SLP Studio Version 1.7  ;-)
Age of Empires Graphic Conversion Utility
Copyright (C) 1998 Joseph Knight. All rights reserved.
Written by Joseph Knight, knight@sad50.k12.me.us

_______________________________________________________
 Disclaimers
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This program is now begware, if you want, please send a donation
to me to encourage more software like this.  Info for registering
can be found at the bottom of this file.

Standard Disclaimer...
This software is provided as is, with no warranty of any kind.
I cannot be held liable for any damages caused by this software.
Use at your own risk.
Age of Empires a game by Microsoft & Ensemble Studios.
Windows is a trademark of Microsoft.
All trademarks are property of their respective owners.

_______________________________________________________
 Contents
_______________________________________________________
 Introduction
 Installation
 Usage
 How To Make A Modification Pack (ModPack)
 Bugs & Limitations
 Feedback & Support
 Credits

_______________________________________________________
 Introduction
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     Well, after 3 or 4 more months work, I've finally released SLP Studio.
This is a Windows program which works directly with the DRS files distributed
with Age of Empires.  The new version (the version you have) allows the
user to view, extract, and replace any file found in a DRS file, as well as
change and save SLP files.  Please enjoy this program, and, if you find any
bugs, quickly E-Mail me at knight@sad50.k12.me.us and I'll E-Mail you a bug fix
as soon as I fix it.

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 Installation
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     The original package is a ZIP archive called SLPSTUD.ZIP, which contains the
following files:

SLPSTUD.EXE
SLPSTUD.TXT
SLPCREAT.TXT
CMDIALOG.VBX
VBRUN300.DLL

     If you had the older verion of SLP Studio, then extract the zips right over
the old version.
     You may unzip the files to any location on your hard drive, but I'd recommend
putting the SLPSTUD.* files and SLPCREAT.TXT in your AOE directory and the other
two files in your WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory.

     The SLPCREAT.TXT File contains specific instructions for making the images
required to build your own SLP frames for inclusion in a modpack.

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 Usage
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     When you start the program, you'll see a large black area, a large white
(depending on your color settings) area to the left and some buttons and a scroll
bar.  None of that will work yet, so we'll start with the menus.  The two menus you
start out with are File and Player.  I'll get the player one out of the way first.
That menus simply selects what player color all the graphics you look at will be
assigned, so if you pick Green, when you open the villager's SLP file (GRA00657.SLP
for instance) the villager's clothing will be green.
     Now, for the file menu.  The options are Open, Extract File, Replace File,
Save As, About, and Exit.  Exit and About are obvious.  Exit exits, About tells
you about the program.
     The Open menu lets you open a DRS, SHP, SLP, BIN, and WAV files, I'll get into
specifics in a bit.  Extract File only works when you have a DRS file open.  It will
extract a selected file from the open DRS file and save it on your hard drive.
Replace File works the same way, except it prompts you requesting a file from your
hard drive to replace the currently selected one it the open DRS file.
     Save As will take the current frames (basically a currently open SLP file) and
save them on your hard drive as a compiled SLP file, ready to be integrated into a
DRS file.

     Now, let's open up a DRS file and check out how things work.  Go to the File
Open menu and open the GRAPHICS.DRS file.  You'll see a listing of files contained
within GRAPHICS.DRS appear on the left.  If you single click on one of them, then
you have the option to extract or replace that file in the DRS archive.  Now comes
the fun part.  Double click on GRA00002.SLP.  Suddenly the program tells you it's
loading and then pop!  In the black area a flame appears.  Also the > button (the
play button) and the O (or stop) button become active, as does the scroll bar.
For fun, click on the play button.  When you're done, click the stop button.  You
can also scroll through the frames using the scroll bar.  More happens though.
     Firstly, if you move your mouse over the flames, it becomes an up arrow.  You
can drag the image around wherever you like.  Also, as you move your mouse around
you'll probably notice the Current X/Y coordinates changing in the menu area.
     A few more menu items appear.  An edit menu, and couple coordinates and those 
current X/Y coordinate readout.  We'll leave the Edit menu alone for the moment and
focus on the coordinates.  The first set of coordinates is the current center of the
image.  This means that at those coordinates from the upper left of the image marks
what the program uses for the 'center' of the image.  Sort of a hot spot around
which each image is locked.  As you play the flames again, notice those numbers
changing specifying where the center is for that image.  Now stop them and click on
those coordinates.  A window pops up asking for new coordinates.  Change them if
you want to see what happens, just don't go to wild or you may not be able to find
the flame frame!  (Try saying that 5 times fast ;-)  An easier, although less
accurate way to change that hotspot is to right click in the black area.  That will
set the hotspot to the Current X/Y listing (which is why it's there ;-)
     Finally the Edit menu.  For this SLP file, your options are Convert Frame,
Convert All Frames, and Replace Frame.  Convert Frame will prompt you for a name
and location of the BMP you want to save the frame as.  It will also create two
other files with the same name, except one of them will have the first character
replaced with an S and the other will have the first character replaced with a C
and the extension replaced with a .TXT.  These other files are for putting the
frame back together again.  Convert All Frames will pop up a window with a choice
for which directory you want to put the frames in.  Then it will use the default
file names and extract all the frames from the currently opened SLP file.
Convert All Frames only shows up when there is more then one frame in the current
SLP file.  Finally the replace frame menu.  This will ask you for a BMP file to use
to replace the current frame in the SLP file you have open.  The same rules apply
to these BMP files as are found in the SLPCREAT.TXT file that comes with this
program.  It must be a 256 color standard BMP file.  If the program doesn't find
a S*.BMP file it will warn you and attempt to create one for you.  If it finds a
C*.TXT file, it will use that to mark the current hotspot, if not, it will assume
0,0 as the hotspot.  As soon as something about the SLP file has changed the Save As
command will become active.  Well, I think I've covered all the SLP commands now!

     Now for some of the other files SLP Studio handles, SHPs, BINs, and WAVs.
WAVs are simple.  You can extract them and replace them (although there's some
limitations on what style WAV file you can put back into the program successfully.
I think the same limits apply as apply to the Taunts).  SLP Studio will let you
play the WAVs (it uses Windows' Sound Player).  But be careful not to play a WAV
while you are already playing one, because the Sound Recorder will complain. ;-)
To Play a WAV, simply double click on it and then click on the play button ( > )
     The SHP files are no longer used in the program, but the ones you'll find are
very interesting.  You'll need to load the gray scale palette before viewing them.
(I'll get to that in a sec.)  If you 'Save As' an SHP file, it will be saved as an
SLP file.
     Finally the BIN files.  Unfortunately there are a few different kinds of BIN
files, although all but 3 of them are text files at their source.  2 BIN files are
simple BMPs, if you 'Save As' them they will also be converted to an SLP file, of
course if you extract them or convert them, they'll still be BMPs.  One of them is
a data file which I was unable/unwilling to fiddle with.  All the other files are
text files, although they don't all look that way in SLP Studio.
     Some of the BIN files specify a Palette.  In those cases, SLP Studio will take
that palette and show it to you.  When it does this, the Edit menu will have an
option called Set Default Palette.  By default SLP Studio uses the most common
palette in AOE, but some images require a different palette to be viewed properly.
If you think the palette you're looking at is the one you want for that stubborn
image, choose set as default palette and open the file to see if it worked.
Remember, whatever palette an SLP files looks good in, is the palette that a
replacing graphic would have to use.  If you want to view those SHPs, set
INT50519.BIN as the default palette.  AOE's regular palette is INT50500.BIN.
     Finally those other text BIN files will simply open up in a text box (not for
editing, just for browsing) instead of the usual black area.  If you want to edit
one of these files, just extract it and use any text editor to change it.  Then
you can replace it in the DRS file.  Ok, that's about it!  If you have any trouble,
please E-Mail me.  knight@sad50.k12.me.us
     By the way, see if you can find my egg, I've hidden my picture and some other
info somewhere in the program.  Look for any things that aren't quite normal ;-)
Have fun!

_______________________________________________________
 How To Make a Modification Pack (ModPack)
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     To create the SLP frames, check out the SLPCREAT.TXT that came with this
program.  I'd recommend the following procedure.  We'll assume you want to replace
the villager walking around doing nothing with an alien walking around.  (I don't
recommend really doing this here, because there are 75 frames to re-draw, just
follow along to get the idea)

1. Decide with SLP you want to change (in this case GRA00657.SLP)
2. Extract all the frames from the SLP file and then edit them as you like.  Or,
   you could simply draw the frames you want, but remember to stick to the AOE
   palette and 256 colors...  To extract the images:
   a. Open the DRS file (GRAPHICS.DRS)
   b. Double click on GRA00657.SLP
   c. Choose Convert All Frames from the Edit menu.
   d. Pick a directory to work with and choose ok.
   e. Then you can edit the images to make the alien.
3. Once your done changing all the frames (you'll probably have closed SLP Studio
   by now, if so, simply re-open the GRAPHICS.DRS, and re-double click on
   GRA00657.SLP) you want to build them into an SLP file for a mod pack.
4. Scroll to the first frame and then click on Edit/Replace Frame and pick your
   first frame.  Make sure that if you have a S*.BMP file that it also has been
   updated to reflect changes to it's accompanying G*.BMP.
5. Repeat this for all the frames you want to replace.
6. When you've finished go to the File menu and choose Save As and save your
   new SLP file.
7. Now, you'll probably want to try out your SLP file right away.  So make sure
   that GRA00657.SLP is still selected on the listing at the left and go to the
   File menu and choose replace file and pick your new SLP file.
8. After waiting for the program to finish rebuilding the DRS file, you can either
   close it or minimize it and run AOE to see your new villager!  Just don't edit
   the DRS files while AOE is running and don't run AOE while the program is still
   working.  It's just that easy!  Don't you love GUI interfaces?

_______________________________________________________
 Current Known Bugs & Limitations
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 V1.6 6/24/1998 Fixed bug that crashed the program when you tried to extract
                images from SLP files that had been already extracted.
                Bug discovered by Wes Seward, thanks!
 V1.7 9/12/1998 Fixed bug that crashed the program when you tried to load SLP
                frames that had no image data and therefore no center data.
                Bug discovered by Mitea Marius, thanks!

     No bugs I know of now.  The program cannot use long filenames.  Other than
that, there's no problems I know of.  If there are any errors in the created
SLPs then Age of Empires will probably lock up.  The worst I had happen was the
whole computer locked up, but I fixed that problem.  Even so, when first testing
your new SLP files, you might want to close other programs first.  You might have
noticed that SLP Studio only lets you replace existing files or frames, it won't
let you add files or frames.  That's because you never need to add/insert files or
frames because AOE won't use the extras.  Somewhere (possible in those BIN files,
but more likely in the EXE, which I'm not gonna play with) which frames and files
are used is specified, so adding more frames won't make the villager's animation
longer (for instance), if you put in more frames of the villager walking down, then
when you ran the program, instead of walking left, the villager would look like he
was finishing his walk downward.  Needless to say, it doesn't work.  Replacing
existing stuff is all that's needed.

_______________________________________________________
 Feedback & Support
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     Well, I've checked and rechecked the functions in this program, but
because of it's complexity, I can't ensure that every possibility will work.
But most of it should work out fine.  If you have any trouble, please copy
down exactly what went wrong and E-Mail me right away.  Make sure you backup
your original DRS files before running SLP Studio so that if things really get
messed up you can just restore from your originals.
     I can't be sure how soon I'll be able to respond to your E-Mail, but
I'll do the best I can.

_______________________________________________________
 Credits
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I would like to thank the following people for their fine
utilities, files, support, and encouragement:

Stoyan Ratchev, for creating DRSBUILD and Brian Yip, for his list
of the SLP files which encouraged me to start in the first place.

And especially my wife, for consenting to be a computer widow for
the past few months.

And, as always, Microsoft & Ensemble Studios for creating Age of Empires!
______________________________________________________
Copyright (C) 1998 Joseph Knight. All rights reserved.
