Conversation History Bug

[Jeryn]

I'm not sure how many active modders will see this post or, having said that, how many will actually care about fixing such a relatively minor issue in the game but, seemingly, the Conversation History in my current playthrough is broken and has degraded to the point where entire paragraphs of dialogue have gone missing and are not being recorded to the Journal as they otherwise should be.

I say "current playthrough" because I don't recall this issue being prevalent in any of my earlier runs of the game or, if it was present, I don't remember it being this egregious where massive chunks of text have just, well, vanished from the Journal without explanation. Having said that, this is my first, and so far, only attempt at playing the "Dalish Origin" and so this bug might be entirely confined to this very specific in-game option. Having lost/deleted all my previous saved game files I'm, unfortunately, unable to check or verify that any of those other, previous, playthroughs (like, say, the "City Elf Origin", "Human Mage Origin", or "Human Noble Origin" campaigns) suffered from the same issue...but it's definitely in this one now!

 

Just as an aside -- and I might be entirely misremembering this -- I don't remember noticing this issue in any earlier versions of the game (say, 1.0 through to 1.4)....at least not to the point where I would definitely notice and feel the need to create a petition to have it corrected by some benevolent Modder out there.

Again, I know that this is not a "game-breaking bug" by any definition of the term but, as both an ardent RPG-er and completionist, this, ahem, really bugs me as I like to use the Conversation History as a reminder of previous choices made by my character to keep track of plot and help determine future decisions in the game. And, well, it's just an error that needs fixing, you know? (Definitely the complaint of an OCD perfectionist, I realize).

 

If I was even a little programming savvy I would attempt to fix it myself but...

 

*SHRUGS*

At any rate, any help in regards to fixing this issue would be most appreciative.

Thanks in advance for your time and patience in regards to this specific appeal.

 

P. S. Oh, I should also make mention that I obviously use mods -- even in-game conversation altering ones -- but I have disabled each and every one of those and the problem still persists. I have even run a virgin model of the game (with no active mods) and it's still there....not recording the way it should.

 

P. P. S. Apologies if this issue has been brought up and responded to before.

 

[Jeryn]

So nothing, huh?

 

Is it that nobody has experienced this bug in their game or that nobody cares or knows how to fix it? If people do know what's causing this issue, but can't be bothered, can I get a head's up on how to fix it? I mean, I would have to learn the Dragon Age Toolset from the ground up (which, I'm assuming, is the way to tackle this) but obviously would have to be talked through it a bit as to not screw anything up. Can anybody help with this?

 

Thanks in advance for any responses, or advice, I can get on this year-longish problem that I've had to deal with in my game, as it would be most appreciated.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Jeryn

[Pasquale1223]

To the best of my knowledge and belief, maintenance of the conversation log in the journal is a function provided by the engine, as is management of everything that is kept in save files. I don't think that functionality is exposed to modders - in other words, it isn't something anyone could "fix" unless they were able to modify the engine.

 

I just loaded saves from several different origins - dalish, dwarf noble, human noble - and all of them lose older conversation log entries as the game progresses. There's just too much other information to maintain to keep track of all of that in the save file, so they probably allocate a finite amount of space for conversation log entries, and cycle through that space, writing over older entries as you progress through the game.

 

That leaves you with a couple of options - you can either keep written notes to remind you of your choices, or keep saves you can re-load to look up older conversation logs. Sorry I couldn't offer more help.

[Jeryn]

To the best of my knowledge and belief, maintenance of the conversation log in the journal is a function provided by the engine, as is management of everything that is kept in save files. I don't think that functionality is exposed to modders - in other words, it isn't something anyone could "fix" unless they were able to modify the engine.

 

I just loaded saves from several different origins - dalish, dwarf noble, human noble - and all of them lose older conversation log entries as the game progresses. There's just too much other information to maintain to keep track of all of that in the save file, so they probably allocate a finite amount of space for conversation log entries, and cycle through that space, writing over older entries as you progress through the game.

 

That leaves you with a couple of options - you can either keep written notes to remind you of your choices, or keep saves you can re-load to look up older conversation logs. Sorry I couldn't offer more help.

 

First of all, many thanks for your reply. It is very much appreciated and also very helpful -- not least of which because you provided me with the technical reasons as to why my request couldn't be fulfilled, previously, and why this problem is, seemingly, an unfixable one.

 

I do realize that, as the game progresses, conversation dialogue is lost as more recent game events push the older recorded exchanges further back and, eventually, right off the Conversation History page, but what was strange about my most recent playthroughs is that this occurred right at the beginning of the game -- like, literally, from the first conversation onwards -- where huge chunks of dialogue went missing in the Dalish Elf campaign, right off the bat. I had never had that happen before and wondered if, whatever professional fixes had been applied to the program since I had last played it (somewhere after the 1.4 patch, I think), had, maybe, done something to alter the game by creating some type of "hierarchical coding conflict" that had managed to affect how the in-game dialogue was getting transferred and stored to the Conversation History part of the Journal.

 

Incidentally, the reason why I thought that whatever I was experiencing, in terms of lost dialogue, could be easily fixed and corrected was because I had seen various mods, on this site, that had either added, or altered, conversations within the game in some way and so, naturally, assumed it was all related and easily repairable by an experienced hand. All that was needed, I thought, was to correct a simple "accounting error" where, maybe, some "i"s or "t"s had forgotten to be dotted or crossed, at some point, and so the command wasn't getting input properly, thus resulting in the error that I had been whining about (please realize, I know nothing about programming).

 

Naturally, on this point, I also wondered if, maybe, some of those use-at-your-own-risk mods that I had been using had also "done something" to cause this problem but even after uninstalling all of that user-generated content -- and even the entire game, at one point -- the issue was still present. So....

 

*SHRUGS*

 

And, you're right: an easy solution would be to simply record the dialogue, manually (and I have done exactly that -- taking screenshot after numerous screenshot to remind myself of previous conversations, when needed) but, as you're also obviously aware, Dragon Age: Origins is such a huge, dialogue-heavy, game that it's kind of a hassle if not outright chore to do so. A properly functioning Conversation History tool would be really helpful.

 

By the way, I know you're probably very busy, but if you're really bored and have some free time on your hands, give the Dalish Elf origin a try from the start (not a loaded game) to see if this happens to you (or to anybody else, for that matter, who would be keen on trying it), as well. I'd be curious to see if it's just something that's only happening on my side of the screen or, if I suspect, it's a persistent in-game bug now. Actually, if I'm being honest, I should go and check out the other origin stories, as well, just to see if this bug takes place in any more of them. (Truthfully, I was just so focused on solving this particular in-game problem, for a campaign that I really wanted to play, that I really didn't do my due diligence on the matter and just kind of gave up).

 

Maybe now that you've responded, I'll give that a check -- just to see if this dialogue problem is happening in all of the storylines -- and then report back with my findings.

 

At any rate, thank you, once again, for your response and getting back to me, as I said. It's all very much welcomed, if only to have someone listen to my DA:O-related problems on this matter.

 

Be well and best wishes.

 

Edited July 20, 2023 by Jeryn