Since I am probably the only person who knows how to do this, I really should spread my knowledge to all of you guys since nowadays this is my preferred method of adding SLPs to the graphics.drs. And it should be for everybody else, since in contrast to this method, using AoMED is like picking cotton without using a cotton gin.

First off, let me tell all you people that I did not recently come across this method. In fact, it actually has resurfaced in my memory from many years back in '99 when I was a newbie trying to learn how to mod AoE. DRS Explorer is a pretty old-ass program dating back to '98 as it says in the readme. Back in my newbie days, I remember downloading DRS Explorer and messing with it a bit as well as with the old SLP Studio program. Well anyway I remember using SLP Studio to extract an SLP from AoE's graphics.drs, renaming said SLP to a number that is directly after the number of the last SLP in the .drs file, and successfully using DRS Explorer to add the SLP.

And now several years later around two months back when I was working on my expansion and using AoMED to add SLPs, I suddenly remembered that time when I messed with DRS Explorer and thought "hmm, could what I did back then work in AoK and up to this day?" So therefore, I downloaded DRS Explorer and experimented with much success. The SLPs that I imported worked rather well and the process worked like a charm. No more decompiling and recompiling and text editing crap with AoMED for me anymore.

You can download DRS Explorer here.

So now, let me show you how to add SLPs with DRS Explorer. It's rather easy really. But in order to successfully add an SLP with this tool, the SLP has to be named according to a specific format.

This format is an eight-character format that begins with the prefix "Gra." This prefix is followed by five digits representing the SLP number. If anyone has ever used SLP Studio, then you would know that this is the format the SLPs are listed as.

For instance, an SLP file that is named 100 according to the standard format SLPs are named in MPS, then it should be renamed Gra00100 so that it would work with DRS Explorer. And an SLP that is numbered 5 should be renamed Gra00005 in order for it to work.

Now on to using DRS Explorer.

If you want to add an SLP, you first have to name/rename it not only according to the aforementioned format, but also according to a number that is bigger than the number of the last SLP in the graphics.drs.

For example, since the number of the last SLP is 5312(or Gra05312 if you see it in SLP Studio), you have to name the SLP you are going to import Gra05313.

Now go to DRS Explorer and click the "Select DRS File" button. This will bring up a window where you can browse through your folders to find the graphics.drs file you want to import, preferably in your AoK data folder. While in your Data folder, select the "graphics.drs" and click "open." You will then see the graphics.drs's path written to the right of the "Select DRS File" button.

Once you've done this, click the "Select File to Import" button and browse for your Gra05313.slp file. Select the SLP and click "open." You will then see the Gra05313.slp's path displayed to the right of the "Select File to Import" button.

Now we're ready to roll. Once you've done the aforementioned steps above, click the "Add/Replace file" button and now DRS Explorer will run and add the Gra05313.slp to your graphics.drs. Wait for the program to finish running and then close DRS Explorer.

Then to see if your Gra05313.slp got successfully imported, use the program DRS_aok, which you can get here to look into your graphics.drs. If you can see your file listed with the number 5313 as well as view its contest, then all is right.

Keep repeating these steps to import SLPs with the names Gra05314, Gra05315, Gra05316, and so on.

Sure hope I gave clear instructions on this. If I did, then this thread should be annexed to the ModPack Guidance Center thread.