Hey Alpha,
I do my own stumps and field mods. Besides the regular energy, poison, and paralyze field mods I also go a step further and change twigs to red squares and rocks to red squares. This allows for easier fielding in Despise plus you don't get caught up on twigs (most the time) when running threw a jungle setting.
Honestly, most people use stumps and turned off animations back in the day when computers were not so great. Now and days most standard piece of crap computers run Ultima perfectly. So unless you have some 2000 generic computer then the animations shouldn't be that big of an issue.
I'll be more than happy to help you if you pm me your ICQ. I won't be back home until Sunday or Monday night, but I'll get with ya whenever I return home.