How to add paperdolls for new NPCs?

[marzo]

This is a question whose answer has eluded me so far. Is there a way to add new paperdoll art for new NPCs or that would require a new version of Exult?

By paperdoll art I mean both, the heads in the SI paperdolls (as well as determining if the body should be male/female) and the gump art of standard BG inventories. It would be nice if the face also displays in the status bars.

Can anyone help?

[Michele]

Wish I knew, seeing as this will become crucial in totally new games using these engines.

[marzo]

The main reason I posted it here is to see if any of the devs can shine some light on it; or anyone who knows how to do it, for that matter...

[Colourless]

You can't do it without editing the exult source code.

There is a file (paperdoll_gump_info.cc i think) that contains all the data used to display paperdolls

[marzo]

Yeah, that is what I feared. Which means that there are no new NPCs/games without a new version of Exult.

Maybe the info on paperdoll_gump_info.cc should be moved to an external xml file? And now that I have finally found out where the standard BG gumps are defined (Actor::inventory_shapenum in actors.cc), the information on that function might also be moved to an external file (after all, not everyone has SI...). Perhaps even to the same xml file; a section for gumps (for BG) and another with paperdoll information (for BG and SI).

Should I submit this as a feature request?

[Dominus]

yes, best submit a feature request.

[Michele]

Go for it Marzo. The idea roxxors

[marzo]

It has been submitted. I also submitted (in a separate, even though related, request) a request for moving out data about which items get ready/unready Usecode events. Given that things such as the Belt of Strength and rings of invisibility use such events, it should be obvious why one would like to have this ability...

[drcode]

Thanks. There is a lot of data hard-coded into Exult, since they were also hardcoded into U7 and we were trying to get the games playable as quickly as possible. The main long-term goal for Exult is to get as much as possible into data files. My current thought is that a single .xml file would be the way to go for all the non-text information. Or maybe just a text file.

[marzo]

My opinion is that the xml file would be better -- the information gets better organized that way. Perhaps one data file per game would be best (one for BG, one for SI and more as people make new games).

[Gradilla Dragon]

And someone should write a program for editing the xml files, as it has been proven than a lot of people has a hard time understanding them. The program could even be used for configuring Exult.

[Alun Bestor]

Well, there should be graphical applications out there for manipulating XML trees already, since XML is an ubiquitous format and Exult isn't doing anything very out-there with it. Worth hunting around on sourceforge for

[Colourless]

The XML 'like' files that Exult uses are very much not standard XML files though.

Of course in Pentagram we decided not to use XML files, instead we use INI files simply because they are much simpler for the average user to understand. And they are just easier to read.

[Alun Bestor]

Not to mention easier to edit
It did always strike me as a bit silly to go so balls-out with XML that Exult has tags for , and gamma values. Things like that could have been handled with attributes, but I suppose Exult's parser doesn't expect or support those.

[Skutarth]

If you can make it so you can change the paperdoll, I can finally solve the problem with spark!

[PanSola]

thread necromancy by spammer!!! o_O"""

Edit by wjp: Freezing this old thread since it's a popular target for spammers.