#dao modding tips

For anyone having trouble with the EA app who hasn't seen this:

Get Origin back here, and use the linked instructions to prevent re-migration:

Open C:\ProgramData\Origin\local.xml in notepad

Add new key there:

<Setting key="MigrationDisabled" type="1" value="true" />

If you can't find ProgramData, you probably have "Show hidden files, folders and drives" turned off. Either:

Change your folder options in explorer in View -> Options -> View -> Hidden files and folders, or

Open ProgramData directly by using Windows key + R to open the Run prompt, type in %programdata% and press enter.

Maybe you just finished a giant set of new headmorphs and don't want to go through them one by one to export them, or maybe you want to make all your headmorphs compatible with Realistic Teeth.

Good news! You can batch export an entire folder of MRH files to whatever they're set up for - MOR or MOP.

Just start a new headmorph using File -> New -> Morph, but before you choose the base head (the option will grey out if you do choose a head), click on "Batch Export Local" over to the right.

It will ask you to choose the folder in which the MRH files are stored, and then it will start exporting! If you have the Object Inspector open you'll see your different MRHs flash past, and it's not a terribly fast process, but it's still a lot quicker than exporting manually.

This can also be used to create a versions of your headmorphs that are compatible with, for example, Brumbek's Realistic Teeth mod. All you have to do is temporarily place Realistic Teeth in your override folder, perform a batch export, then uninstall it again if you don't want to keep it (or do it the opposite way round if you do use Realistic Teeth and want to make vanilla teeth versions). Voila, instant compatible headmorphs! (The same is technically true of mods like tmp7704's Elf Update, but in practice it requires manual tweaking, so it's not a quick install-export-uninstall process.)

So you download the core/single player source files (vanilla headmorphs, areas etc) from Nexus or from the Bioware CDN, but when you open them in the toolset, you get a red bar saying they're read-only.

I've seen advice to get around that by saving a new copy from the toolset, but there's a quicker way! There's no format-specific internal flag restricting them or anything -- it's just the standard file permissions flag, which you can unlock on multiple files at once.

On Windows (procedure for other OSes will be different), right-click on the file(s), select "Properties", and untick the "Read-only" flag. Example image below the cut.

If you're used to pyGFF but want to edit UTIs, UTCs etc, you'll notice that pyGFF will view but not edit them. Those GFFs are v3.2, and pyGFF only edits GFF v4.0.

To edit GFF v3.2 files you'll want TlkEdit (which unlike what its name might suggest, doesn't only edit TLK files). You will need Java to run it, and this is where people sometimes run into problems.

TlkEdit requires 32-bit Java to work. Most people's computers these days are running a 64-bit operating system, and so the auto-detecting "Download" button on the main download page on the Java website will most likely give you 64-bit Java - and so TlkEdit still won't work. You'll need to go to the manual download page and download one of the files that doesn't say "(64-bit)" at the end (they don't explicitly say "32-bit", but they are). Install that, and TlkEdit should run just fine!

Individual terrain textures can't be changed directly: the image tiles get stuck together into big composite images for each area layout, and it's these that must be edited unless you're recompiling the area layout with custom terrain textures.

The composite textures are located in packages\core\env\[area layout name]\[area layout name].gpu.rim. The filenames are [area layout name]__pal ("pal" refers to the terrain image tiles being called the "palette" in the level editor) for the diffuse and specular textures (the specular is stored in the alpha), and [area layout name]__nrm for the normals. Note the two consecutive underscores in each filename. There is also a [area layout name]__hgt, presumably intended to be a composite of the tiles' heightmaps, but I haven't yet seen one that isn't just solid 50% grey (the source tile heightmaps themselves are fine).

To find out which area layout you need (since it's often different to the area name itself), open the Object Inspector for the area in the toolset -- you don't need to actually open the area for this, just single-click on the area with the inspector window open/docked -- and look under General -> Area Layout.

Example

The Mage Origin fade (bhm600ar_fade_harrowing) textures are in packages\core\env\oth000d\oth000d.gpu.rim, inside oth000d__pal.dds and oth000d__nrm.dds.

The Dalish Origin camp (bed200ar_dalish_camp) terrain textures are in packages\core\env\brc997d\brc997d.gpu.rim, inside brc997d__pal.dds and brc997d__nrm.dds.

The composite images are compressed as DXT5 with mipmaps; the normals are swizzled (red -> alpha) and left-handed for DirectX (green channel "lit" from below).

The original tiles are uncompressed 8-bit (u8888 for diffuse, normals and specular, u888 (no alpha) for heightmap) with mipmaps; the normals are unswizzled and left-handed.