Grey screenshots in game menus

[Herk]

Hello

For a non-negligible number of people playing Dragon Age, as myself, the pictures in the game menus are replaced by a grey rectangle, like this :

 

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/8721/dagreyscreenshotssaveme.jpg

 

http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/8938/dagreyscreenshotsscreen.jpg

 

Although, they appear correctly in the Dragon Age folder under Windows. The reason is the spelling of the name of the user session : if it contains some non-english characters (like accents), the screenshots will appear grey in game. It seems the game then cannot read them correctly in the screenshots folder.

 

My Windows session name has an accent ; I checked with another session which name only holds "regular" characters, and the screenshots indeed appear correctly.

 

I didn't find a solution to have the pictures displayed correctly in the game menus. There are only some workarounds, like changing the location of "My documents", changing user name...

 

Does somebody have been able to find a solution ?

[Balagor]

Some questions:

1. Do you have Windows in French?

2. Is it only you, or is it a common issue in the French version?

[ThingTheWiz]

My windows 7 is French but DA:O and Awakenings are both english language versions. Apart from the well-recorded keyboard mapping issues (english version assumes US keyboard - how racist!) I am encountering no problems of the sort mentioned.

 

Hope this helps to eliminate some potential problem sources for you

 

:biggrin:

Good Luck!

[DarkeWolf]

dragon age disk 2 has the multiple languages on it. the answer may lie there. It sounds like the game isnt translating the filenames correctly, and thus, isnt able to read/display them. In other words, the unrecognized symbols are throwing it for a loop.

Tho I will also say that if you are only patched to 1.02 you will need to switch from patch 1.02a to patch 1.02b if you reinstall with the additional languages. As 1.02a is meant for the english version and b is meant for the additional languages version.

 

Also, unless you have awakening installed, dont patch to 1.03, it has massive issues which havent been fixed yet. Bioware no longer has 1.02 on their servers, but you can find it easily enough in the search engine of your choice, just google/yahoo/bing/ dragon age patch 1.02b

[Herk]

Balagor wrote:

1. Do you have Windows in French?

2. Is it only you, or is it a common issue in the French version?

 

1. Yes I have

2. From the testimonies I've gathered around several forums, no, it is not limited to the french version. Other non-english versions have also this problem, and it seems some english people also encounter this issue if they have a non-english character in their Windows usernames.

 

ThingTheWiz wrote:

My windows 7 is French but DA:O and Awakenings are both english language versions. Apart from the well-recorded keyboard mapping issues (english version assumes US keyboard - how racist!) I am encountering no problems of the sort mentioned.

Hope this helps to eliminate some potential problem sources for you

 

Thanks for your contribution. Do you have a Windows username containing an accent, a cedilla, or something like that ?

 

DarkeWolf wrote:

dragon age disk 2 has the multiple languages on it. the answer may lie there. It sounds like the game isnt translating the filenames correctly, and thus, isnt able to read/display them. In other words, the unrecognized symbols are throwing it for a loop.

Tho I will also say that if you are only patched to 1.02 you will need to switch from patch 1.02a to patch 1.02b if you reinstall with the additional languages. As 1.02a is meant for the english version and b is meant for the additional languages version.

Very interesting theory. Could I ask two questions then:

- As I already play Dragon Age in french, and as I encountered this problem with 1.01, 1.02a and 1.03 patches, doesn't this mean the installation has been made with the additional languages yet ?

- From what I've read, the 1.02b patch isn't intended for the PC version of the game. Do you play on PC with that patch ?

 

DarkeWolf also wrote: Also, unless you have awakening installed, dont patch to 1.03, it has massive issues which havent been fixed yet. Bioware no longer has 1.02 on their servers, but you can find it easily enough in the search engine of your choice, just google/yahoo/bing/ dragon age patch 1.02b

I know of the massive issues of 1.03, and I rolled back to 1.02a for that reason. I will download, and install if I can, patch 1.02b, and report the result here. Thank you very much for your answer.

[DarkeWolf]

The linguistics are on the second disk, not in any of the patches. The patches only offer support for those other languages (such as having dialogs in french).

 

Hmmmm. So, you're saying that its the USERNAME that is screwing up the mix? That could make sense, as the directory structure of anything after winxp is all listed under USER/Documents.

 

I dont know if this would work or not, but its worth a try. Create a new user account on the computer, one without any special characters. Something like Joe, or whatever.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.microsoft.com%2Fkb%2F279783&ei=NXXTS_mGNI3UsgPU8_TwCQ&usg=AFQjCNFM3S8jmSBDECQVBYCuNKhrpo1RtQ XP

 

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lockergnome.com%2Fwindows%2F2006%2F12%2F05%2Fcreate-a-new-user-account-in-vista%2F&ei=VnXTS6K8G4WIswOdoYHeCQ&usg=AFQjCNEakr0dxfoPymu0O1VlMrjIrel8KQ VISTA

 

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial153.html WINDOWS 7

 

Then try playing the game on the new user. You MIGHT have to copy over the screenshots folder, savegame folders and whatnot from the other user account tho (dunno). If so, log in on that account, copy those files to disk, or usb drive, whatever, and then change users and add them into the user/documents/bioware/dragon age folders for the new user.

 

I dont know if this would work or not, but its worth a try, I guess.

 

No problem, I hope that you get it working! :smile:

 

 

Oh! And to quickly switch user accounts, click on the windows icon or press the windows key on the keyboard. It will be in the shutdown/log off options.

[Herk]

I already know how to create a user account, and I tested this workaround some time ago, and indeed it works: the pictures appear correctly in game then. Another workaround is to move the "My documents" onto another location which isn't in the user folder. Thank you all the same DarkeWolf.

 

Regarding the 1.02b patch, I didn't find one: there are a lot of results when searching, but all these patches appear to be eventually the 1.01b patch or 1.02 or something else potentially dangerous.