How do you edit spells in Dragon Age Origins?

[DagonSeaGod]

Ok, I know there is a tutorial made especially for this topic but despite following it to the letter i failed to change spells' attributes like duration and damage. I did exactly what the tutorial said but the changes I made never took effect.

 

Any help will be appreciated.

 

* I am an experienced modder for many games (I also know how to use hex editors effectively, even for really old games where the data is hidden), but this one is new for me.

 

For the time being, I managed to give my character (female mage) the witchy robe of Morrigan (changing the name, restrictions and description, of course). I have also found how to change attributes etc.

Edited January 2, 2017 by DagonSeaGod

[mcgoy]

Out of curiousity, which tutorial?

 

The changes for what you want to do, most likely, need to be made to core resources in the files that have the spell constants. I suspect that you would then need to recompile all of the programs that reference the file(s) that you changed. This is not the type of change that I make - ever - so I'm not sure if you would need to compile (re-compile) and programs/scripts or not.

 

You may have to make changes to the gda files as well, depending on the types of changes you are making.

[DagonSeaGod]

I mean this tutorial:

 

http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Modifying_a_spell

[mcgoy]

http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Adding_a_new_spell_tutorial

Tells how to add a new spell and is the one that I use. The concepts are the same, the details are different.

 

If you don't want to manually move files, use

Tools (dropdown)

Export

Export without dependent resources

 

I recommend

http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Main_Page

 

The information is only as good as the person who wrote it, but there is some excellent information there.

[DagonSeaGod]

I tried some things to no affair. These guides assume the reader already knows enough things about modding and I fail to find a guide for dummies. For example, there is an analysis about a longsword item, its attributes etc. Ok, These I can figure out by myself. What i can't figure out is the VERY BASIC concepts, such as how exactly I modify the longsword item for the modifications to take effect. The only things that seem to work are the item's name and description. Everything else just doesn't change no matter what I do. I suppose I am missing some necessary BASIC step that is explained nowhere.

 

For example, I downloaded a No Helmet mod. How the heck do I install it in the game?

Edited January 2, 2017 by DagonSeaGod

[DagonSeaGod]

Ok, I made some progress: The problem is that some of the spell files won't compile (they error out). The ones that do, can be changed. For example, spell_aoe_instant and spell_cone, can be changed but spell_constants_h and spell_singletarget won't.

 

When trying to compile spell_singletarget, I get an error message saying "sys_traps_h.nss - sys_traps_h.nss(1521): No right bracket on expression". I checked sys_traps_h and there is no bracket missing.

 

When trying to compile spell_constants_h, I get an error message saying "spell_constants_h.nss - spell_constants_h.nss(?): Script must contain either a main or StartingConditional".

 

Any ideas?

[DagonSeaGod]

Ok, I figured that (and many other things) out. I just needed to patch the game and now everything works fine.

 

Now that I have already learned the basics I have to move to the next steps, like making new items. I am thinking even about writing a guide for dummies when I get experienced enough. I feel there is a need around for something like that.

[mcgoy]

http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Tutorials

And there are other pages that I consider 'tutorials' even though they aren't labeled that way.

 

I suggest learning to use B2B files to learn about modding as well, there are multiple mod authors that included the B2B files and I found them very useful while I was learning. My own are at:

http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4442/?

[DagonSeaGod]

Thank you for your suggestions. The beginning is always hard but once you get rolling, the difficulty decreases big time. I already passed that stage :-)

 

I think the subjects a modder may be interested in are:

 

- Character appearance

- Spells

- Items

- Creatures

- Areas

- Texturing for items

- Classes

- Advancement trees

 

I am interested in most of them, though not all of them are equally hard to master. I may make a Witch class for fun (because the Mage class has so many choices that practically allows you to build a witchy character anyway). I am starting a topic about my newly created character.

[DagonSeaGod]

Just an update!

 

I have already unlocked almost everything in the game. I can edit spells, items, rules, etc. Everything I searched for, I found, everything I haven't searched for, I CAN find (as soon as you understand the game's file and data structure, it's easy).

 

Now I am up to the last step: 3d modeling!

 

Currently I am learning Gmax really fast and yesterday I made my first attempt at editing a 3d model (one of the hair options, actually). This is a field I have never dealt into (in the past I only made 2d images for games, like Baldur's Gate item icons, etc). We will see...