Need help creating standalone mod for DAO

[Lusyydia]

Hello there!

 

I'm new, therefore - introductions are in order.

 

I'm Lu. Completely new to DAO, well - I've played a few runthroughs, but I just downloaded it when it was free on Origin.

I've run into a problem.

 

I think everyone wants to modify the textures of their favorite armor at some point. I know I've reached that point.

 

My favorite race/gender combination is Elf/male and I realized that there are not many good looking armor mods for that combination out there, especially not for mages. Females get all the attention, which is all right, I just don't want to start a female just to benefit from all those beautiful armor mods out there.

 

So I decided to create my own, using the male apprentice robe as the base.

 

I'm a total beginner at modding, really...

So I searched the internet, downloaded a few tools (DAtool and the DA normal map conversion tool here on Nexus mods being the most helpful ones, as well as the toolset,) read through a LOT of instructions and began my journey.

 

So far I've managed to create a diffuse, normal and specular map. With the help of DAtool and instructions by it's creator, I managed to create and modify a separate *.mao and *.mmh file, referencing the new, modified, textures. Placed them all in one, separate folder on my desktop and stared at them for a while.

 

Placing it in the override folder won't do anything, since the names are different from the base model of the male apprentice robe, and I don't want to change all apprentice robes in the game by renaming the files (and modifying the mao and mmh files accordingly) back to the original. I just want the item to spawn in my inventory.

 

I'm really, absolutely, new to modding. So if I read instructions that say... "put all files in the toolset..." I would stare at that and say "which files exactly?" Simply because I really don't want to do anything wrong and corrupt the game.

 

I'm sorry for that.

 

I know that DAO is an old game and most people are probably off playing Inquisition right now, I still hope that there is someone out there willing to give me a helping hand.

 

Thank you so much.

 

Lu.

 

[theskymoves]

You also need a GDA that 'adds' a new Item Variation for the custom item, in order to use it in the toolset. (To avoid conflicts with existing items, check out Valerie1972's Item Variation ID spreadsheet... it's not comprehensive, but it's currently the best publicly available resource for that information.)

 

More to the point, I've made a lot of retextured, standalone items for my game, using information gleaned from various tutorials and the toolset wiki. Some things I have bookmarked regarding custom and standalone items are:

Retexturing a Armor without Replacing it

Custom Player Items In Single Player

StandAlone

Dragon Age Modding - Retexturing armour

 

I also recommend the general tutorials on Beyond Ferelden, and the wealth of information (and knowledgeable, helpful people) at the toolset forum at BSN.

[Lusyydia]

THank you so much! That was exactly what I was looking for.

 

I' ve also found a video online about creating the *.gda file, but even though the script appears to work flawlessly (It greets me with a happy "Success!" at the end) it does not produce a *.gda file, however.

 

It's my very first attempt so it wouldn't surprise me if I did something wrong. I'll check out the resources linked in your post and try again, and again until it works!

 

Thank you again for digging those up. Much appreciated.

 

Lu

[theskymoves]

When I'm modding for myself, I usually just rename and edit a copy of the base-game GDA for the item class with GDApp.

 

When I do compile a GDA from an Excel spreadsheet, I follow the steps on the toolset wiki which mostly work for me, apart from the GDA never appearing in the folder with the ExcelProcessor.exe, and instead being dumped to somewhere on my C: drive. *sigh*