New Party Picker for Awakening

[rosvitacousland]

I want to have another follower in Awakening.

 

In the basic tutorial of the Toolset Wiki, which is concerning followers for DAO but not for Awakening - as far as I could see - I found the information to duplicate the vanilla file into the Toolset, which should overlay the original party picker in game.

 

The problem is, that the Toolset only has got the DAO resources, not the Awakening resources. So I only could duplicate the file: char_stage.are

 

Now to my question: Would it work...

 

1. to duplicate the file of DAO: char_stage.are

2. to rename it with the name of the party file of Awakening, which would be gxa_char_stage.are

3. to rename the followers of the DAO file duplicate with the names of the followers of Awakening (and one of them with my own follower's name)

4. to replace the original coordinates of the DAO file duplicate with the original coordinates of the followers of Awakening from the original file of Awakening

5. to export the file under its new name (the Awakening name)

 

Or do I have to do something additional? Or would all this be completely wrong?

[Taylor17387]

I see you asked me about this in the last PM but might as well answer here. The process you described would result in a complete override of the picker area. Most likely you wont need to care about the original coordinates and just place the characters whereever you see fit. You wont need to care about the MODULE_GETCHARSTAGE script from the tutorial. The bad thing is that your mod will be incompatible with any other mod which adds followers to Awakening.

 

I dont know how will work the overlay approach of the tutorial using a DAO area on top of the DAA one. Maybe you wont need to add the Awakening characters, if the original area is still seen below. There are instructions in the wiki to use area layouts from Awakening in the toolset. If you manage to make it work so the DAO area looks like the Awakening one, the results will be better. Might be worthy to give it a try, since it would ensure compatibility.

[rosvitacousland]

Hi Taylor!

 

Thank you for your kind further hints! I've read your PM, many thanks! I thought, that maybe in addition I could still get further hints here on the forum maybe from other modders who are interested in making followers.

 

I guess, the problem is, that I cannot place the characters whereever I want, because this would be places in the DAO party picker (which I only can open with the Toolset) and not in the Awakening party picker.

 

I want my mod to be compatible with other mods in Awakening. I tried to get some areas of Awakening into the Toolset as described in the Wiki - unfortunately it doesn't work for me. Maybe I did something wrong or you mean another source. This is the source of the Wiki I have been using:

 

https://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Using_DLC_areas_in_your_mods_tutorial

 

By the way, I am not sure, whether I understood you right: Shall I make an Awakening party picker only with my new follower? Would this overlay the existing party picker with all the other followers so that I would get a kind of seen combination?

[Taylor17387]

If youre overriding Awakening's party picker I dont think that using the DAO area with its coordinates will matter. That resource wont be used by the main campaign, so in theory, there shouldnt be any conflict. But perhaps someone more knowledgeable will pop up in the forum and confirm this.

 

That was the tutorial I meant. It's for importing Awakening area layouts (decoration, appearance etc.), not for importing the actual area. You'd still be using the DAO area, but with the appearance of DAA area.

As for the overlay, if that method allows compatibility with other mods which add more followers, it must be because you can "see" the other overlays as well, and presumably, also the original area. If not, I dont understand how it would be better than the override method. Theres this old thread, where it was discussed the pros of overlay against override:https://forum.bioware.com/topic/86284-solved-followers-questions-about-char-stage/

 

One of the posters says that its possible to overlay the original area with one which has a different layout. So maybe you dont even need to give your area the Awakenings appearance.