[test] materials merger for DAO campaign (requires DAA)

[VGfallout]

hello brothers & sisters

 

requirements, then explanation, cool?

 

if you are not familiar with DAO's overall file structure, or do not have an general idea which one of your mods affects materials from single player campaign etc - this file will certainly conflict with any other file/mod that does. in fact, to be safe.... if a filename has the word "materials" in it, using this may set your computer/hair on FIRE!!!

 

one more thing - this may very well have been done by another uploader (concept/function wise or whatever), though last time i was "active" in the downloads section, it wasn't, regardless, i felt the need to share - as this can only enhance the experience, especially for those using epic/awakening talents etc, this will also work in conjunction with some other "merger" packages i've been cooking up which ill upload as well - once this is confirmed to be working properly - if anyone even bothers to give it a run (i know this 'presentation' isnt very user friendly heh)

 

-retail copy of dragon age origins

-retail copy of dragon age awakening (white steel, volcanic,wood, leather etc)

-retail, digital, whatever copy of wardens keep dlc (starmetal)

-awakening mounted to dao, either by "mounting mods", or your own way of making daa resources accessible (for proper gui icons/text descriptions/ any possible dependencies)

 

DO NOT RUN THIS IN AWAKENING, WILL NOT BREAK GAME - BUT - WILL ALTER MATERIAL STATS, RUN THIS IN D.A.O. ONLY! (recommended, unless you'd prefer "nerfed" armor stats for an higher challenge in daa, but i warned ya so its up to you to give it a run, i didnt test in daa since i no longer have daa installed and only use it as a resource cache)

 

please ;]

 

what this does - integrates all "known materials" into DAO world environment so they are recognized by word's material system, merchants, npcs, items (items with full material progression) scale at default pace of original campaign, except instead of dragon bone (tier 7) being highest, adds,white steel [tier 8], volcanic (tier 9) & starmetal (tier 10)

 

so if you sell something to a merchant and reload/re-enter area or whatever, they'll re-sell tier up the item accordingly, enemy npc loadouts will scale regularly according to dao campaigns presets (if this works properly, next thread will be for maxlevel/map config made to work in conjunction with this)

 

how it's balanced - tried to emulate biowares multipliers as best as possible, let's PRETEND...

 

(made-up values just for example)

 

red steel is 1.5 armor / 1.4 armor penetration

silverite is 1.6 armor / 1.5 armor penetration

dragon bone 1.7 armor / 1.6 armor penetration

 

i tried to keep going at the same pace....

 

white steel 1.8 armor / 1.7 armor penetration

white steel 1.9 armor / etc etc etc

 

additional entries were created for

 

Starmetal Armor

Starmetal Shield

Starmetal Weapon (all parented by original starmetal material from DLC, ref. #10000)

 

so...

 

if you're level one and walk up to lothering, bandits will use gray iron crap/low level equipment

 

if you get there mid level, might use dragon bone/white steel/volcanic

if you're high level, might use starmetal, etc - can't remember default dao config

 

if all is well here, i'll share the next part - just need to know this works as i'd like it to first, which is where you beautiful people come in :]

 

files included

 

TS_Material.GDA

materialtypes.GDA

materialrules.GDA

 

ANYTHING that uses/modifies these files will conflict - and several popular mods do, so if it's not working - check your override directory and especially your addins/mod list or their source files to see which may be causing erroneous behavior - assuming you wish to prioritize the effects of this package over the "mod in question" 's effects

 

these use the default names/id/string/everything as the originals, they will integrate into the DAO campaign painlessly/seamlessly

chose starmetal as final tier...since..well come on, "starmetal" - so heavy sounding, galactic - ooooh woooow. so i went ahead and added wep/shield/armor settings closest to bethesda that i could

 

here's a few screenshots of the two merchants in denerim (the max level of tier an merchant can upgrade is determined to the merchant/vendor files, so if they dont "max out", its the merchants fault, not yours or the packages')

 

Gorim the dwarf merchant

Cesar the antivan weirdo merchant

 

veteran_gamer standing nude under the moonlight covered in blood

 

bahahah, had to do it, k back to business

hope to get some useful feedback

 

 

STUFF THAT SHOULD PROBABLY BE MENTIONED

 

initially took the string name reference ID (only) from gold material GDA found in improved atmosphere - but simply could not stand the "party gold" label - so its been removed (would have been tier 8 ), "Party gold" as you can see in the screenshots (not the nude one) wont be there, so dont get confused cause of screenshot :]

 

big thanks to sir nezroy for spotting "item 52", high five buddy!

 

hopefully everything works perfectly so i can lay this down & pump out the rest of this kinda stuff, one by one though yeah?

hope this rewards users as much as it has rewarded me by makin the game just a tiiiiny bit better :]

 

installation - dump into override - enjoy life ;]

uninstallation - remove from override, persecute uploader

 

p.s. had custom tint files originally set to my taste, however - with the mighty tint kit recently unleashed, i figure you guys can set it to whatcha want, yea? (cannot confirm that this will be 100% compatible with nezroy's beast, but have tested it on previous "versions" of the topics package, all seemed to work fine - so long as 'personal/desired' overrides were....in the override folder)

 

 

thanks kaerar, feedback was exactly what i needed - if any moderator sees this, please feel free to lock at any time, served it's purpose with flying colors & all is well here, thanks!

Edited July 26, 2010 by veteran_gamer

[Kaerar]

Excellent work my friend. I was looking for a mod that brough DA:O inline with Awakenings materials. I always got the feeling that Dragonbone was not quite the final tint and tbh it looked crap too!

 

I agree on the party gold thing too. Very frustrating when everything else about IA is very good. Will give it a try, does it conflict with IA though?

 

Are you planning on converting the items from Awakening too?

 

Just gone through your GDA and the stats for Tier 8 Leather are out. Looks like Tier 8 has been put in the Tier 9 row and the Tier 8 is at default (or just the first column's wrong).

Edited July 16, 2010 by Kaerar

[VGfallout]

hey there, thanks for your time & feedback

 

about IA compatibility - not quite sure, as these are like a "core" override to the material system, i think i remember IA only change specific entries.. tell you what - i will download latest version as i revise the charts for what you mentioned

 

what you mentioned - im looking through these as we speak, can't seem to locate the specific mix-up, would really appreciate if you could point it out if you happen to read this within the next few hours

 

i had to modify certain tint assignments, and remove certain other edits so that it would be "universally" compatible and not the same as my version which is super-tweaked and constantly adjusted, i apologize for making this error was nearly positive all was good, am checking now and will also check if this plays well with IA

 

thnaks

[Kaerar]

The error was in the materialrules.GDA. The leather armours didn't scale correctly after Tier 7. They sort of jumped or didn't change. Was weird. Could be my mistake though ;)

 

I am confused by the linear method used in the game for progression. It makes for a weird experience. A more exponential method would be far more fun though it makes adding Tier's very hard. With it being linear though it's just well linear...

 

Sorry I digressed, rant over ;)

[VGfallout]

dude if that's what you call a rant.....ahah. trust me, that was nothin :P

 

 

ah yes, found 1 entry that was off, for armor leather, i skipped a block by accident most likely during my "reverting" to universal settings

the idea behind this, is to run it in along with an npc level cap augmenter, as well as modified enemy npc loadouts, as well as a much quicker leveling system

 

this is so that any user that has daa mounted will be able to reach "epic feats." and start the "epic talent" progression about halfway through the game

it seems nearly unavoidable for the player to become somewhat "invulnerable" with Default values, no matter how high the enemy level is...

 

challenge factor around level 25-30 becomes laughable (in dao campaign+epic talents+default material super-stats)

so, my goal here friend, is to have enemy npcs using equipment that is capable of damaging even some of the toughest loadouts (of course people ahve their toolset "god items" heheh), while making them use epic talents against you as well

 

this si controlled within the ai packages

 

so an npc with 1.9 arm penetration vs. your lets say 2.15 resistance, plus his attribute modifiers, in conjunction with lets say....riposte, twin strikes & punisher, is certainly going to draw the players attention. npcs are so awesome when this is implemented, imagine a darkspawn rouge stealthed, using flicker against your party haha, glorious

 

or when you gang up against an dspawn alpha and your team "sorrounds him with more than two enemies aka two of your party", have em two handed sweep, etc

now i'm jumping 300 steps ahead of what we're doing here lol

 

in other words, what im tryin to say is that this is a small piece of many, that will all eventually work together...and this thread here is meant for ..well...feedback as you have provided, part of a checklist so to speak, once this is good to go, i put it in the vault, and get the next one out, etc etc

 

until there's enough for a "base"....which i am hoping to build upon rapidly once everything has -blended together in harmony-, its just hard when you work on 50 differnt things, in 5 months it feels like ive accomplished 2.5 goals heheh

i could go on for a few thousand more words, but ill go ahead and silence myself now ;]

 

i will upload the fixed one tonight, or tomorrow, i am DYING to get some game time in today

 

thank you i fixed leathr entry, it skipped one over as you said, well done, 1 typo/mixup = death with these gdas

very appreciated, will upload update very soon (dont want to upload now without fully testing)

 

5 bucks to your paypal if you read all that without bleedin from eyes ;]

[Kaerar]

Right I need to activate my paypal ;)

 

No probs, I was just looking through to compare and found it by accident as I was comparing it to the Hardened Gold of IA. As I was looking at it, due to the unique ID's it shouldn't affect Hardened Gold anyway (material ID 22 I believe) as it's not in the same ranges.

 

I like your ideas with the combat tweaks for the enemy. Comparing it to Combat Tweaks 3.23 and Dragon Age Overhaul 0.93a what you want to do is basically a merger and evolution of those two mods. Might save you a lot of work checking those vs your ideas ;)

Hell I've been wanting to have the combat damage system from DA Overhaul compatible with CT since I started to use CT. CT isn't developed any more though, and Overhaul isn't either (to my knowledge). Good bases to work from though. Also with the Damage progression I was thinking of altering it to be more noticeable as with the current setup all a lvl 6 weapon does is about 20% more damage than a lvl 3 weapon (well that's what it feels like ingame, though it's inaccurate ;) ). I have always found the DnD differentiation of damage too minimal. It's all well and good working with a bucket load of decimal places behind the scenes, but why not work with tens instead of .1's? doesn't makes sense to me ;)

 

Oh the other thing is the injuries. Why do they happen only when you die? I think it would be cool to implement a %chance of receiving an injury when the target gets hit by a critical. This would make those Injury kits much more useful and well used outside of Ostagar ;)

[VGfallout]

excellent ideas, yes. yes.

 

good.

 

i had no idea those other mods existed, i'm going to download them immediately my friend

 

and you know what - instead of playing it safe with decimals etc, staying true to original scaling, why not increase the multipliers by .5, or 1, you're right

just cause the original scales the way it does, doesnt mean its right, yes, yes dude.

 

damage for higher tiers will be far greater - but at higher levels it wouldnt be overwhelming, yeah, im gonna bvackup what i got now, and start tweaking away

 

i wish i woulda known about the combat tweaks packages, ive spent easily over 30 hours (over time) working with the ai charts, haha, damn. i will check these out to see if i can indeed get any usage out of them, or at least use them as a better template

the default AI packages are SO dry & empty. maybe they can save me time with user preset tactics (archer, scrapper, healer etc), cause i've also poured a few dozen hours of actual 'editage' into those, while essential they are annoyingly time consuming and it can become a bit tedius configuring them while 20 other things on your mind

 

good man you are.

cracks knuckles

 

lets take a look

[Kaerar]

Well if you need a hand mate I am willing to get into modding this game properly as I see it as a hugely squandered opportunity by BioWare.

 

Currently having a chat with Jonpetro (Slinks random item generator maker) about creating Borderlands (and NWN) style weapons for the enemy so you don't just see one of about 8 sword or axe types for the entire game. Splitting the weapon model into component parts will allow for much more and even allow for different parts to add different default buffs/debuffs to the weapon.

 

Also something you should take a look at is the Flash Creatures Rescale mod (FCR for short). That tiers enemies across the game so as you level you'll find darkspawn are always a pain, soldiers less so and wolves while still damaging don't offer much of a problem unless in a pack. Also makes things like Revenants, Dragons and other major bosses (NOT humans!!!) truly terrifying, as they should be. You see a dragon you should be crapping your pants and only win by the skin of your teeth :biggrin:

 

CT also makes Archery deadly. Leave the archers as per the original game and you'll find yourself dead very fast. At the same time it's not overpowered and allows for some very very interesting tactics. Make everyone archers and you'll die just as fast as an all warrior group ;)