Ah thanks Eleaza!
Seems that that description of how to do it is a bit misleading.
ADDIT: Whoo hoo! Success.
Won't lie, that was a tad bit complicated. But actually compared to the process of making mods for virtually any other game I've ever fiddled with: pretty dang easy.
Couple points of complication/confusion that other may find edifying:
Apart from using the changes in the "example.txt" only change I made was to change M07 image to my DicheBach avatar. Now that I've got that baseline process under control, I may may more changes. The proper way to do this:
1. Get your pic and save it with the proper format: 60x64 .png file. I'd recommend saving it someplace outside the CapLab directories first.
2. Now decide which stock portrait you want to swap out (I went with M07.png, and decided this using the list of photos on the 'how to make a mod' page) and name your new pic with that file name.
3. Make a copy of the original .png you are going to replace (either rename it originalM##.png, or cut paste it to a different directory) just so you retain copy of that original graphic file (just in case . . . I actually failed to do this myself so it is not a show stopper).
4. Make your MyMOD.txt file, as per the directions in the How To page. I won't belabor those directions, they seemed clear and adequate and I doubt most folks would have any difficulties there, though if anyone does ask and I'll help if I can.
5. As far as I can tell, you do not need to make any changes to the Persons.dbf file if all you are doing is swapping out an existing pic slot. I suppose you can add new rows to that dbf file and thus retain all the old and add new pics but haven't gone there yet <- something you said made me think I needed to do that, and that created some wrinkles for me Eleaza (MS Excel is not a 'fan' of dbf files, though the trick seems to be: tell it to save it as an .xls close the file [and/or MS Excel] and then rename the file itself, simply changing the .xls extension part of the file name to .dbf . . . end of the day, I just reverted to the original .dbf file because I did something to the one I made some changes in that were invalid . . .
In sum: if you just want to swap out an existing portrait for a new portrait, and do NOT want to make any changes to that person slot's "attributes" (skills and affinities, sex, name) then you do NOT need to do anything to any other files in the /DATA or /Image sub-directories of the /MOD Kit sub-directory . . .
6. Run PACKALL.BAT. Just right-click it and select Open. You'll briefly see the windows console flash past and when you are done, you should have a CAPMOD.RES file in the
Q:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Capitalism Lab\MOD_kit directory (or its analog directory path on your install)
I'm not certain if this file is already there before you do step 6. If it is, I'd suggest deleting it. Not sure, but I think if there is already a file in that location, it might not overwrite it . . .
Bit of clarification here: The supposition I am making above could be incorrect. The alternative explanation would be: the PACKALL.BAT does NOT work properly when you right-click "Run as Administrator" <- one of those two use paths will cause the process to fail, meaning the mod will not show up else not work when you put it in the Q:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Capitalism Lab\MOD directory.
So the safe bets: for step 6: A. If you see a CAPMOD.RES file in there before step six, just cut-paste it to some other location (so you can bring it back if you need to); B. do NOT use right-click Run as administrator . . . use right-click Open.
7. Now that you have your CAPMOD.RES file and your MyMod.txt file, you are nearly done! Just rename your CAPMOD.RES file to match the prefix part of your .txt file (if MyMod.txt then MyMod.RES as the 'how to' page explains quite clearly)
8. Copy those two files and paste them into the \MOD directory.
9. Launch game and select your mod and choose "Use"