Exult Forum

Hi there,

Every time I replay The Black Gate I think to myself: Let's use that keyring mod so I don't have to haul 176 different keys around!
Then I create a new character and am instantly turned off by this mod thanks to these portraits. Don't get me wrong, I am sure the creators tried their best to make them, but they do not fit in this game at all.

I really wish the vanilla portraits would have been in there and am wondering: Is there anyone that felt the same and modded this mod so it has the old portraits again?
If so, would this person mind sharing it?

Reading back my post I realize that I might have sounded a bit rude.

I mean no disrespect to the artist(s). Your portraits are nicely made.
I just miss the old ones, which fit so much better with the other in-game portraits. Not to mention them giving me a feeling of nostalgia.

They're intended to be SI-style rather than BG-style. I don't believe there's been much changed in mod for some time, but you could edit the code that does this and recompile it so it does allow the original two options.

There might be a way to edit a saved game in Exult Studio, but it's not clear to me if that would let you change this in the way you'd like.

Looks like changing the text file avatar_data.txt would allow you to do what you want. Change 297 to a different number (0?) might work.

Yeah, I figured they're SI-style.
Made me wonder why the mod makers didn't just put the portraits from SI in, although I'd miss the old portraits then even so.

Anyway, thanks for the Exult Studio tip. I was browsing the shapes, exported the original avatar portrait and imported it over the custom one I chose.
And that basically did what I wanted, even though it might be a dirty fix.

"Looks like changing the text file avatar_data.txt would allow you to do what you want. Change 297 to a different number (0?) might work."

Oh, you ninja'd a reply in before my answer.
Thanks for that, I'll go check it out.

Okay, I did a dirty edit of that file and got doubles of the vanilla portraits and some of the SI-shrunkdown portraits are missing (/sloppy me), but I don't use those anyway, so got what I want.

Thanks for the assist!

While I was walking my dog outside I was thinking to myself:
What if I just delete avatar_data.txt?

Now there's an even easier solution.
Thanks again.

Glad to help.

Exporting the original Origin artwork is easy now, but redistributing it is pretty questionable at best. That's why there's not a mod base that uses all of the graphics in a single game. Maybe EA could loosen the licensing for the existing artwork?

I wouldn't count on EA doing anything that improves their karma rating. *coughs*

This late in the game, I don't understand why EA cares at all. Hell.. I am surprised someone who worked on the story for SI hasn't just shared all the plot ideas that got dropped due to the rushed release.

"I am surprised someone who worked on the story for SI hasn't just shared all the plot ideas that got dropped due to the rushed release."

Maybe they were under some shady contract to not talk about things like that.
Would still be nice to hear from mr. Garriot or someone else what their full plans were, but I guess they've moved on a long time ago.

For me this is a nice read of what could have been:
http://ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Cut_Materi ... rpent_Isle