As of yet, we're not going to make anything as in depth as a new NPCs or new conversations... we're just altering buildings and making small dungeons. We are thinking about making a sewer under Britain, linked to a dungeon under Castle British.

We want to make goblins for our sewer! After unsuccessfully trying to just move one over from SI, we thought it might work to just alter an existing creature in U7. We're thinking about using either the "naked man" or the "blacksmith" character and changing it's skin color to green and having it identifited as "goblin" when it's clicked on. Then it would be simple to arm them, scatter them around the sewer and make them hostile.

So, does Exult Studio allow one to do this, or does it need to be made in another program? I noticed that the guy who made the Keyring Mod used the "Jaana" character and gave it a new hair color for his NPC, and this is essentially the same thing we want to do. So, how was it done?

Thanks in advance!

[marzo]

I noticed that the guy who made the Keyring Mod used the "Jaana" character and gave it a new hair color for his NPC, and this is essentially the same thing we want to do. So, how was it done?

I used ipack to extract all frames for Jaana as pngs, loaded each of them in Gimp to recolor the hair, then used ipack again to create the shapes.vga that is distributed with the mod. It is possible to use ES to extract the graphics, it is just that I found it more convenient to use ipack.

In any case, to import the SI-goblin with ES you would have to: 1) extract the graphics; then 2) create a new shape in the BG 'shapes.vga' file and 3) import all the frames from (1). Then you'd have to edit the shape properties (i.e., make it a 'human' or a 'monster' so it can move, etc.).

But reading the ES Docs would have yielded just as much information...