FIREFLY11

Hey justaking! While this isn't a quest mod, it's one that's incredibly useful: Make Console Commands Visible: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/1110. There are more than a few mods out there that can only be played by entering the proper code using the console commands. The trouble is, under normal circumstances, the console commands you input are not visible and a single typo means the mod won't work. This mod fixes that by making the commands you type in visible, so it's definitely a must-have if you want to use any mods that rely on console commands. As for quest mods, in addition to the ones recommended by Sky and balmz, Spiders and Knives is a small, but worthwhile addition; Hilltop Under Siege, Ancient Elven Ruins, and Calenhad's Tomb are lots of fun & will extend your game play, and Temple of Vulak if you're up for a real challenge (esp. on Nightmare! :wink:). Have fun! Best, FIREFLY11

Hi buzzin99! There's also another way to do this that doesn't involve scripting so long as you have the Feastday Gifts & Pranks DLC installed. Load up on "thoughtful gifts" from Bodahn (they net you a +10 approval each time you give them to a companion) & use them to max out Oghren's approval in DAO. Hang on to all the booze-related ones you collect in DAO that are meant for Oghren & make sure you have them in your inventory when you beat the game. They will then port into Awakening (so long as you import your warden, of course :wink:). You can then use them to raise Oghren's approval enough to trigger his personal quest. I learned this from my days as a console gamer before I discovered the magic of mods. If you are into modding, you might want to go the scripting route for the practice if anything. Have fun whatever method you end up using & stay well out there! Best, FIREFLY11

Hey YaraC, hope you're doing well & thanks again for replying! :smile: Yeah, about the 'false positives', I reached out to the company that offers the BINK movie player after I scanned it & it came back showing an infected file. They said what came up was just that & so did a programmer who released an FSB extractor that came up w/ the same result (I used VirusTotal to do the scans). Has everything been OK w/ your computer after getting Aezay's FSB extractor? BTW, I heard somewhere that you need to use Peazip to open FSB file extractors since they DL as a RAR file. I have 7-zip. Would that work? Sorry for the dumb question, but this is new ground for me. :tongue: Anyway, thanks once again & take care out there! Best regards, FIREFLY11 UPDATE: Hi all, I ended up installing Aezay's FSB extractor after all. Turns out the reason it got flagged by VirusTotal is b/c the file is unsigned. While I was at it, I happened to scan my DAO Mod Manager & it got flagged for the same reason & I've had the thing for over a year & a half w/o incident. A scan by Malware Bytes & Microsoft showed no threats from Aezay's either, so now the work begins! YaraC, if you happen to see this, thanks again for pointing me toward that & the BINK player! :thumbsup:

Hi all, hope everyone is doing well out there! In my quest to alter dialogue files, I was told I needed an FSB extractor to pull that off. So far I've tried downloading 3 different ones (aezay, FSB files extractor 0.3.8 (fxbext), and Game Extractor's extract_312.exe), but when I ran a virus scan on them, each contained a file that was determined to be infected w/ a virus and/or malware. Does anyone know where to get an FSB extractor that doesn't contain corrupted files? Thanks to anyone w/ any info on this! Best always, FIREFLY11

Hey Sky & balmz, thanks a lot! I'll go & download that now while the downloadin's good. Thanks again! :happy: Best always, FIREFLY11

Hi all, hope everybody is doing well out there! I recently went to take a look at one of the few remaining detailed tutorial documents, From Woe to Go: How to Mod DAO by AnnaTito, here on Nexus & was greeted with a "page not found" message. (Knew I should've downloaded it! :wallbash:) Even w/ all its links defunct, it still has some incredibly useful info. So I'm wondering, is it gone for good, or is there some way to recover it? Thanks & best to everyone, FIREFLY11

Hi YaraC, thanks for reaching out & hope all is well where you're at! Sorry about the delayed response--got sidetracked by work. Wow, many thanks for all the info & the how-to! :happy: That's gonna keep me occupied for a while since I'm still sadly in noob territory when it comes to this area. Another kind soul also pointed me in the same direction (thanks earlsmith852 :thumbsup:). Good to know about Audacity, I'll go & grab that. And thanks for the link for that program for creating BINK movies. I checked out the site, but unfortunately it has a strike over the security icon. I threw an email to the company letting them know, but haven't heard anything. :confused: Guess I'll try phoning them. Also, just checked the place for Aezay's FSB Extractor & found the same thing going on w/ the security icon, so again, :confused:. Is there a particular version of it you would recommend BTW? As for what I'd like to do & how I want to trigger it, I'm hoping to create a romance mod in the vein of ARR/IRS for a female Cousland warden. It would involve altering lots of the Warden's dialogue, dialogue from NPC followers as well as a few NPC non-followers that are triggered by various events in the game, so it would require altering existing conversations as well as creating custom ones. (Eventually I'd also like to create a quest mod for use in the game where the Warden finds a cure, but my guess is something that involves cutscenes & dialogue will be easier than level creation). For instance, the Warden can have the option of discussing w/ Alistair whether or not he should be willing to become king at various points in the game & his responses will evolve to correspond to events in the story (i.e., whether he was changed by his personal quest, the completion of the Urn of Sacred Ashes Quest) & the responses of the Warden. I would even include a second chance/alternative means of hardening Alistair as well. For the NPC followers, I'd like them to have different conversations w/ the Warden that are dependent upon how far Alistair & the Warden's relationship has progressed. I'd be using the existing lines of course, just moving them around to create customized conversations. Too bad it can't be as easy as grabbing lines out of the game's resources & plopping them in a new track! :tongue: Thanks so much again for the outline, especially re: how to get the Warden's lines into a CS; I'll probably come running back for help sooner rather than later, but for now I'll get cracking. :happy: Kind regards, FIREFLY11

Hi to everyone out there in modding land! I've been learning the ropes of cutscene production for a while now & I've gained a decent grasp of the nuts & bolts of it, but there are a few aspects that I would be immensely grateful for some guidance on. First one, I can't seem to find much info on how to change the lines of an NPC in an existing conversation. I've seen YouTube vids that show how to create a conversation w/ a user-created NPC, & one that briefly discusses conditions/actions, but nothing on altering dialogue with say, one of your followers or an NPC you would interact with in the game (i.e., Eamon). There are mods out there that do this, ARR for instance, so I know it's possible. I've looked at the dialogue trees in the Toolset & have found out how to alter the Warden's lines, but not how to change those of the NPC the Warden is talking to. It's probably pretty simple, but I'm a complete dunce when it comes to these things. :tongue: There are some pages in the Toolset Wiki that cover conversations/dialogue, but not this. Unless I didn't look in the right places? :confused: Second, I know how to add lines to a CS in the Toolset by adding a track & then grabbing a line from the game resources & I've even managed to create some "custom lines" by overlapping two different tracks in the timeline. But for an exchange where you have the Warden conversing w/ an NPC, how do you add the choices for the Warden's lines since they appear as text instead of being voiced? I was thinking creating them as a dialogue file, saving, & then pulling them up from the game resources, but I'm not sure. Finally, how do you take pieces of dialogue out from spoken lines & paste them w/ others or just have them one their own? For example In this line from Alistair, "Hello, have you met her? I think she'd need a reason not to betray us", if you want to take out just "I think she'd need a reason not to betray us", how is that done? Again, I know that it's achievable; if you look at kianta's Alistair's Proposal, for example, his lines have been taken from various sources & edited together. I've been able to isolate the first part of a sentence by setting range start & end markers, but while they cut off the rest of the sentence, it just keeps repeating over & over in the timeline, so again :confused:. Wow, that was a lot more than I expected to cover & sorry if it's a bit much. Again, if anyone out there can explain any of this, it would be more helpful than you can imagine! :happy: Best to everyone! FIREFLY11

Hi, TheLopsidedCowboy, hope you're keeping well & healthy out there. There is actually a much easier method of renaming your main character while the game is in progress. There is this mod https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/2058 that among many awesome things (if you're a fan of cheats :tongue:) will allow you to change your main character's name as well as the name of any character you happen to be controlling if you want. Hope that helps & happy gaming! Best always, FIREFLY11

Hi Yara, thanks so much for the info! :thumbsup: I'll have to try that out when I have an afternoon to devote to it where I won't get interrupted (which could be a little while! :tongue:), but I'll be sure to let you know how things turned out. Thanks again & stay well! Best always, FIREFLY11

Hi to all out there; hope everybody is keeping well & healthy! I've been working on making cutscenes for a while now, and would like to create some scenes in which the character has flashbacks/dreams or where action takes place in more than one area. I've seen the BINK movies in the game, but am not sure how to create one in the Toolset. Also, when watching a CS that includes a bink movie in the Toolset, for some reason it doesn't show it. All you get in the view port is a black screen with "Bink movie [insert name of movie]", so, :confused:. Would the way to create one be to make a cutscene, then change the .cut to .bik when saving, then grab the newly created .bik file from the Toolset's resources & put it into the cutscene in the appropriate place? I'd try this, but I'm afraid of doing something that might result in catastrophe for my game and/or the Toolset. Many thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this! :smile: FIREFLY11

Hey there! This is in response to Jninja98's question. Sorry if it's rather late. :tongue: Among many other awesome things (if you're a fan of cheats), this mod here will allow you to upgrade an item's material for tier 3-7: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/2058. Enjoy! :happy: Best, FIREFLY11

Hi legitmatebusiness! I've been looking into how to alter the starting equipment of NPCs/companions myself and found this helpful tutorial vid on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6qpegG6JYw. It talks about changing armor, but it seems the same principle applies to the other gear and/or abilities as well. So far I haven't had a chance to attempt this yet (life is that little thing that interferes with modding!), but if it made sense to me, then anyone can follow it. :tongue: Good luck w/ the modding & if I manage to get around to doing this in the near future, I'll be sure to let you know how. :thumbsup: Best regards & stay safe out there! FIREFLY11

Hey there, hope everyone out in modding land is keeping safe & well in the midst of the collapse of civilization! I've been working at making some cutscenes & encountered something odd & was hoping somebody might have an answer. When I put my actor's pose in "standing neutral" to give them a more lifelike appearance, they do a quick one-time "flap" of their arms after taking an action. Here's an example: During a scene set in the Landsmeet area, I had Alistair do a small bow while saying "I accept this decision. I will be king, if the Landsmeet will have me." As soon as he finished the bow his arms gave a quick "flap". Imagine having your arms at your sides, then raising them up at the elbows & quickly dropping them. The same thing happened after I had him cross & then uncross his arms later in the scene. Do I need to add key positions & then enable the GAD to fix this perhaps? I had quite a bit of dialogue going on in addition to the animations, but I'm not sure if this would affect anything. Unless I return the actor's pose to "none" this arm flap happens. The curious thing is that when I tried a different setting with the "standing neutral" pose (this time in the camp area) where I had Alistair walk forward, cross & then uncross his arms while speaking a line I didn't get the arm flap, so :confused:. Thanks to anyone who can help! Best always, FIREFLY11

Hey Sky, thanks so much for the info! Wish they'd just let you upload stuff directly, but great to know for next time. :happy: Catch you later! :smile: FIREFLY11