New Games

[PhilSRD]

Hi, Just something that has been bugging me for a while.

 

I'm a complete novice with the toolset but I have always wondered why noone has been able to find the script to get items to appear in the inventory for new characters.

It must be possible since the DLC items do show up, could someone not go through the script for those items to find out how it is done and then publish it?

[DarkeWolf]

the scripts that are currently available don't discern whether the character is brand new, or pre-existing. Many of them being used only check to see if the items have already been given.

Its not the scripts fault that the game has save-game bleed-over and that the scripts can see that they've been given in a different save, so think that they dont have to spawn the items again.

[PhilSRD]

So you're saying that the reason these items don't work on new characters is because it checks all existing saves to see if they have been given or not?

 

If that is the case why don't these item mods work on a game with no pre-existing saves e.g. a fresh install?

[DarkeWolf]

Ok, there is several reasons why some of these mods can not work correctly.

1) is because there's another mod that is throwing a bug into the mix, and accidentally blocking the others from spawning.

This is usually the case of the latter part of your post.

In this particular case, its kind of a pain to track down. You pretty much have to load up all of your mods one at a time, until you find the culprit. Then you have to remember to load that one LAST.

 

2) Save-game bleed-over. This is what I was talking about before. Its where when the game is going thru your addins.xml at load. Its checking flags as it goes thru. Sometimes it says "k, we've loaded this, and this, and this, and we haven't loaded this." Thats where it makes the mistake. Its not the script itself, its the game making the checks where it gets screwed up.

Its not checking ALL the existing savegames (that would take years on some us who have 200+ saves per character). Just the most recent ones that are still cached in the database (I think). Which is why if you create a clean save on all your characters, with the mods not active, you can sometimes get around this bug.

 

Its kinda hard to explain. As we're still trying to figure out some of the causes, and what needs to be done about it. And then of course they went and threw patch 1.03 into the mix, which just made everything worse. which leads me to #3.

 

3) Patch 1.03. Causes bugs bugs bugs and more bugs.

[madd_6233]

I was sure I subdued this bug a couple of months back. That said, I completely had no idea what I did back then, so if you could point me out as to what I should do, I would be grateful. My problem is some missing armors and weapons never did spawn in my inventory. These mods were active when I started a new game. And for some stupid reason, I saved the game, realizing that I have no moded stuffs on my inventory, then quit and disabled those inventory spawned mods. Reload the game and resave. Then reactivated the mods, but when I reloaded, the stuff still hasn't spawn. So did I just do a very terrible mistake?

[DarkeWolf]

Affff... I'm really sorry for not getting back to you on this sooner :sad: Massive apologies!

 

When you did your save, did you do it as a clean save, or did you just write over an old save? You'd need to do it as a clean save, or else it doesnt accomplish anything as the save still has the info in it that the gear was spawned.

 

Also, are you running patch 1.03? Thats causing a lot of problems with this kind of issue.

 

Also, for future reference... when starting up a new character, disable all your mods that dont involve character generation. (hair, eyes, faces, that kinda thing). Including awakening, if you have it. (unless its an awakening character, of course). Dont activate the mods until you've had a chance to get to a savepoint on that character and save the game with no mods running.

 

There is also hdhd's add item console command. http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1131

However, all of the mods that you are having problems with, MIGHT not be listed in his script. (the other modders have to give him permission to add their stuff to his release). In which case, you would have to MANUALLY add those items to his script. Which would involve getting the filenames of the item's .uti files, manually adding it to the script in the toolset, and then compiling it. It also means adding the console to your game, if you havent already. Which is pretty easy to do, there's a link for how to do it on the descption page of his mod.

 

There is also a method where you can edit the items into a savegame thru the toolset. However.... I dont know how to do this. And it also requires knowing what the .uti names are for the items.

 

Finding those names means opening up the .erf files that they are contained in, in the toolset and then lookin thru the list of items that are contained within it.

 

In an extreme case, you can copy all your characters savegames from out of documents/bioware/dragon age/characters and move them all to another location on your hard drive, burn them onto a cd, or save them on a usb drive. Then leave ONLY the clean save for that character in the saves folder. (The saves are store in folders called Slot X. There's a slot for each savegame, and they range from Slot 1 to Slot xxx. The highest number, is your most recent save. So if you've got Slot 1-53 Slot 53 is your most recent).

Then once you've got the mods where they will load, you can just move your other characters and saves back in.

This method sucks because it's a lot of work. but it definitely prevents any bleed-over.

[dragonagefun]

I use a basic working script to add items to a character (new or saved). Well, a new character will just have to hit save & reload.. and the item will appear in the inventory. The item will only be added if it can't find it in your inventory. If its in your inventory, it won't add no matter how many save/reload you try. Of course, if you destroy / sell the item, then it will appear once you reload. I posted the script in another topic here called "Scripting Nightmare". Of course, it requires you to alter the item tag to read the item you're trying to import. Not sure if this helps..