Please see this thread for updated links: http://uorforum.com/threads/artmods-are-back.34647/ ================================================================= Hi everyone! So after nearly two decades of staring at the same bland spell icons I decided it was time for a change, and I'm going to teach you how to use mine or make your own! FILES NEEDED: Mulpatcher (download) My new spell icons (download) (pre-modified MUL files are located at the bottom of this post if you don't want to do the patch yourself) --- Color swatches (download) (only needed if creating your own images) Default spell icons (download) (only needed if creating your own images) Photoshop or other image editing software (only needed if creating your own images) To start off, here is a comparison of the old vs my new ones: Lets begin! (note: you can skip to the "Adding the new art to your mul files" below if you are using my files instead of creating your own) Creating new art For this tutorial, you will need to copy your gumpart.mul and gumpidx.mul files (located in the Ultima Online folder) to a new folder (NOTE: it's a good idea to save an additional copy of these files elsewhere to serve as a backup). Once you've done that, go ahead and open Mulpatcher (you can skip this part if you downloaded the default icons above, but it is still helpful to read if you want to know how to extract other art from the mul files). First you'll want to expand the window a bit (bottom right of the box) because when the program opens it hides all the menus. Next, locate the "Gumps" fields in the Settings tab. Click the "..." button next to each field and navigate to the copies you made of "gumpidx.mul" and "gumpart.mul". After you've done this, click "Load". Now we will switch over to the "Features" tab. In the "Extract" section, select "Gumps" from the dropdown and then hit "Start". What happens next will take about a minute: in the same folder as mulpatcher.exe, a new folder called "Gumps" will be created. Inside will be all the gump art from the mul files that we loaded. The mage spells start at "0x08C0.bmp". Now that we have the default spell icons, we can color them in (or try and create your own completely different icons)! Go ahead and fire up Photoshop (or whichever image editor you use, this tutorial was designed around using Photoshop). File > Open and open the Clumsy spell image. Next we are going to load the Swatches file from above. This file contains a color palette that is suitable for our uses here. To load it, click the hamburger menu and select "Replace Swatches" and select the UOswatches.aco file. Now that we have some decent colors and a spell icon, lets go ahead and color it in. Create a new layer and select a color from our swatches that you would like to use. For this one I will use "water 40" for the background (hover over the individual squares to see their names). Take the brush tool, set to a small pixel size (under 5 is best for this size image) and begin coloring. Okay so we've got our color, but that obviously doesn't look very good. At this point you'll want to head down to the "Layers" tab and locate the blending options drop down menu (default is set to normal). You can play around with the different options and find one you like, but for this tutorial we will use "Color Burn" As you can see, the color has been adjusted to something more pleasing. Now, create a new layer and choose a color and color blending mode for the legs. Do the same for the shoes (it's best to keep each object component on a separate layer for now). Once you've colored the icon as you like, select the "Image" menu from the top bar and select Mode > Indexed color. Click "yes" when it asks if you want to flatten the layers. You can play around with these options as well to get the desired effect you want, but here are the settings I used: Now, go to FIle > Save as and save the file with the original file name (NOTE: be sure to save the image as a BMP!). Adding the new art to your mul files Once you've colored all your icons and saved them, you'll need the config txt file (this is located in the "my new spell icons" download at the top) in the same folder. NOTE: ensure that the file names of your images match the file names inside the text file, for example 0x8c0.bmp (when you extract the default icons they may have an extra 0, for example 0x08c0.bmp. Be sure to remove it or mulpatcher will have a fit and crash!). Now go ahead and open Mulpatcher.exe. As before, select your gumpart.mul and gumpidx.mul files if they aren't still entered from before and click "Load". Head back over to the "Features" tab, and this time we will be using the "Autopatch" section. Click the "..." button and select the "Mages.txt" file from my new spell icons download then select "Gumps" from the dropdown menu and hit "Start" (NOTE again: that the Mages.txt file should be in the same folder as your new images). We're not done yet! The mul files have been patched but they haven't been saved yet. Head back over to the "Settings" tab and under "Gumps" click "Save". You will now be asked to save the two mul files. First, type "gumpidx.mul" (without the quotes) and hit save. Next type "gumpart.mul" (again, no quotes), and hit save. Congrats, you're all done! All you need to do now is copy gumpidx.mul and gumpart.mul into your Ultima Online folder. Once finished, load up the game and admire you're hard work! If any of this is confusing or you need help, feel free to ask here. NOTE: I've decided not to upload the modified mul files as I am not sure how the staff feels about that, so until someone chimes in this tutorial will have to do! If staff decides it's okay to distribute them, I will upload the mul files so you can just download them and copy them into your Ultima Online folder without going through all of these steps! Pre-modified MUL files: Download from me: http://xf2m.com/uofiles/new-spell-muls.7z *note that these mul files may be a different version from yours. If you encounter any issues, replace the muls with your backups and use the mulpatcher method above! I don't plan on releasing other mul files, though, so I recommend learning how to use mulpatcher for any other art mods I do (reason being some people might not want some/all the mods, so the mulpatcher method means you can pick and choose which ones you want rather than getting all of them).
If you don't want to wait you can use mulpatcher and my new images and patch the mul's yourself (start reading at "Adding the new art to your mul files")
Ya I've already done it boothby! Takes like 2 minutes from that stage thanks so much for your hard work.
Chris has approved the upload of the mul files, so here you go! Download from UOR: http://uorenaissance.com/downloads/new-spell-muls.zip Download from me: http://xf2m.com/uofiles/new-spell-muls.7z I don't plan on releasing other mul files, though, so I recommend learning how to use mulpatcher for any other art mods I do (reason being some people might not want some/all the mods, so the mulpatcher method means you can pick and choose which ones you want rather than getting all of them).
OMG I have only just found this. This is amazing Boothby! That must have taken you hours Thank you. FB
This is amazing. I never knew this was a possibility. My question is, was it stated what we can or cannot change? I'm very tempted to add modifications to armors and whatnot. Imagine plate helms having the horns of an orc helm, for example. Or making certain hats have the appearance of the hood of a death shroud, so it looks like you have a hood, to go along with that cloak.
How hard would it be to combine boothby's mods with the small dragon mod? I currently have it but if i used boothbys mods would it overwrite it?
A 'patch' like this will not overwrite another unless they are working with the same sprite/gump as on another. For example, were you to find a patch that turned dragons into sharks, then weeks later found a patch that put laser beams on dragon's heads... alas, you would not get sharks with fricken laser beams on their heads.
do they use the art.mul file? or something different? I think that's what the file was called, but i can't remember
Nope, the dragon mod will still work. I use that one + my stuff together just fine! Just patch your files manually as per the post above rather than downloading my MULs and dropping them in your UO folder.
