nezroy

Item/inventory icons are 58x58 and they all have a 100% transparent pixel in each corner. The icon for a mod in the DLC screen is 128x128. I don't know about spell/ability icons.

I've never used the photoshop plugin but based on the requirements when using the command line tools, try the "8.8.8.8 ARGB" type and set mipmap generation to "No MIP maps".

Use the ErfEditor.exe from the <dragon age install>\tools directory.

check in/check out are standard concepts from the version control world. The toolset has this functionality so that you and several other people could all be working in the same database w/o trampling on each other's work. You check out an item to work on it and then check it back in when finished. That way other people would know you had it open for editing/were done making changes. When working yourself it's kind of pointless. The DAZIPs are generated from you local copy where needed so you really never have to bother if you don't want. However you should check in everything before creating a builder-to-builder package or if you are trying to backup your projects by backing up the database, since the changes in your local copy are not stored to the DB version until you do a check in.

There are mods that change the shape of the armor meshes (since there are only a couple of armor meshes, one for each weight class mainly), as well as some of the clothing. Curvaceous Attire - female meshes of robes and light armor for humans and elves Busty Armor Clothing Body - busty female meshes of robes and light armors for all races Symmetric Massive Armor - various options for the massive armor meshes The TnT Team has created a bunch of custom heavy armor meshes. Never used them so I'm not sure if they are straight replaces (change all heavy armors) or just individual variants (would show up only if that armor is equipped on your PC/party). (The alternate textures in particular have some decent looking options that don't look like the stripper anime armor from the default TnT stuff). I thought there were a few other mods that updated the meshes for medium/heavy/massive armor across the board, but I can't seem to find any others at the moment.

A while back I posted instructions on installing the toolset with a standalone sql express 2008 install, since some folks have better luck getting 2008 working than 2005. Something to try if you are still having problems... http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=177587&st=0&p=1616852&&do=findComment&comment=1616852

One of the goals of Leliana Item Set was to make a light armor that looked plausibly useful in combat while retaining an appearance of flexibility. Despite the name, it can be used by any female PC. Still might be a little more skin than you want though...

I would try to avoid doing it that way since it will conflict with any other mod that modifies that same creature's file. If you want it to drop from a specific creature in a specific zone, then use the PRCSCR functionality to run a script that fires when entering the zone that contains the creature. Then use GetObjectByTag to get the creature and CreateItemOnObject to add your item to that creature's inventory. Use a plot flag to make sure this only happens once. The benefit of doing it this way is that the item will still be added even if another mod directly overrides that creature's UTC file, and any number of mods can add inventory to the same creature in this same manner without conflicting.

The original icons are mostly all in <game>/packages/core/data_tools/guitools.erf. You shouldn't need to worry about any GDA stuff. There is also the icons project, which has a ton of useful stuff.

I assume you've already tried out Better Sex Cutscenes and found it insufficient?

Can also use the translation flag patcher from the translator toolit. http://dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=500

Since cloak was an un-used/un-supported slot, is it possible they've removed support for it from EquipItem in Awakening? "If an incorrect slot is given or an invalid object is given the function will return 0" - maybe it's now considered an invalid slot. EDIT: Or, alternately, did they change the bitm GDA def for helmets to not allow it to go into the cloak slot?

A lot of the textures, diffuse maps especially, have completely transparent alpha channels since that data gets ignored by the engine. In the GIMP, click on the channels tab and select just the alpha channel, then fill it with white, to get a completely opaque image. (This will be true whether you are opening the DDS directly or opening a converted TGA). Also in the GIMP, you can use Colours->Components->Decompose to split the channel data into grayscale layers (and later compose/recompose to create channel data out of grayscale layers), which is particularly handy when working with specular/normal maps.

Looks like the materials M2DA was the only one with apparent problems, and the issues I was seeing were actually being caused by my related material strings being in my module's talk table instead of in the core talk table.

Yeah it seems that almost everything EXCEPT the item properties will update if you change the UTI. Cost, name, description, item variant, onhit stuff, and also the tint override I believe. The only other thing that I know won't change on an existing item if you modify the UTI is the material type, which makes sense anyway given how material/item scaling works (and changing materialprogression DOES impact existing items, from what I can tell -- though in order to see the effect of that you'd have to force your items to be re-scaled, via the Warden's Keep vendor or script calls).

Don't listen to this misinfo. The Downloadable Content is precisely where you will find listed any mods you have installed that are actually mods, and not just overrides of existing game resources. So the majority of new item mods, new quests/content mods, etc. will all show up in the Downloadable Content menu when installed correctly. Basic overrides like Natural Bodies or some of the hairstyle mods, etc. won't.

I'm curious to know if there is a way to use M2DAs when extending the core resources module? I've set my module properties to extend Core Game Resources, and all of the associated scripts/etc. belong to the core game module (owned by my mod), and everything exists/runs properly in game. However none of my M2DA overrides (custom materials, etc.) show up in-game that way. The custom M2DA stuff shows up fine when the module is set to extend Single Player (even with all the items/scripts still belonging to Core, owned by my module).

I have this problem all the time, particularly with the developer console enabled. What usually fixes it is if I hit prntscr, alt-tab out to windows, and then come back into the game and hit prntscr again. Then it starts working normally. Bizarre but seems to work for me. Plus when you alt-tab out you can go check on the screenshots directory each time to see if it's working yet...

Nope, still the same problem. FF3.6 and IE8. When I enter the file into the file picker It warns me with a javascript popup that it has an unsupported extension. Clicking submit will upload the file, but after it's done I just get an error again that it's an unsupported file type and couldn't be processed. The list of supported extensions on the file upload page doesn't list dazip (though I'm not sure if it ever did, I never paid that close attention).

Changing the t3_arm_drb.tnt file and putting your version in the <my docs DA>/packages/core/override directory should be the correct way to change that across the board. Note that there are other tint files for the different weapon materials, etc., so possibly what you are looking at is not using the tint you think it is. You can see exactly which tint file is being used for each material by opening up "materialtypes.gda" (or tools/source/2da/rules/materialtypes.xls if you have the toolset). Also be sure you are modifying the specular colors too when you update the tint. Though it seems counter-intuitive at first, the color associated with the specular can have way more impact on the in-game color than the diffuse color, particularly for shiny objects. Finally, just to make sure you're clear on what the tint is doing, the vector for each of the 6 fields (TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R/G/B and SPECULAR counterparts) are each complete RGBA color definitions. For instance the field TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R is NOT just setting the red component of a single color to be applied. It is setting a complete RGBA color to apply to any areas of the armor that have been masked out by the red channel of that item's tint map. So to truly understand which part of the armor will change when you change the color of TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R, you'd have to go look at the tint map for that specific armor and compare the area masked out by the red channel of the tint map to the original diffuse map to see which areas of the diffuse map will be altered. So a single tint can actually cause 3 different regions of the armor to have 3 different color (and specular) changes. Hopefully that makes sense. Of course it's not strictly necessary to look at the tint map for each item, you can just start changing things and see what changes. Also in general, the R channel generally masks out the primary item material (the main metal/leather/whatever), the G channel generally masks out the secondary/trim items, and the B channel is frequently not used or is used for like buttons and stuff like that. I just tried it out to make sure I wasn't steering you wrong. I updated the t3_arm_drb.tnt to these values: TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_R: 0, 0.5, 0, 1 TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_G: 0, 0, 0.5, 1 TINT_MASK_DIFFUSE_B: 0, 0.5, 0.5, 1 TINT_MASK_SPECULAR_R: 0, 0.5, 0, 1 TINT_MASK_SPECULAR_G: 0, 0, 0.5, 1 TINT_MASK_SPECULAR_B: 0, 0.5, 0.5, 1 And left the other values unchanged. I saved that to my <my docs>/BioWare/Dragon Age/packages/core/override directory, and got this chromatic result: http://static.nezroy.com/images/dragon_tint.jpg

Since the overhaul it seems I'm unable to upload .dazip files now for Dragon Age. Is this accidental? Or intentional and I missed a forum post/news post on that?

The DA:O normal map is not in any "standard" normal map format, which is annoying. See the wiki for details: http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Textureformats#Normal_Map Regardless, if you set a 50% gray RGB with a 50% alpha, you will get a "flat" map that with no normal modifications applied. If you still see normals in-game then your replacement texture is in the wrong place or has the wrong name and is not being picked up by the game. Generally you can get decently convincing normal effects for "clutter" by simply applying an emboss in two different directions for the RGB and alpha channels. For something more specific you'll obviously need to either hand-paint your normals or convert normals exported from a 3D modeler into the format used by DA:O (which generally just means copying channel data into the appropriate configurations, depending on the format of the normal map that you exported -- typically a tangent space normal map, which are the ones that look "blue"-ish, and are widely used).

It would be allowed as long as the mod did not INCLUDE Awakening content, but merely enabled it within the Origins campaign for people who also have Awakening installed. There's no problem modding DLC/xpac content as long as the user must have the DLC/xpac installed in order for the mod to work.

Use CreateItemOnObject with bSuppressNotification set to TRUE to avoid the item added message. To prevent the player from unequipping the item, you would probably want to setup an event listener for EVENT_TYPE_UNEQUIP that always re-equips the item.

Your best bet would be to contact the original mod authors and offer to provide Italian translations for them. I suspect most of them will be willing to add the localized strings to their mods, if they are still doing active development. I know I would. That way it becomes part of the released mods and more people benefit.