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New to Dragon Age modding


keyblade47

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Hello everyone

Let's cut straight to it

 

I want to begin using mods on my Dragon Age: Origin/Awakening but I have come across these two programs that keep being mentioned over and over by anyone that uses mods.

  • DAModder
  • DAO Modmanager

Now, from the first glance at it they both look like mod managers. Which I sort of understand since the Nexus mod manager does not support Dragon Age at the moment (correct me if I'm wrong)

 

The question is, which one do I pick to handle my mods? What's the difference between the two?

I'm not really new to modding since I have some experience with others games that are mod-compatible like JK3 or FO:NV and TESV:S

just have a slight confusion with Dragon Age

Thank you for hearing me and thank you for taking your time to look at this, even more thank you for your replies.

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Hello, keyblade47; Welcome to the DA-side! Lots of fun in store, just don't think it's like modding for Oblivion or Sims. ;D

 

First, see this article: "Using Dragon Age Mods for Dummies". After you've got a handle on the basics, the rest of what I'll say will make more sense.


1. I use DAO-ModManager (DAMM). I find it's "all-in-one" layout more to my taste, which compensates for the fact that it doesn't recognize what to do with a .zip file, which DAModder (DAM) does do. I'm perfectly capable of extracting files from a .zip archive all by myself.


2. Only DAMM can make use of a mod that is packaged as a ".override" file. (Not to be confused with your "\override" folder!)


3. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter. Besides helping to organize your mods a bit for you, the only other thing that either one adds is a better clean-up process if you decide you want to delete a mod. (The vanilla game makes it easy to "disable" a certain type of mod, but not to remove one completely.)


If you decide to go with DAMM and can't quite follow the author's instructions for using it, (English is not his best language...) see this helpful file: "DAO-ModManager Manual". It was put together by another player to try to help the rest of us. :thumbsup:

 

Happy (Modded) Gaming!

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...

The game is amazing. How come it has so little recognition?

Is the 2nd game really that bad?

 

Dragon Age: Origins got lots of recognition. But, like other AAA titles, the investment required to develop something that good is astronomical. (See what's happening with Square Enix even with the success of Tomb Raider: 2013!)

 

DA2 suffered from a number of flaws, some of which were the result of deliberate decisions to change how things worked, (see "awesome button") and some of which were due to pressures from the publisher (EA) to "get out a sequel quickly". (See "map reuse", and interviews with soundtrack composer Inon Zur).

 

But I think Dragon Age 2's biggest failing was simply not being DAO - Continued. They would have deflected a considerable amount of the criticism if they'd named it Dragon Age: Champion of Kirkwall, or something like that!

 

I've played DA2 about a dozen times. I think it's excellent, just not as good as the original. :thumbsup:

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  • 11 months later...

Hi there guys,

So it is May 2014 and it seems NMM does work with Dragon Age Origins. If either of you wish to comment on this as I am just now coming over from Skyrim to start my first run of DA-O. Looks good, different than Skyrim but well done.

JS

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I always tell players who are just starting to mod their DA-series game to review this article: Using Dragon Age Mods for Dummies. It'll provide some of the vocabulary and framework needed to understand mod authors' installation instructions. (See also Post #2 above.)

 

As for NMM, it works well for DAO/DAA/DA2 as long as a mod is of the straight forward, "place in your \override folder", or BioWare's ".dazip" add-in type.

 

It doesn't work in cases where the author has packaged more than one version of a mod in the archive file, (as I have done) or with ".override" mods, or with multiple CharGenMorph changes (although it does place any cgmc.xml file it finds within a mod into a special folder to allow you to run the Compiler afterwards. As long as you remember to do that after each individual CC mod install, things should work. :cool: )

 

But even with those limitations, it's pretty good for the average player who just wants to use a few basic mods!

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  • 2 months later...
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