Ultima Online Graphics Tutorial Creating a custom login screen

[Zythrix 0]

I'm going to teach you how to create a custom login screen for Ultima Online.

Ok, to start, you need a program called MUL Patcher. Unzip that.


Next what you will want to do is make backups of

-Gumpart.mul
-Gumpidx.mul

To do that, simply browse to your Ultima Online program folder (generally something like c:\program files\ultima online 2d). I recommend just making a copy of each file and changing the file extension of the copy to .MOD.

Next, you want to open Mulpatcher. On the settings tab (the one displayed by default), you need to tell it where the Gumpart.mul and Gumpidx.mul files are located. So browse to your UO directory and select the files. Then hit the load button.

Now you're going to want to switch over to tab "Gump (nonAnim)". In the list box on the left you should see a bunch of values. Scroll down to 0x2329 (it may be different on yours but it'll be close to that at least). Right click on the number, and select save to bitmap.

Now, I recommend you use Photoshop for the next part because I don't really know Paintshop's capabilities anymore. Open the saved bitmap image up in Photoshop. Create your login screen. Now, before you save it, do the following in Photoshop.

- In the menu, click "Image".
- Go to "Mode".
- Select "Indexed Color".
- Click OK on whatever pops up.

Now, you've just reduced it to a decently sized, compressed bitmap. Now, to save it, go to "File>Save As..". Change the 'Format:' to BMP if necessary. Hit Save. Now, in BMP options, it should have 8-bit selected (if it doesn't then you didn't do the previous step) . Also, make sure "Compress (RLE)" is checked. Then hit OK. And it's saved.

Now, to import it back into the client files. Go back to mulpatcher. On the "Gump (nonAnim)" tab again, scroll down to 0x2329 (or whatever yours was). Right click on it and select "Load from bitmap" (NOTE: NOT "Load from bitmap to verdata" !!!). If the new image is displayed, you were succesful.

Click back over to the settings tab and save the Gumpart.mul and Gumpidx.mul files. Now, when you run it locally, it will have your artwork. If you want other people connecting to the server to see it, you have to send them your Gumpart.mul and Gumpidx.mul.

Run through the motions on this a couple of times and you will be able to modify any in-game graphic you want!

I hope this helps!

[Senadrin 0]

This was a great tutorial. I need more information though. I figured out how to change the background but what about the rest of the login screen. How do I change where the login portion lays or how it looks?

 

[Karmael 0]

I have followed the tutorial exactly - even compared the sizes and what not to both the original background and our new one and I can get it to show up, but with gaps in the artwork so it shows the background behind.. any ideas on how to fix?