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

[Qwinn]

Um, wow. Kinda a major find here.

 

A bug I found based on reports in the wiki is that, when you save either the Denerim Market district or the Alienaga, upon traveling to the second location you'd get a journal entry saying that the other district was destroyed. This is attributed to a journal bug, but I actually think the bug is that you are allowed to save both. Based on what I'm seeing in the code, it was DEFINITELY the intent at one point that you could only save one of the districts... whether being able to save both was changed deliberately later on, or it's just a bug that you can, is the open question.

 

I'm going to do more research, try things out in different order, and see if I find anything that can confirm that question one way or the other..

 

EDIT: Alright, this isn't a firm decision yet, but for the time being I'm not going to change the fact that you can save both, I'll just stop erroneous journal entries. My biggest reason for this is that the two areas are not even remotely equal - the Alienage is FAR more developed than the Market district at this stage. The Market just has a number of mobs and a general. The Alienage has Shianni with dialogue and a reward with a huge xp bonus, the bridge cutscene, fleeing elves, the works. If you're forced to do one or the other, it's pretty much a no brainer that it should be the Alienage, and I hate the idea of forcing a choice-that-isn't-really-a-choice that no one would enjoy being forced to make anyway. If there were a real tradeoff between the two areas, I'd be more inclined to pursue this, but as it is, all that choice would seem to do is eliminate a little bit of combat content, and that's it. There might be more info by the end that changes my mind, but for now, that's the way I'm leaning.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Man, figuring out what to do with the Final Battle is giving me headaches. One thing I noted is that you can clear the market, then go straight to the palace district, and if you just turn around and exit, it still allows you to go back to the alienage. I would've thought at that point it was too late - especially given how the journal entries tell you those districts get overrun even *before* you reach the Palace. It's very very hard to glean what the intent here is, because they clearly had an original plan that they changed at some point in development, but there's bits of the original plan still lurking around to confuse things.

 

In terms of whether the Market or the Alienage ever *should* be overrun/destroyed, the thing is, as far as I can tell, even if you skip both generals they don't show up for the Archdemon fight (even though the "overrun" journal entries say "Perhaps the general will show up later". They *are* in the Fort Drakon roof area, so it's obvious that at some point they were intended (as Riordan tells you) to be summoned by the archdemon if you didn't kill them first. But I'm not seeing that they ever get activated. Both the Wiki and the Prima Guide tell you to kill them so they don't show up later (possibly only based on what Riordan says and those journal entries), but nowhere can I find confirmation that they *actually do* appear if you don't kill them, and if so, I can't find the code that would activate them. Has anyone reading this ever seen them at the final fight?

 

Now, if I were to decide that they should show up if you don't kill them, my activating them could make the final fight a LOT harder, the Alienage general in particular is brutal, and the Archdemon fight is tough enough on nightmare. But there's no way for me to know (so far, anyway) if their never being activated was an oversight or intended in order to keep the difficulty balanced.

 

So. What to do here? Ugh. At this point I'm just leaning toward fixing the journal entries, not making any changes to when the market and alienage are accessible (so basically, the Market and Alienage are never overrun...) and just moving on. I'm just irritated at not knowing for sure that I'm leaving something unfixed that *should* be fixed., and it annoys me that Riordan and the journal both say the generals will help the archdemon, yet leaving it that they don't (or at least, I think they don't).

Edited May 7, 2017 by Qwinn

[AdenYeshua]

My 2 cents. If it was really not intended to save both that would be a major bug. It would have gotten patched in one of the updates. At some point someone from Bioware played it and was presumably happy with the result...

 

As far as I'm considered though personally I like the idea that my amassed assets and army during the entire game meant something. If I started losing the city even after I was there to defend it would feel cheap. Kinda like being told that no matter what you have to lose something no matter how hard you train, prepare, or plan in Mass Effect 2 (at the end). It take away from the overall satisfaction you get at the end.

[Qwinn]

"My 2 cents. If it was really not intended to save both that would be a major bug. It would have gotten patched in one of the updates. At some point someone from Bioware played it and was presumably happy with the result..."

 

Considering the last 56 pages worth of bugs I've fixed, some of which I'd actually consider more major than this, I don't think this can be assumed. I've fixed bugs that actually prevent the game from being able to be finished, or that can cause you to lose all of your equipment - this is trivial compared to those. The number of plot bugs fixed by patches was pretty small - the patches seemed to focus on gameplay bugs like the Rules fixpacks do, not the kinds of bugs I'm addressing.

 

That said - I was wrong! The generals DO show up to help the archdemon if you don't kill them (this happens in the archdemon creature script). So - good! At least I don't have to worry about anything I change unbalancing the fight in an unintended way.

 

So. At this point, I intend on leaving it so that it's possible to save both areas, for reasons previously listed and others (and I tend to agree with your point, Aden, it would be less fun to not be able to save them both).

 

BUT. I don't like that my change to not set the journal entries that show the areas as being overrun when you travel to the second area will now *never* be set. I'm basically eliminating functionality altogether with that fix. At some point, those areas should be destroyed with those journal entries set properly, where it's too late to go back and kill them. It seems most logical to me that this should happen when you travel to the palace district - that once there, you can pretty much only go forward. Alternatively, I could do it when you actually enter Fort Drakon. But I feel rather strongly that it should happen at some point, just not where it happens in the unmodded game.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Qwinn

[AdenYeshua]

Very true... While I've beaten the game probably over a dozen times now and never triggered those kinds of bugs that is not to say others don't. I should have clarified that while admittedly other bigger bugs exist, this was probably one of the more common "must trigger" bugs that pretty much any would have caught. A good read though slightly related is the Skyrm lead programmer gave an interview. - In it he stated that he knew there were perhaps thousands of bugs, and that he and his team could spend months, in not years in full development to fix them, but at the end of the day he just instructed them to squash and "major" commonly occurring bugs.

 

Anyway glad to see it all worked out.... my 2 cents was to aid you one way or another. Glad the end result is the same.

Edited May 7, 2017 by AdenYeshua

[Thandal]

@Qwinn; I absolutely agree that once you enter Fort Drakon, there should be "no going back". But until then I'm less... rigid.

 

Say you save the Market District first, then clear the Palace District. Just as you are about to head up, a runner arrives pleading with you to save the Alienage. Why shouldn't you be able to decide to "... do what I can"? Especially given Riordan's warning about the generals.

[Qwinn]

A brief description of what's in the code: The area scripts for the Market and the Alienage both add the "overrun" journal entry to the *other* area when you *leave*. Meaning, according to the journal, when you leave the Market, the Alienage gets overrun. When you leave the Alienage, the Market gets overrun. This is part of my basis for the belief that in the original implementation, you were only supposed to save one. Another hint to that effect is that there are lines of code that destroy the other area as soon as you *enter* one, but those lines are commented out. Meaning, in the Market area script, there's commented out lines of code that destroy the Alienage the second you enter the Market, and vice versa. The fact that those lines are commented out doesn't necessarily mean they abandoned the overall idea, though - they may have just decided to move it from when you enter the area to when you leave it (as indicated by the journal entries), for any number of reasons.

 

An inconsistency: When you arrive at the Market district or the Palace district, you can just turn around immediately and leave the way you came in. You can't do so in the Alienage - the only way out is forward. There *is* an area transition to turn around and go back out of the Alienage, like the other two areas, and it's even "active" - it's just not *interactive*, so you can't actually click on it.

 

One way to "fix" all this and make it consistent with a minimum alteration of code is that I make that area transition interactive (meaning you can enter and leave the Alienage immediately, the way you can in the other areas) but, instead of destroying the *other* area when you leave one of them, we instead destroy *itself* if you leave either of the areas before killing the General in it. This makes sense to me.... once you enter the Market or the Alienage, the Darkspawn there have "become a part of events" *(in Doctor Who terminology)... they are in the District, and if you leave the District before killing the general, they'll wipe it out in no time - they're not just going to wait passively while you wander away, you don't get to leave and come back and still have time to save it.

 

So, In this proposed solution, once you enter either the Market or Alienage, you *have* to kill the General before you can leave, or the District gets wiped out. IMO that logic falls under the "common sense" category of bug fixes. Anyone object?

 

Now, as to how long a district is available *before* you visit it, the existing code seems inconsistent. Every district "grays itself out" upon both entering and leaving it, but something somewhere can reactivate them, and I haven't found what does that yet - for example, I cleared out the Market, then I went to the Alienage, and when I left the Alienage the Market had become accessible again. I guess I can't really decide what to do until I find out precisely where the code is that is reactivating the Market after it was grayed out when you left it.

 

And ok, Thandal, I can see that. I'll leave them available from the Palace district. I'll probably cut them off when you enter Fort Drakon Exterior.

[Qwinn]

Okay, so, just confirmed that you can't return to the Denerim map after you've entered Fort Drakon Exterior. There isn't even an inactive or un-interactive exit at the beginning of the area like there is in the Alienage, and the area transition at the end leads only to the Fort Drakon interior, so ALL evidence is that that really is and was always intended to be a Point of No Return (the DA wiki erroneously claims the Palace District is a PONR, which is part of what threw me on this whole thing). So I feel entirely justified in closing off the General quests and deeming the Market/Alienage destroyed when you get to the Fort Drakon exterior if the Generals still live, under the principle that all quests must be closed with a failed entry once they are no longer completeable (at least, if there's a failed entry to be had, which in this case there is).

 

I also figured out what reactivated the Market on the map after clearing the Alienage - it's clicking on the exit transition at the far end of the Alienage that reactivates it. Hovering the mouse over that exit transition actually says "Market", not "City Map", although what it does is opens the city map and always activates the Market on that map. To make everything else work and consistent, I'm going to fix that: that transition at the end is going to say "City Map" just as the exit at the end of the Market does, and it will no longer activate the market district on the map, because there's no good reason to do so - if you didn't visit it yet, it's already active, if you visited it and killed the general, there's no reason to return, and if you visited it and didn't kill the general, it should have been destroyed.

 

So here's the 3 changes I intend on making regarding this whole thing. Any input is welcome:

 

109. (v3.0) When hunting the generals in the Market and Alienage, upon leaving the first area you visited and entering the second, you would get an erroneous journal entry stating that the second area you just arrived at had been destroyed by the darkspawn. The only way you'll get those journal entries now is 1) if you enter the Market or Alienage, then leave it (see next fix) before killing the general there, or 2) you reach the Fort Drakon Exterior without killing them, since at that point there is no way to get back to the Market or Alienage.

 

110. (v3.0) It was possible to leave the Market District without killing the General, but not the Alienage. It is now possible to leave both areas without killing the General there - however, this will result in the darkspawn destroying the area immediately (see previous fix).

 

111. (v3.0) Hovering the mouse over the exit at the far end of the Alienage would read "Market", even though it pulled up the city map, and it would always reactivate the market district even if it had already been cleared. That exit transition will now be labeled "City Map" like all the other transitions, and it will no longer reactivate the Market area if it has already been closed off for any reason.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Here's a cool one - the Story So Far was never updating after Riordan's talk in Redcliffe castle. It was supposed to.

 

112. (v3.0) Restored 2 previously inaccessible "Story So Far" updates following Riordan telling you about the sacrifice needed to kill the Archdemon. The "Story So Far" (which is attached to each saved game) will now be updated with Morrigan's offer of the ritual, and again when entering Denerim for the Final battle.

 

Is it just me, or are the Nexus Forums frequently timing out today?

 

EDIT: Oops - actually, there's really only 2 updates to the SSF (edited the above to reflect this). The 4 updates with the results of the Ritual never appear, because there's no opportunity to save game between the ritual and arriving in Denerim. Still, better than having "You're almost ready to make your final stand" be the last update you ever get, even after you've waded through half the darkspawn in Denerim.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Qwinn

[Qwinn]

One quick correction: What I thought was an un-interactive exit at the beginning of the alienage - isn't. It was just a gate put there for visual effect. I still like my overall solution, however, and allowing the party to retreat from the Alienage does resolve the inconsistency between the Market and the Alienage. So I'm handling it as intended, by adding a retreat exit at the beginning of the alienage (as indicated, though, if you use it before killing the general, the area is destroyed, same as if you just ignored it altogether and reached Fort Drakkon).

 

To the possible question - how can you make someone Bann of the Alienage if it can be destroyed, I respond, I think Denerim needs a hell of a lot of rebuilding regardless of what happens, and I don't think the district being "destroyed" means all the occupants were killed, they could easily have fled (and in fact you can see them doing so). It's just a way of marking that you've missed your chance to stop the darkspawn there, they've done what damage they intended, and they've moved on, so you can't face the general from that area until the archdemon fight anymore. Remember, you were getting the "destroyed" journal entry prior to any changes on my part, and under the wrong conditions - I'm just making it happen under appropriate conditions instead.

 

EDIT: Oh yes, I will be removing the retreat exit in the Alienage once the general is killed, so that the archdemon-destroying-the-bridge cutscene can't be avoided in that circumstance. It certainly appears that that was intended as a way to explain why you can't return to the Alienage after clearing it out, and I have no reason or inclination to change that.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Qwinn