After what felt like centuries of recompiling over and over again, I think it finally worked. The end result is not exactly what I was hoping for but I'm so scared of touching the game again that I'll leave it as is, I think...
One thing to note is, similarly to someone on the thread that you sent, the process only worked after downloading a clean copy and working from there.
Anyways, you're a life saver Gnou, thank you very very much.
As for eli_zhang, I hope you are able to fix the problems in time. Try not to get desperate and stay positive :)