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Original Poster
#1 Old 10th Sep 2025 at 4:27 PM
Default Where to put skin images for use by custom NPCs (with bodystring)
Hi all, I've been making some custom behaviour for garden gnome NPCs and want to give my modified ones a recolour.

Gnome NPCs use the SpellboundMAFat_Gnome mesh which is in the makin magic game files (Expansion7.far).
If I set "bodystring" on my custom gnome iff to
SpellboundMAFat_Gnome,BODY=SpellboundMAFat_Gnome
then it loads perfectly with the default texture, as expected.

I have previously done some digging and seen that in order to use a different texture image I should just need to change the BODY= part of this, however the texture isn't loading when I do this so I'm not sure if I have put the new texture file in the correct place? Or does it need extra cmx files etc?
My recoloured bmap is currently just in the GameData/Skins folder, and it is called SpellboundMAFat_GnomeGreen.bmp

I have bodystring set to
SpellboundMAFat_Gnome,BODY=SpellboundMAFat_GnomeGreen
but in-game it just shows the gnome as a solid white colour, so the correct mesh but no texture

Can anybody point me to what I'm doing wrong? Many thanks
Test Subject
Original Poster
#2 Old 11th Sep 2025 at 12:38 PM
I'm going to answer my own question here as I figured out the problem, in case anyone comes here with the same issue in the future.

I was referencing the alternate skin image correctly but simply had too high a bit depth on the image.
Resaved the texture as a 256 colour bitmap (bit depth of 8) and that was all it needed!
The texture will need some tweaking to not look awful but at least I know why it wasn't working now
Test Subject
#3 Old 12th Sep 2025 at 5:45 AM Last edited by zero35 : 12th Sep 2025 at 6:20 AM.
hello,for fix this you need write a cmx file of:
_____________________________________
// Character File. Copyright 1997, Maxis Inc.
version 300
0
1
spellboundmafat_gnomegreen
0
0
2
PELVIS
xskin-SpellboundMAFat_Gnome-PELVIS-GNOMEGREENBODY
0
0
HEAD
xskin-SpellboundMAFat_Gnome-HEAD-GNOMEBODY-HEAD
0
0
0
________________________________________

bodystring set to
SpellboundMAFat_GnomeGreen,BODY=SpellboundMAFat_GnomeGreen
and a skn file name is xskin-SpellboundMAFat_Gnome-PELVIS-GNOMEGREENBODY
modify header as:
—————————————————
xskin-SpellboundMAFat_Gnome-PELVIS-GNOMEGREENBODY
SpellboundMAFat_GnomeGreen
—————————————————

because the normal cmx file format is
________________________________________
// Character File. Copyright 1997, Maxis Inc.
version 300
0
1
b000uaskn_proxy
0
0
1
PELVIS
xskin-b000uaskn_proxy-PELVIS-BODY
0
0
0
________________________________________
skn file header is
xskin-b000uaskn_proxy-PELVIS-BODY
x
________________________________________
within bmp files
b000uaskndrk_proxy
b000uasknmed_proxy
b000uasknlgt_proxy
b000uaskn*drk med lgt


but you modified is a NPC skin,so it will need a specified cmx and skn file
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