140 replies to this topic

[Calzier2]

To get the PC version you can download the EA Download Manager and under the "activate" tab [inside the download manager] after you log in to your EA account, you should be able to download the PC client by entering your game key even if the version you purchased is Mac.

Single most useful thing I've read in this forum (and to think I was contemplating *buying* a PC version to, for example, access the tool kit.

Edited by Calzier2, 16 March 2010 - 09:22 PM.

[Calzier2]

DONE IT!



I can access Ostagar itself, without recourse to Windows version. It did crash (ie lock up) soon after arrival, but I get that sometimes, and might be a 1.02 issue, but the DLC authorisation can be done entirely through the Mac version, just as eleve stumbled upon...

[Marvin_Arnold]

OH IT'S SO FRIGGIN' EASY!!!
Calzier, you beat me by 17 minutes!

It's really so simple!

- Do everything eleve mentioned. (eleve, there seems to be an error in the "Offer" part. It should be "OfferList" etc, not "AddinsList" a second time.)
- Then go to the "offer" location ("Bann Whatshisname's Land") . Don't bother about the "unauthorized" tag in your DLC list.
- Play through the dialog and ensuing battle. Afterwards, you will be asked if you want to download additional content (which, ironically, you already have). Then your Bioware Points will be spent and you can continue playing. DLC shows now up as authorized. Didn't even crash in Ostagar.

That's it. Haven't played it through yet, but that's it.

eleve, I recommend adding this information to your original post. Thank you 1000 times for bringing up the whole RtO issue in the first place, or we would still be moping about it not being available...

Just for moping again, it's a pity that we have to find this out by ourselves and Bioware/EA just take the easy way claiming it's just not possible.

So, now I wonder if we can get DA:Awakening to work by ourselves, too...

Edited by Marvin_Arnold, 16 March 2010 - 10:10 PM.

[Calzier2]

Couple extra points - make sure that (a) game is registered & bioware points bought before you try the conversation ( if you can't talk to the chap from Ostagar in the offer location *after* 'buying' the DLC (happened to me) log out, give it a few minutes, log back in again, and it should all work.



Now happily wandering around Ostager, and not crashing this time (luckily you get an autosave as soon as you arrive at Ostagar!)

[Calzier2]

Marvin_Arnold wrote...

So, now I wonder if we can get DA:Awakening to work by ourselves, too...

If we can find someone to reverse engineer the patches... someone did try running the 1.02 patch inside the wrapper, but didn't work....

[joelevan]

It worked for me as well! Thank you guys for posting all of this info! Brilliant!

[eleve]

Marvin_Arnold wrote...
- Do everything eleve mentioned. (eleve, there seems to be an error in the "Offer" part. It should be "OfferList" etc, not "AddinsList" a second time.)

I think I am blind as I don't see it....also, I don't think I am going to touch that post again as on editing all the xml tags disappear

What I can do is a 2nd post with all the details.

Edited by eleve, 17 March 2010 - 12:38 PM.

[eleve]

Marvin_Arnold wrote...
So, now I wonder if we can get DA:Awakening to work by ourselves, too...

We might but we definitely need access to a Windows for the .exe

[eleve]

ohhh...then we should go and sell the solution as a group effort to Bioware/EA

[sneezr]

Thanks a lot Marvin_Arnold, works great!

[ilkelma]

I'll update my first post to include the solutions! Good job all!

EDIT:  Updated! Feel free to point out errors or places it's unclear or something might be added/subtracted. Also does anyone know how to stop BBCode from indenting the whole post after I use the numbered list tag? I can't figure out how to do that. I can just kill the lists but they seem so much neater and easier to read that way...

And yeah it is kind of sad that it's this easy and yet nothing has been done to enable it. I'm just kind of happy this way all the money goes straight to BioWare/EA instead of TransGaming As for hacking the expansion and the patch I'm pretty sure that would go well beyond our reach... who knows though! I've been debating buying it since we know the keys are the same and I do have bootcamp as well as a desktop PC...

Jhime, any chance the next version of Modazipin could be able to change GameVersion tags too? That'd make this whole process stupid easy. (not that it isn't already but it'd be even less of a risk that way)

Edited by ilkelma, 17 March 2010 - 03:07 PM.

[Marvin_Arnold]

Ilkelma, just one detail: It's 400 Bioware points, not 500.

[ilkelma]

oops! thanks, I guess I must have just been thinking 5 since it's $5, but why make so much sense

[joelevan]

Hmm...one problem I have found which may or my not be related...The dwarf merchant and his son (the one who is good with enchantments) no longer show up in my camp. Any thoughts?

Edit - Nevermind, they are back. Most likely problem? User error. :-)

Joel

Edited by joelevan, 18 March 2010 - 02:18 AM.

[Marvin_Arnold]

Edit - Nevermind, they are back.

ENCHANTMENT!



(sorry, could not resist...)

[Supersirlink]

I had an issue with my character appearence not changeing when changing armor. Dont know if it was related to RTO. However i disabled RTO and reloaded my save, saved, then reloaded RTO and the issue disappeared.

[Welnic]

Supersirlink wrote...

I had an issue with my character appearence not changeing when changing armor. Dont know if it was related to RTO. However i disabled RTO and reloaded my save, saved, then reloaded RTO and the issue disappeared.

I found that this happens fairly regularly in the PC version of the game. Changing armor doesn't change the appearance, changing weapons means that they do a bow animation with a sword, and helmets don't get removed for cut scenes. Saving and reloading has always fixed this for me.

[superberg]

I bought the PC version of Dragon Age a week before the Mac version was announced. I found a copy of the Mac version, but unlike what people seem to be saying on the forum, my Windows key does not activate the Mac version. Is there something I am missing? It's the retail Collector's Edition.

[Welnic]

The Mac version code will allow you to download the PC version using EA Download Manager. The PC version will not do anything for you on the Mac side of things.

[superberg]

Really? That bites. I must have misread something. Well, I guess I'll be sticking with boot camp. I'm not dropping another $65 just to play natively.



It really sucks that they didn't announce a Mac version until a month after the main release. I'd have waited.

[Marvin_Arnold]

People who release games nowadays don't seem to realise that with Bootcamp, Mac users are more likely to buy a Windows game than wait for a Mac version to appear. If they want to sell Mac versions, they should announce their intent as soon as possible. Or maybe waiting until a majority of Mac users has bought the Windows version is their strategy anyway...
"Huh! Most Mac users boght our Win version anyway, so why bother with Mac ports in the future?"

Edited by Marvin_Arnold, 19 March 2010 - 09:24 AM.

[superberg]

That's pretty much how I think they figure it. I'll wait a month or two for a Mac version, no big deal. There are plenty of things to keep me busy in the meantime. The thing is, they never seem to announce their plans for a Mac version until after every other version is released. Either they're terrible at planning, or, more likely, they think Mac users live in a bubble and don't know what happens in the outside world.

[ilkelma]

hmm well that's interesting, it totally works the other way around but I've never tried to do it the way you've done it, I'll add that it's no guarantee to avoid leading people astray...



I think the trouble is porting in general seems to be a publisher initiated thing. I mean the most successful "mac ports" are those developed in tandem with the PC version, take the Sims series for instance, even though the Sims 3 is a cider port it came out at the same time and I'd like to think that Eaxis was thinking of the mac users at least a bit since patches come out and work as well as pretty much everything but the neighborhood creator tool. BioWare didn't develop Dragon Age for Mac like they did PC, Xbox, and PS3 at the same time. Thus when the game is produced then they start to look at ways to pump more money out of it and release a mac version, specifically EA but I don't know that BioWare was totally absent or anything.



Marvin_Arnold has the unfortunate truth of the matter though, until they get numbers that make sense to the suits there'll be little incentive to do anything for the growing Mac userbase that get conflated with the PC numbers from bootcamp users.

[Helmets]

Us Mac gamers will be uncomfortable until either:



A) Gamers suddenly decide to only buy Apple for some crazy reason



IBM or DARPA decides to commercialize a reasonably inexpensive non-processor-intensive AI robot program that is also capable of doing all the programming grunt-work of simultaneously porting a game to Mac OS X during game development or after release on its own without human intervention and prompting. Call it Microsoft Word Clippy 2.0 - it will not only teach, but also DO. Most computer programmers, including the ones that designed Clippy, will become unemployed and will have to develop new skill-sets.

[superberg]

I don't necessarily blame BioWare. EA published the game. It's not like someone there sent the Cider folks a thumb drive with the source code on a whim. It wasn't ported in a week. They could have announced it sooner. I'm sure there are a significant number of people who bought the PC version with the intent to play it on Boot Camp.



Gaming on the Mac is a Catch-22. No, the market isn't as big as pubs/devs would like, but it's not as small as they would have you believe. I hope that Steam will help the state of Mac gaming change for the better. Here's hoping Valve joins Blizzard in doing native versions at-launch. And nothing would make me happier than buying the next standalone Dragon Age game in a Mac native version. In fact, I'd be more likely to buy it, because I fire up Boot Camp maybe once a month.