There's an easier way in the 21st century!
When you are done editing your field file in Meteor, just drag and drop the file onto LZS.exe and it will automatically compress it (in XP anyways). Then reinsert the file and save the lgp.
And it's all preference, but Highwind replaces field files as well. I have no idea if it's better or worse than Emerald. It's what I started using, so it's what I stick with.
To make new dialog in Meteor, you pretty much only need to know a couple opcodes, and if you want entirely new boxes with new dialog, you'll need to click on the dialog tab and add it.
Anyways, the script you add should look sort of like this:
WINDOW (0,50,50,20,20)
MESSAGE (0,2E) <--- 2E is the dialog ID you want.
Just open up a script and look through it until you see a MESSAGE opcode with the dialog ID that comes right before you want to add your new dialog.
To get the exact WINDOW coordinates, you can just copy the opcodes that call dialog by the character you want. That way it makes the same window as the rest of their dialog. Then just point the next MESSAGE opcode to your dialog. Also, don't forget that Meteor's code is [New Box] instead of {New Page}.
