Creatures Caves

My specialty subject!

You'll want to use BMP2S16, available here.

When drawing your sprites, make sure the image dimensions are multiples of 2 (so, no odd numbers) and you want to export them as 24-bit BMP files.

To start off, it's probably best copying a set of pre-existing creature sprites, and renaming them/copying over their sprites with your custom graphics. I achieved this by doing the following:

1. Determine which pre-existing breed files you want to work from. Although this choice didn't matter to me as I drew all my bodypieces from scratch, I ended up picking the Grendel set. (Note: As I wrote this guide, it occurred to me that starting with the Grendel set isn't a good idea, because Grendels don't have as many files as a standard Norn breed. I'd encourage you to start with any of the standard Norn sets instead. You should end up with 140 files copied. The rest of this guide will still refer to the Grendel set, but please keep in mind that you won't end up with a complete set of sprites using the Grendel.)

2. Copy all chosen breed files to a new folder. Sprite file naming convention goes like this:
(example) a12a.s16
a = body piece,
1 = species + sex,
2 = lifestage, and
a = slot.
In this example, a12a.s16 is an Adolescent Male Grendel's Head. So if I were to choose this set of files to work off, I'd copy all files fitting the criteria of *1*a.s16 (male) and *5*a.s16 (female)

Refer to this page for a complete list of number/letter combinations: http://www.creaturesvillage.com/wafuru/e/faq.html

Now you've got a copy of these files (140 in total for a standard Norn breed), you need to rename them to your chosen slot, unless you plan to override the default species slot (not recommended). The quickest way to do this is to use a series of batch commands.

We'll use the same example as before. So, we currently have male/female Grendels of five different lifestages, and I want my custom breed slot to use the Ettin "T" slot, instead. Essentially, this means changing all *1*a to *2*t, and all *5*a to *6*t. If this is confusing, reference the Wafuru page again to see why these new numbers correspond to "Ettin slot T".

3. Create a new text file, and inside it, write the following three lines exactly and then save it in the same directory as your copied sprite set as batch.bat (Save As... 'all file types' to get the .bat part to work):
ren *1*a.s16 ?2?t.s16
ren *5*a.s16 ?6?t.s16
pause
^ Remember, if you've chosen different slots to my example, you'll need to change these numbers using the Wafuru page as a guideline.

4. Run the batch file you just created. The window may complain a few times about finding duplicates-- this should be nothing to worry about. Now look at your spriteset. If all went well, all those *1*a.s16 should now say *2*t.s16, meaning you've successfully created a set of sprites for Ettin slot "T"!

You'll also need the same set of .att files. The process is exactly the same as above: find the originals, copy them into a new folder. Create the .bat file, except this time, make sure you change the .s16 parts in the bat commands to .att, or the batch won't find any valid files to rename.

From here, you use the BMP2S16 utility to go through each file and replace the existing graphics with your own. Make sure you add them in the correct order.

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I have to stop here for now, but if there's any part of this process I've missed, I'll be back soon to ammend. Any questions or confusion, fire away!