Usually I answer these kinds of questions promptly...sorry I missed you.For skills whose graphics are handled by overlay (like auras and the actual animation of "casting" the spell), the column is Filename.
For spells that rely on missiles.txt for their gfx (which is most of them), the column is CelFile.
In both cases, the situation is the same, you could copy, say the filename for holy freeze over to prayer, and prayer would now look like holy freeze (so would holy freeze, of course, unless you changed it as well).
Overlay is pretty safe...even if your value in the Frames column isn't perfect, you'll just have incomplete animation, which can be tweaked by adjusting the number.
In missiles.txt though, if the column AnimLen (which serves the same function as Frames in overlay.txt) is set too high, the game will *crash!*
So, if you copy a missile graphic to another skill's missile, make sure things like AnimLen especially (but also possibly the LoopAnim, AnimSpeed, RandStart, SubLoop, SubStart, and SubStop columns in some cases)
the are set right.
You can also use overlay files in missiles.txt or vice-versa. One way to do this is to extract the animation and save it with a new name in the appropriate path (either overlays or missiles). This can make your patch file a bit big, though. Apparently, you can also just put the relevant parts of the path in the Filename or CelFile columns (so, for example, to just make one up...missiles\firebolt in the Filename column to use the firebolt animation in some aura or other overlay-based skills...I think that's the way, but I just went with a larger patch and extracted and re-saved the few ones I wanted to move.).
You can also do things like extract monster animation files and use them for missiles or overlay by saving them to whichever path and putting the new name you save them under (minus the .dcc extenstion, of course) into the Filename or CelFile column.
When I used new animations like monster stuff and I don't know what AnimLen to set in missiles.txt, I tend to start at 5 or 6. If the animation seems incomplete I'll keep raising it until (a) I get what I want or (b) the game crashes and I know I went too far upward.
Finally, there are a number of unused overlay and missile graphics in the .mpq files, particularly d2data.mpq. They are in an "extra" area so...extra\missiles\whatever the filename is.
I uploaded my datafile for MPQ View here to the Keep...it will show those unused files if you load it before opening the d2data.mpq archive.
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- JEFF
"A hero is no braver than anyone else. He is only brave five minutes longer."
For my latest mod (for LoD/expansion), download at http://www.fileplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?/planetdiablo/phrozenkeep/mods/sic_beta.zip - Or for old stuff (for classic D2), visit my orignal mod site at www.planetdiablo.com/sanctuary