Hey,
After spending a few hours, yet again, searching around for this information and coming up with absolutely nothing, I thought that it would be a good idea for me to share what I've learned as to quicken development on other servers. Before I start typing out this guide, I will admit that I'm no expert on DBC editing and that some of this information
may be incorrect. If you know of any additional information, notice an error, etc.. just comment and I'll do my best to keep this thread updated.
There are a few things that you'll need before editing a DBC file. I've seen many different programs, and even more people recommending each program over every other program, but the vast majority either didn't work or corrupted the DBC files. I'll only be recommending the programs that work for me. So, before you continue reading, please
download this; it contains everything that I use. These programs will only work on Windows.
Just in case anyone wants to know what I'm running:
- Windows 8, x64 -- Home
- Debian 7 x32 -- Server
- TrinityCore -- Latest version as of 5/June/2014
- WoTLK 3.3.5a
Assuming that you've followed my instructions and have downloaded the
tools that we'll be using in this tutorial, lets begin!
The first question that you should ask yourself is "Which screen do I want to change, and to what do I want to change it to?". Pick out something and then refer to the bullet-points below to figure out where the files you will need are. I haven't tested the majority of these, but from the few I've tested I believe that these will all work.
- Vanilla Login Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_MAINMENU/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- BC Login Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_MainMenu_BurningCrusade/ within patch-enUS.MPQ
Also exists in expansion-locale-enUS.MPQ in the same location. I'm not sure if there is a difference between the two. - WotLK Login Screen (With Dragon) - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_MainMenu_Northrend/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Blood Elf Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_BLOODELF/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Draenei Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_DRAENEI/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Dwarf Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_Dwarf/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Human Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_Human/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Night Elf Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_NightElf/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Orc Character Screen - Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_Orc/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
Also exists in patch-enUS-2.MPQ in the same location. I'm not sure if there is a difference between the two. - Tauren Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_Tauren/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Undead Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_SCOURGE/ within locale-enUS.MPQ
- Death Knight Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_DeathKnight/ within lichking-locale-enUS.MPQ
- Unused Weapon-Mound Character Screen - Interface/GLUES/MODELS/UI_CharacterSelect/ within patch-enUS-2.MPQ
The only other file location that I can think of which is worth mentioning is Interface/GLUES/COMMON/ in locale-enUS.MPQ. This is where the blue WotLK and red Vanilla/BC button looks are stored. I'll add a short section on switching to the red buttons near the end of this tutorial.
Tip:
When editing any files that can be packed into an MPQ file, you can just go into your Data/enUS/ folder and create a new folder, lets call it "patch-enUS-n.mpq", and place all of the files that you would place into the MPQ file in there. This is extremely useful if you don't want to keep on creating a new MPQ file every time you go to test new edits. When you release the edits you should place them into an MPQ file as it hides everything from the average user.
Credits to MyLilSuccy for this information.
If you already know how to open up the MPQ files, extract files, rename those files, and place them back into an MPQ file, then you can stop reading here and go have some fun changing the character/login screens.
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Assuming that you've downloaded the
tools that I linked to earlier, let's begin!
For the purpose of this tutorial I will be showing you how to change the login screen to the Orcish character creation screen. Near the end of the tutorial we will also be changing the buttons from blue to red and removing the WoW logo from the upper left-hand corner.
The first thing you should do is open up
MPQEditor.exe within
Tools/mpqediten64/. Next click
Open MPQ(s), navigate to your
Data folder, and open
locale-enUS.MPQ. In the screen on the right-hand side, or in the main screen, double-click
Interface, then
GLUES, then
MODELS, and finally UI_Orc. Now click on the main screen and select all of the files, right-click on one of them after they've all been selected, and click
Extract, and then click
OK. You can close the program now.
In the
mpqediten64 folder you should see a new folder called
Work. Double-click the
Work folder, then
Interface, then
GLUES, then
MODELS, then
UI_Orc. Look at the bullet points below and rename the files just as I tell you to.
- Rename UI_Orc.m2 to UI_MainMenu_Northrend.m2
- Rename UI_Orc00.skin to UI_MainMenu_Northrend00.skin
- Rename UI_Orc01.skin to UI_MainMenu_Northrend01.skin
Note:
Every single screen contains a .m2 file and a few .skin files that follow the naming convention that you can see in the bullet points above. To switch any screen with the WotLK login screen, just rename the files as I've already told you to. I haven't tried switching character creation screens yet, but I'm certain that you can follow the same steps as this tutorial, but with different file names. Hopefully this note makes sense to you. 
The next step is to change the buttons from blue to red. Reopen the MPQEditor and then open locale-enUS.MPQ, navigate to
Interface/GLUES/COMMON/ and export the files
Glue-Panel-Button-Down.blp,
Glue-Panel-Button-Disabled.blp,
Glue-Panel-Button-Highlight.blp,
Glue-Panel-Button-Up.blp, and
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp. Hopefully you've managed to remember the steps we took before and that you have successfully exported the files I said to.
Note:
Within the locale-enUS.MPQ in the Interface/GLUES/COMMON/ folder, there are two files with very similar names. So, when exporting Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp, make sure that it's named exactly as I have it written here.
Just as we've done previously, go into the
Work folder, then into
Interface, then
GLUES, and finally
COMMON. For each .blp file, excluding
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp, you need to add "-Blue" to the end of the filenames. When you're finished the files should have the following names:
- Glue-Panel-Button-Disabled-Blue.blp
- Glue-Panel-Button-Down-Blue.blp
- Glue-Panel-Button-Highlight-Blue.blp
- Glue-Panel-Button-Up-Blue.blp
The last thing that we're going to do before creating an MPQ and testing out all of these file-swaps is to get rid of the logo in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. You could replace it with whatever image you want, or even another one of the logos, but for this tutorial we will be removing it.
To do this we need to convert
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp into a .png file and then edit it in a program such as GIMP, Paint.net, or Photoshop. Don't use MS Paint, it can't edit the image in the way we need to. To convert
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp into a .png file just copy
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp into
Tools/BLPConverter_8-4, and then drag
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp onto
BLPConverter.exe. There should now be a file named
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.png, open it up using the image editor of your choice. Don't use MS Paint! You will need to select the entire image and delete it. The image needs to be completely alpha. After that, just save the file, delete
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp, drag
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.png onto
BLPConverter.exe and then copy the new
Glues-WoW-WotLKLogo.blp back into
Toolsmpqediten64Modified FilesInterfaceGLUESCOMMON.
Phew, that sure was a lot to type. Don't worry though, we're just about done!
The final step, before testing, is to create the MPQ file. To do this you will need to open up
MPQEditor, click
New MPQ, type in a patch name such as
patch-5 (which is what I'll be using), then click Next, select the option to build the MPQ from an archive or directory, click the little button to the left with three periods on it, then select your
Work folder, press
OK, click
Next, click
Finish, then exit the program. Now just copy your newly packed MPQ file into your
Data folder and launch the game.
Link to the fullsize image. Please ignore the News box, that isn't part of this tutorial.
For that you should refer to this tutorial.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for reading this guide, hopefully it doesn't bore you too much. I've tried to improve upon my previous guide by speeding up the steps and taking out a bit of the over-detailed explanations, but you should still understand everything that I'm trying to teach you after reading through the guide.
If you want to stay up-to-date with my latest tutorials or if you just want an easier way to view all of my tutorials and releases in one place then take a look
at my blog.
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Edit ~ 18/Apr/2014:
- Edited a few sentences for clarity.
