Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

[dmg22]

Hi,

Thanks for looking, I must have confused it with something else.

"Please hold on to the save game prior to this, as I'm going to ask you to do a quick test on it when v3.1 comes out."

Sure, no problem.

---

A couple of minor things....

Summoning Sciences quest

-No sound effect when clicking on the statue of Magus Gorvish.

-Scrap of Paper, on shelf in First Enchanter Irving's office = Codex entry: Circles Within Circles, doesn't give XP.

-First Enchanter's Journal, on desk in First Enchanter Irving's office = Codex entry: Irving's Mistake, doesn't give XP.

-I'm pretty sure, Codex entry: Extracurricular Studies - Templar Quarters, didn't either. But this one is a bit different because it has multiple placeables/entries.

Cheers

[Totalbalance]

Actually, this is a potential dilemma. Unless DA2 is smart enough to check for the original conditions of Isolde's slide playing, then Isolde's slide should *never* play, even if Connor died, because she only has one slide and she dies in it. Do I just retract my fix? Or do I do the additional fix of making Isolde's slide never play? Or does DA2 also check if Connor died, which means Isolde inevitably dies too? The Wiki just says "if Isolde survived" she'll appear in DA2, but I don't know if that just means survived the demon plot, or survived both the demon plot and the epilogue.

I did some research, and Isolde will indeed appear in DA2 even if you got the death-by-childbirth epilogue.

I wouldn’t worry too much about continuity in the epilogues, though. Bioware’s stance on them is that they are considered to be “rumours”, and if they feel the need to ignore them they will. Most of the things that happen in the slides are never referred to again. Most notably, Cullen’s slides where he goes crazy and murders some apprentices is completely ignored in the next two games. Same with Harrowmont being assassinated. Only a few of them actually acknowledged, like Morrigan being in Celene’s court or Alistair becoming a drunk.

Anyway, onto the good stuff:

• An update on the dark ritual music thing: Uninstalling the fixpack causes the music to play as it should, so it seems to be what’s causing it after all.
  

• I decided to play through the landsmeet again to see the various options and found this: If you fail to convince a hardened Alistair and Anora to marry and then choose Alistair he’ll say his unhardened line (“This is where I wake up, usually. Or everyone points and laughs because I have no clothes on…”) rather than his hardened line (“And I accept that decision.”) It’s also very likely that the same thing will happen if Alistair / Anora refuses to marry the human noble player (haven’t tested).
  

• Also during the landsmeet: When asking Alistair questions before making your decision, the various questions will disappear and reappear willy nilly. With Anora the conversation is a lot less confusing, with the options disappearing after you’ve asked them.
  

• Also, this lore error in one of the last epilogue slides was listed on the wiki. Not sure if it’s within the scope of this mod, but it would be incredibly easy to fix:
  

“These war bands spread havoc, and some even journeyed west into Orlais or crossed the Shining Sea by the Deep Roads. They proved incredibly difficult to wipe out.”

Note: The Shining Sea does not exist in Thedas. The name was likely changed to the Waking Sea later in development.

[Qwinn]

I did some research, and Isolde will indeed appear in DA2 even if you got the death-by-childbirth epilogue.

Thank you for doing that! Very appreciated. Your further points are acknowledged. I will leave it as it currently is, which, no change from vanilla as to whether her slide plays, except that you get Connor OR Isolde's epilogue if Eamon remains in Denerim to advise Alistair, not just if he returns to Redcliffe. In either case though, Isolde's slide will not play if both her and Connor were saved, as in vanilla. I saw no sense (and still don't) in their epilogues not playing based on that condition. If someone can advance a theory as to why that would cause their fates to play out differently (and because you actually believe it, heh, not just for the sake of argument please), do share.

 

An update on the dark ritual music thing: Uninstalling the fixpack causes the music to play as it should, so it seems to be what’s causing it after all.

Crap. Crap crap crap. After a couple hours of working the problem, I finally nailed it down. It's the new .fsb /.fev files I generate to be able to edit "the future king of Ferelden" line out if Alistair isn't king. Actually, specifically, it's just the .fev file. If I get rid of that, the music plays properly, but then the new no-king line isn't voiced. I just tried recreating those files a different, simpler way but nope. And I have no idea how to get around it.

 

Anyone worked with music and .fsb's that knows how to not lose it when redoing voiceovers?

[sialivi]

Varathorn's Armor, that you can get as a quest reward for "Rare Ironbark", is made out of Silverite rather than Ironbark. The item description refers to the armor as being metal, yet also mentions that the scales are carved.

Edited July 1, 2017 by sialivi

[Qwinn]

So I worked out how to add music into a cutscene, and theoretically if I could *find* the music that plays during this conversation, I could insert it into the cutscene on the first line and hopefully get it to play beyond that cutscene, as that's supposed to be possible.

 

The problems:

 

1) I have no idea which sound file it is. It seems pretty generic, not specific to the ritual. If anyone knows another place in game where that specific music plays, it might allow me to track it down.

2) It bugs me that I'm not seeing that music already set up in the cutscene. Reading the toolset wiki, that's generally how they do switch music in dialogue. But looking at the first few lines of that conversation in morrigan_main.dlg, I can see *nothing* that looks like it could be starting new music. If I could find some way of identifying how the music is being told to start, I could try extracting all those sound files from the related .fsb's and having them available in /packages/core/override when I rebuild the new morrigan_main.fsb / .fev, which might solve the problem. But I see no hint anywhere in morrigan_main.dlg in the toolset of anything that could trigger that new music to play. Very frustrating.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

So I was able to ascertain by looking at the original .fev file that it's there that the music is being set to play. I see the reference to the first cutscene in that dialogue that must trigger the music, but I can't see a readable reference to the music file itself. Extracting the .wavs from the .fsb doesn't extract the music, only the dialogue. Unfortunately, without the original .fdp used to create that .fsb and .fev, I can't see the music reference.

 

If I could find the music file (already failed after 2.5 hours) I *might* have a shot at adding it in a different way, might not. Depends.

 

So, it looks like it's got to be a tradeoff unfortunately :( Is the cure worse than the disease? The same issue should have affected my fixpack v2.0 and any other mod that modifies dialogue lines.

 

Anyone got a save game with a mod that edits Morrigan's dialogue lines like I do to verify it's unavoidable?

 

If it were a trivial fix I'd just retract it, but I've always considered the Alistair-Isn't-King-Damnit fixes pretty important.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Qwinn

[sialivi]

I tried to hear which music is supposed to play during that scene, but had to rely on a crappy youtube video so I couldn't hear it very well since I can't disable the dialogue. From the fragments I could pick up it sounds a bit like DA_m_pre_kwilds_a_04.wav.mp3 or one of the other kwilds files.

[Qwinn]

Awesome find sialivi! I think you're absolutely right, it definitely sounds like one of the da_m_pre_kwilds files, though yeah, it's hard to tell which one. I can listen to the original by force loading without my mod and turning the dialogue all the way down and the music all the way up in game, and even then it's hard, but frankly all those clips sound so much alike, any of 'em would do as a replacement.

 

I'm first going to see if I can't get it actually working in the .fev... create the build and then add it as an event the way it must've been done originally. Wish me luck!

 

EDIT: I actually think it's more than one file spliced together. The only one I've been able to definitively confirm is in there is DA_m_pre_kwilds_a_03.wav.mp3. The other 3 kwilds ones, I haven't nailed down yet. What makes it harder is it doesn't always seem to start at the same spot. I don't know if they spliced a bunch of 'em together or if there's a way to concatenate them within the .fev.. I think first I'll see if I can get the _a_03 working by itself, and if I can succeed in that, then I'll work on identifying and adding the rest.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Qwinn

[Pinjanna]

Qwinn, Bioware did release most of the source files. Maybe check if what you need is there: http://social.bioware.com/project/1331/

Edited July 1, 2017 by Pinjanna

[Qwinn]

Thanks for that, Pinjanna. Good find and I may need something from there someday, but unfortunately it's not helping with this. I happily downloaded the .fdp pack there, but it just got me more confused - the morrigan_main.fdp file there is 1/10th the size of the morrigan_main.fdp I get when I generate voiceovers. It generates 4 errors about missing files if I try to open it, but it will open successfully. It *does* have 3 events that I am sure are tied to music (with one being 235832, the first line of the Dark Ritual, the other 2 are both conversations that start in the Wilds, so I guess the music is missing from there too, sigh). But I can't figure anything out from the way they're set up, and it doesn't give me the actual sound file either.

 

There's one piece of good news in this: looking at the original alistair_main.fev file in a text editor, I'm not seeing any of the signs I see in Morrigan's that would indicate that Alistair's dialogue ever uses this technique for adding music. So the sound changes to HIS file, at this point, shouldn't be causing any problems. Also checked Sarel and Lanaya's dialogues that I tweak and no apparent music issues there either. It's just Morrigan, and it's just for two crummy lines with king references in them. One of those two lines will pretty much always come up though (one is for male wardens, the other for females).

 

And unfortunately, without some serious guidance on how to go about this by someone who's previously worked with FMOD, I have no idea how to resolve the problem. Even with having some appropriate music files to work with (thanks again, sialivi), even if I managed the currently rather baffling task of either adding the music as a second layer to Morrigan's DR starting dialogue line, or added the music as a separate sound and added it to the starting cutscene... how the heck would it replace the general Redcliffe Castle area music? That's a showstopper for me. I have no idea how to get around that. Far as I can tell, both musics would overlap.

 

So... which is worse? Hearing Morrigan refer to King Alistair in 1 line when he isn't king, or losing 3 pieces of music, 2 in the Wilds and 1 in the DR conversation? The crappy part of it is that for people who DO make Alsitair king, it's all downside, no upside :sad: And if I *do* retract that fix, it's going to mean I have to redo every fix I do to Morrigan's file from scratch. UGH. Thank God I take good notes, but still..........

Edited July 1, 2017 by Qwinn