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[nerseus]

Hello and welcome to the Modding Tool / Modding Manager thread!

If you wanted info on modding DragonAge:Inquisition (DAI) for the PC you're in the right spot. If you're a developer or tester or just curious about modding then you're in the right spot. If you're not sure, read on and decide for yourself.

 

This is the main thread for finding DAI mod information. A few other sites will have duplicated information about the current mods - but if you want one spot to check for keeping up to date on mod progress then this is the thread. See below for a summary of other useful links. 

 

I just want to install/play mods - where do I go?

You can find mods around the internet. Mods currently come with their own instructions for getting them installed. Those packaged mods will not need the Modding Tool nor the Mod Manger (mentioned above). If you're just interested in adding mods to your game then the tools described in this thread aren't needed. Instead, head over to the nexus:

http://www.nexusmods...ition/mods/116/

 

 

What are these tools and what are they for?

There have been a number of tools developed to help people mod DAI. There are currently two main tools that help making and installing mods (if you just want to use mods - see notes above):

* Modding Tool - a windows program for viewing various game files related to DAI. Allows preview of assets plus export/import of assets. The tool is needed to make mods but to get them installed/tested you also need the Mod Manager

* Mod Manager - a windows program for packaging up a mod created with the Modding Tool. Both the Mod Manager and the Modding Tool are needed to make new mods.

 

 

The Code for the Tools:

A few notes - the code for both tools is done in C# and compiles easily in Visual Studio. Project files are currently in VS 2013 format, as that has a free community edition that is very robust. The code IS very... techie. It is well organized but it IS a mod and, as such, contains a lot of very "low level" types of instructions. If you've never looked at an encoded file in a binary editor, decyphering 4 bytes viewed as Hex then... many parts of the tools will be too detailed. There aren't a lot of docs. There isn't a tutorial to get you started. It's functional code written fast and was, I'm assuming, written with a lot of prototyping and discovery. It's the nature of modding a game that isn't intended to be modded.

 

Having said that, the code WILL be made publicly available. For now, the current code is not working with the current patch and so there's no point in sharing what doesn't work. It should work very soonish (early April) and will be released as soon as it's working even a little bit

[link to publicly available code to be posted here when it is available]

 

There is an older copy of the code on SourceForge that is not quite near the features seen in the current modding tool / modding manager. This version of the code is NOT one you'd want to start with, but might be useful for prosperity's sake. For more information, see the following thread:

http://daitools.free...ors-etc-t3.html

 

 

Mod Developement Status:

First, know that DAI has had a number of official patches. The current patch is version 6 and was released in early March, 2015.

 

Official DAI game, patched to version 6 (and related DLC):

Both the Modding Tool and Mod Manager are currently NOT working for making new mods. Testing is ongoing. Useful updates will be posted in this thread. If and when the tools are working, this is the place to find them and information about getting them. Bookmark this page!

 

Official DAI game, patched to version 5 or below (and related DLC):

Both the Modding Tool and Mod Manager ARE working. Downloads and more information can be found:

http://daitools.free...eased-t507.html

 

 

Helping out:

If you're a developer who knows modding or has related skills (very low level stuff such as analyzing binary files in hex, knowing big endian vs little endian, bit shifting, etc) then come on board! The dev team could always use help. If you're just curious, you're also in the right spot. Head to the following forum and browse the Introductions page to say hi and see where people need help!

http://daitools.free...s.org/index.php

 

If you're a tester who doesn't mind testing potentially broken files (this means putting up with delays, non-working mods, ideally doing lots of tests at the developers request, etc) then yay! Come on board! I'll be putting a link to a page where you can go to get started soon. Right now the tools are NOT working with the current patch and so they are in flux - so no testers are needed. But hopefully soon! Bookmark this thread to check for updates!

 

 

Release notes:

Want to find out what works and doesn't? What can you mod in the game and what you can't?

 

Current information about each version of each tool can be found above, under Mod Status. Look there to find links to current versions of the tools. Those links will take you to a forum that will also contain release notes such as what works and to what extent as well as known bugs.

 

Information on using the tools to make mods?

There are a few places you can go to get information on making your own mods.

 

The DAI Tools forum - many topics including current tool release notes, tutorials on using the tools, FAQs on the tools, and forums for asking for help or just posting your awesome progress:

http://daitools.free...s.org/index.php

 

The Bioware forum - an ongoing thread with a long history of people trying out mods and posting questions along with WIPs and more. It's a LONG thread but there's a ton of good information there:

http://forum.bioware...9048-dai-tools/

 

 

Have a question?

I love questions! And so do others. But please, let's try and keep this thread clean so newcomers can find the latest info without digging around. If you have a question that's not answered here there are a few places to ask:

 

DAI Tools Forum:

• http://daitools.free...s.org/index.php

 

DAI Tools Forum - Latest news (links above will often point to threads found here):

• http://daitools.free...updates-f3.html

 

Bioware thread - very active discussions. Great place to ask a question!

• http://forum.bioware...9048-dai-tools/

 

Bioware thread - some older news about the tools (mostly outdated - but here for reference):

• http://forum.bioware...9048-dai-tools/

 

Reaching nerseus (Dan):

• See my signature for contact info. Keep in mind, if something is answered here I might just link you or direct you to one of the other forums.

 

Who made these tools?

There have been a number of people working on modding DAI. I've attempted to gather a history of people that have helped - if anyone spots names missing please let me know!

* WarrantyVoider

* Ehamloptiran

* mft-dev

* Sirmabus

* Will Goodes

* nerseus

 

(See also: https://sourceforge....tools/_members/)

 

And special thanks to Renmiri for hosting a forum that is a main center for the DAI modding!

 

There are also a ton of other people helping with testing and making mods, without which these tools wouldn't be possible nor very relevant. Most can be found actively posting here on Bioware forums, on the DAI Modders forum, or on the Nexus making their own mods. For every person posting there are probably 10 more lurkers, nodding their heads and learning from those that post. Keep it active and keep it fun!

 

-Dan / nerseus

[nerseus]

Hello everybody! This is Dan / nerseus joining for some DA modding. Thanks Ren and thanks Adela for bringing me into the mix. And thanks WarrantyVoider, Eham, and others (names mentioned in the first thread above) for the mod code - great work so far! I hope I can keep it running

 

So a quicky status - I've got some code compiling and I'm running through it this weekend. I'm getting a good feel for what's out there. Although I'm not new to modding games (and game programming/graphics in general), I'm completely new to Dragon Age modding so I'm just wrapping my head around things. I'm also an optimist so I'm hopeful this won't take tooooo long to get back to a working state. I'm assuming most people just want the mods working as they were before with the newest patch and that's my goal right now. I'll be sure and post on here whenever I have news, good or bad or in between.

 

I'd hesitate to give any longer term goals, such as future features and enhancements. Right now my goal is just to get things working again and keep any new programmers in the loop. I'm big on giving out all the code and documenting things I find, as well as helping anyone that's interested in learning what I know. With any luck, the group of mod developers will grow quickly to keep pace with all the requests.

 

It's late but wanted to say hi and howdy. Feel free to contact me on here or on skype. My username is "djatarchon". 

 

Happy modding!

 

[EDIT]

Source Code! I'm sure people are wondering - will it be released, when will it be released, how can I help, when will feature X be added, when will bug Y be fixed, etc.

 

Short version: Code will be publicly released, for sure, and semi-soon. I'm leaning towards MS Azure since developing is under Visual Studio. I will release when I feel there's a stable version that extracts and imports the assets and allows modding with the newest patch. This mostly means troubleshooting/fixing existing code - not adding features or bug fixes (other than the obvious one that prevents mods from working at all with the newest patch).

 

Longer version:

 

Location of code: I will be uploading code to a public area - either github or sourceforge or MS's Azure cloud. My pref is on a MS cloud since it integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio, and since VS and the cloud storage for small teams is all free it's pretty easy. I'll be sure and post here and in the dev forums when it's up.

 

When will code go up: I plan on getting through this initial code base... in a few days, maybe a few weeks. My gut says closer to a few days but we'll see. I'd rather not push another set of code out to the world if it's simply not working. Sure, "better" code would be better than what we have - but if it's not compiling to an EXE that lets people mod or at least install existing mods then there's no point. I think the progress will be fast enough that I can get this part done quickly by myself and adding others, which I'd love to do eventually, will add management overhead. Also, there might be some legal considerations for the code which I won't get into - but it will prevent me from taking too drastic a step before I have answers.

 

What about feature X / bug Y: Easy answer - later. My goal now is simply to get the import/export of existing assets working as good as they were when Eham last produced a tool. Once that's working again with the latest patch, I'll check in code and start build a list of potential updates and, ideally, a release schedule. Since I don't know when this will begin and who the helpers might be it's impossible to give any real predictions. Think... 1 week to 2 months. One week would be pretty optimistic while 2 months might not even be enough time, but my gut would place it somewhere in that range. Also, if anyone knows of any single goth girls that like to chat, send them my way. Everyone could use a little motivation 

 

 

-Dan / ner

[nerseus]

Small update on the progress of the modding tools:

Did some work this weekend and the tools are compiling and testing is going smoothly. The short version is - the assets are being scanned and stored in their local cache. The UI is showing the assets and Cullen's diffuse texture map is both previewing and exporting correctly. That was the only test I did last night, but tonight's testing should reveal more. On the downside, I gave Adela a copy of the mod tools to do some testing and it still crashes on load up for her - I'd owe that more to my being lazy and not packaging things up correctly than a sign that the tool is faulty. 

 

So here's a quick view of my upcoming work (all estimates subject to change):

* Monday - do more testing of Mod Tools. Make sure all files are exporting and importing

* Monday - Begin rework of Mod Manager

* Monday/Tuesday - Walk through basic "tutorial" of creating a new mod, packaging it up, testing the change in-game

 

That last bullet might not get done until Tuesday - but I'm hopeful. And until all of them are done, there's nothing to release. But with some luck (and I'm still hopeful about those goth girls) things might be working again in the next few days. That's a big "might" - but there you go.

 

Some details of the issue with the newest patch:

For those that follow such things - it seems (and this is only my initial view of things) that there is a Patch system built into the updates. Patches are a way to package up only changed bits of files in a more compact form - to make downloads smaller typically - and then have the program "merge" those changed bits into the core/base game files. Judging by the work that's been done previously, there were 4 variations on the formats of patch data that were being handled - and any unknown format would cause an Exception - that is, a program crash. The newest Patch seems to have introduced a 5th type of patch format and that seems to be the cause of the Mod Tools crash while scanning assets. I've NOT fixed that, which would require analyzing that format and coding for it. It seemed to hit about 7 assets only so I've chosen to have the Mod Tools just skip those chunks. What does this mean? No idea really.   But at a semi-educated guess, the Mod Tools "work" but there are likely 7 assets that either aren't showing their true format OR they won't be showing at all OR, if the patch got rid of some parts then the Mod Tools might show them when, in fact, they'd be deleted from the game. Lots of ORs. But 7 out of many thousands? I'm ok with that for now 

 

Other news:

I've reached out to Eham to talk about future development work on the mod. I'm currently expanding on his work and would love to hear from him. If anyone knows of a way to contact him, please do!

 

I've also been talking with Warranty Voider about the future plans of the mod tools/mod manager. More to come soon!

 

-Dan / ner

[LapisLazzuli]

Hi Dan,

First, thanks a million to take over ModManager while Eham is on break.

 

I have a request that is a tiny programming thing but a huge impact on user friendlyness for people who dont know/understand version numbering.

 

When you look at a mod in ModManager, you see the patch version needed to run that mod. What's shown there is the info that is in Bioware patch package.mft file. Bioware released a unnannonced patch that most people dont know about. So creating mods with Patch 5 (really version 6) will show as mods needing a patch 6. Which is really confusing since Bioware Patch 6 (really version 7) is out and doesn't work with mods. I spend a lot of time explaining that to people who try to use my mods with Patch 6.

 

So my request is this: Can you remove that +1 in the version display in ModManager? Normal people (not programmer/modder type people) dont really care if it's not the real version number that's shown there, they want to know if they have the correct Bioware announced patch

 

Thanks

Lapis

[Adela]

Hey guys bit of an update from Dan.  He's been kind of busy lately but found some time to fix  the DAI Modding Tool

 

 

 

DAI Modding Tool v1.27 released

This version of the Modding Tool contains a fix to allow mods to work with the latest patch of DAI

Instruction:
* Download from link below
* Unpack to a folder
* Run the EXE

Modding Tool (x64): https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing
Modding Tool (x86): https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing

NOTE: This tool requires and updated version of the Mod Manager to pack mods and get them working in-game. This tool is not officially updated but there IS a working fix. Please see the following thread for more information.
The old version of Mod Manager (version 0.48) will NOT work. The mods created with that version will either freeze the game at startup or will crash the game completely.

Link to working Mod Manager:
http://daitools.free...tch-6-t681.html

 

Now, note ive done some tests and found a couple of things 

    1. copy  the  daimodding configuration settings from Ehams old tool into  Dan's updated one. So it can start        scanning. If this part isn't done , then when u are going  click on the DAI exe the tool will crash

 

    2. If you got the new DLC Jaws  of Hakkon move it somewhere else when the tool is scanning for assets, if you have the DLC  in the update folder the tool will crash when it will try to make a cache.

 

Dan will find a solution for that later, but for now  we will have to do these steps 

[Adela]

Hi all Dan put together a new CodePlex project for DAIModdingTool and DAIModManager where coders who want to join us will have access to all the source code. So if your a coder and you want to help here is where u can find all the goodies : https://daimoddingtools.codeplex.com/