New NPC models

[sirreality]

Is it possible to introduce new [npc] models to the world? Not animated models, but static models that have a race assigned. For example, trees are race 143, row-boats are race 141, etc...

I'm kind of a newb at this stuff, but here's what i found out so far:

I was messing around with ships and found that the only one that behaves like a normal NPC model is the original boat, which can be force-loaded using pre,oot_chr in a *_chr.txt file. However, this boat does not have any collision detection. I thought perhaps collisions were handled by the model itself, so i loaded up my original EQ CD and replaced the oot s3d files with the ones from the original CD. When i loaded the boat, Stormbreaker, it was taking on the old model and the old textures, but still has no collisions, so unless i missed something, that isn't going to work.

I cannot seem to find the right ***,***** combination(s) for any of the other boats to force-load them in zones where they do not already exist. From S3dSpy and ZoneConverter, it looks like those models are SHIP, which doesn't obey the 3-character standard for the force-loading method and will crash some zones when used in a _chr.txt file. For instance, ship,timorous_chr will crash the client when used in east commons, but doesn't seem to crash butcherblock.

So, since i cannot seem to get boats to work, which are race 72, i thought i would try the launches (small boats and rafts), race 73. However, these all appear to be static models and i cannot find any kind of ***,******* combination for them to force-load.

If anyone has some insight on this subject, i would really appreciate it. I have been beating on this for a while and not making any progress, so i thought i would appeal to the experts.

Thanks in advance for your help
-sirreality