User:Neovalen/Origins Revisited - Ultimate Edition

Origins Revisited: Ultimate Edition
A STEP hosted mod guide created and maintained by Neovalen.
Last Update: 5:32:40 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Introduction and Summary

Origins Revisited: Ultimate Edition is a STEP hosted mod guide designed to mod Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition. Key tenets of this mod guide include:

• Maintained Lore Friendliness meaning remaining true to the majority of Dragon Age lore - but not in a purist sense - some liberties will be taken.
• Maintained Stability with Maximum Functionality including proper installation and resolving conflicts between mods.

The system used for the creation of this guide is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4.5Ghz
MOBO: Gigabyte G1.SNIPER 3
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600Mhz
GPU: EVGA 670GTX Superclocked 4GB (SLI)

Prerequisites

Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation. --Robert H. Schuller

To use this guide to it's fullest extent, the following software must be installed and configured as specified.

Official EA/Bioware Content

• Origin
• Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition v1.05

Tools

• 7-Zip v9.20

The function of this tool is to open archives manually when not using other tools as it handles most modern compression schemes and is free to use.

• Beyond Compare v4.0

The function of this mod is to compare folders for conflicts and easily resolve them by either merging or deleting a conflicting file.

• CharGenMorph Compiler v1.2.3

The function of this tool is to merge all the various CharGenMorph.xml files in your override directory into a single xml file for use by the game.

• DAO-Modmanager v1.9d

The function of this tool is to manage mods and is the mod manager of choice for this guide.

• Large Address Aware v1.0.4

This function of this tool is to modify the Dragon Age: Origins executable to be aware of memory greater than 2GB.

All Journeys Begin With The First Step...

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days. --Voltaire

The road of the Warden begins slowly and with purposeful resolve.

Configure Dragon Age: Origins

Upon downloading Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition from Origin there are no ini files pre-generated. Thus, it is imperative to run the game to generate the initial set of ini files and do basic setup.

Start Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition through Origin.
Click "Options".
On the game tab, in the Feedback section select "Conversations and Ambient Dialogue" in the Subtitles drop down.
On the video tab, in the Screen section select your monitors native resolution in the Resolution drop down.
On the video tab, in the Detail section max out all the sliders and ensure both frame buffer effects and Vertical Sync are enabled for maximum graphic fidelity.
Click Ok then exit the game.

Next, the large address aware tool will be used to allow the game to use greater than 2 gigabytes of memory.

Start Large Address Aware.
Under step 1, select the daorigins.exe located in the bin_ship folder where the game was installed.
Under step 2, check the box.
Under step 3, click [Save].
Close Large Address Aware.

Your settings have now been saved into the ini files and the game can now address greater than 2 gigabytes of memory which will be important for modding. These settings have accomplished the following:

• Setup the ini files with a high quality graphic baseline.
• Enabled subtitles to help with making sure no dialog is missed.

Configure Graphics Driver

Dragon Age: Origins (henceforth referred to as DAO) uses an old engine and needs help in the graphic department from your systems video driver.

ATI

Unfortunately, the author does not have an ATI card to test with but the important settings are the following:

• Anistropic Filtering: 16x
• Transparency AA: 4x

Nvidia

Using Nvidia Inspector some life can be brought back into this old game engine. The settings should be as follows:

• Antialiasing Compatibility: 0x004010C0
• Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling: 4x Sparse Grid Supersampling
• Anistropic Filtering Mode: User Defined/Off
• Anistropic Filtering: 16x
• Texture Filtering - Quality: High Quality
• Ambient Occlusion Setting: High Quality
• Ambient Occlusion Usage: Enabled

Using DAO-ModManager and Resolving Conflicts

In DAO there are two types of mods, DAZIP and loose files. DAZIP is a complete mod packed using the Dragon Age Origins Toolset from Bioware. Originally, these mods were installed using the supplied DAUpdater.exe in the main game folder but due to various bugs found it is recommended to use a mod manager such as this one. These types of mods are generally gameplay or new content mods. Loose file are as expected - loose files. These types of mods are used to modify dialog, facial morphs, and/or textures. DAO-ModManager additionally introduces an override format file (.override) which may contain an installer or simply be a pack of loose files with mod information attached such as author, description, web address, etc. DAO-ModManager only handles DAZIP and override format mods and it includes a tool to convert loose file mods into override files for use in the manager. Upon installation of an override mod, file conflicts are checked and a message box will pop up stating if a newly installed mod is compatible with the currently installed overrides. It should be noted that in DAO the file path does not affect the use of a file, only the file name. For example, a file named A.dds in the base override folder will conflict with a file named MyFolder/A.dds. The order loaded by generally alphabetical but is not guaranteed. Thus the only real way to eliminate conflicts is to remove one of the offending files.

DAO-ModManager should automatically set itself up with the proper game and mod paths on startup. This can be verified on the "Options" tab. Inside the folder where DAO-ModManager is installed there should be a mods folder with two sub folder DAZIP and override. These will be where your base mods are to be stored. DAZIP mods can be directly placed into the mods/DAZIP folder and .override mods can be placed directly into the mods/override folder. To process a loose file mod, perform the following:

Extract the loose file mod to a temporary folder.
Open DAO-ModManager and click [New Override Packet] on the "Override Creator" tab.
In the resulting pop up box, type the name of the mod you are installing and click [OK].
Fill in any mod information available such as author, description, url, etc. as desired.
Click the packages/core/override/<Mod Name> folder in the bottom left pane then drag and drop the extracted loose files into the right pane.
Once all files have been added, click [Create Override Packet] to finalize.

This process creates a <Mod Name>.override file in the mods/override folder which you can install using DAO-ModManager. If for any reason you want to edit an override (such as resolving a conflict), simply select [Edit Override Packet] then select the override file to repeat this process. Note that it may take a few minutes to create large overrides.

The Warden Comes

TBD --TBD

With the basic foundation of the journey complete, the Warden strides strongly into the main quest of his journey. The important points to remember when installing mods are as follows:

• Mods should be installed in the order presented. Any deviation from a standard installation will be clearly marked such as removing conflicting files.
• Loose file mods may be separated into conflict groups so they are combined prior to creating the .override for DAO-ModManager.
• The recommended options and/or texture sizes will be specified next to the version number.
• Backup a copy of the original mod archives on your computer in case a mod is ever taken down from the Nexus or you need to reinstall.

Loose File Mods

Each mod listed should be made into its own .override file unless otherwise noted.

Character Creation

Conflicts found for chargenmorph.xml within this section should be ignored as it will be fixed using the CharGenMorph Compiler tool.

More Hairstyles

Author: kzelsama
Version: 0.51
Mod Notes: This mod adds new hairstyles available at character creation. Included are some of Ren's and idkrrr's hairstyles, as well as the Lady of the Forest hair.

Pineappletrees Vibrant Colors

Author: Pineappletree
Version: 1.31
Mod Notes: This adds 48 new hair/eyebrow colors, 40 new skin tones, and 30 new eye colors to the character creator and replaces the 11 eye colors originally shipped with the game.

Face Morphs

Dragon Age Redesigned

Author: Dracomies
Version: 7.3c
Optionals(Via Installers):
Dragon Age Origins / Non-Companion NPCs:

• Dracomies True Textures VI (First Installation)
• Recommended Setting (Second Installation)

Dragon Age Origins/Companion NPCs for Origins/Leliana:

• Leliana Version 11 (Original Hair)

Dragon Age Origins/Companion NPCs for Origins/Morrigan:

• Morrigan Version 15 v2

Dragon Age Origins/Companion NPCs for Origins/Oghren:

• Darkkammi Oghren

Dragon Age Origins/Companion NPCs for Origins/Wynne:

• Wynne Version 6 (Lore Version 2)

Dragon Age Origins/Companion NPCs for Origins/Zevran:

• Zevran Final Version (Lore Version)

Dragon Age DLC- Awakening:

• Recommended Version

Dragon Age DLC- Awakening/Companions:

• Version L - Lore Version

Special Installation: This mod is installed via executable files found in the archives file structure. The install target should be the temporary folder for this group. All executables with the exception of Sten should be installed. After installation, remove the following files:

• ef_bed200_keeper.mor (DA2 Merrill and Marethari is superior)
• ef_bed200_merrill.mor (DA2 Merrill and Marethari is superior)
• hf_har* (Included With More Hairstyles.)
• pn_har* (Included With More Hairstyles.)
• Uninstall*.exe

Mod Notes: This mod will redesign all of the NPCs in Dragon Age to fix skin issues, face proportions, personality mismatches, gender identification, race identification, etc. in an attempt to make each character fit better with the the lore of Dragon Age. This mod makes changes to the NPCs within Dragon Age Origins and it's expansions and DLCs. Many of these were done from scratch as no source files are provided for DLCs and/or expansions and the Dragon Age Toolset was used to replicate and make adjustments to Bioware's original renditions. This project encompasses nearly 1241+ NPCs (within the three versions Lore, Aesthetics and Recommended).
Mod Dependencies:

• More Hairstyles
• Pineappletrees Vibrant Colors

DA2 Merrill and Marethari for DAO

Author: incendiaire
Version: 1.0
Mod Notes: This mod changes the facial morph and clothes of Merrill and Marethari to look like their Dragon Age 2 counterparts. Mod Dependencies:

• Dragon Age Redesigned
• Kirkwall Exports

Fix Mods

Clothed Prisoners

Author: danscott84
Version: 2.0
Optionals: King Cailan Clothed, Ser Friden, Sick Ostagar Soldiers
Mod Notes: When using mods such as Natural Bodies - All In One to fix the underwear issues during romance scenes, various prisoners and corpses are naked. This fixes the issue.

Texture Packs

Due to the large number of conflicted files, the mods in this group should be extracted into the same temporary folder before being made into a .override. For example:

Temp
 Mod A
  files
 Mod B
  files
 Mod C
  files

After extraction, use Beyond Compare to delete any conflicting files from mods previously installed in this group. Use the "Diffs - No Orphans" view with the file structure flattened via the "Flatten/Ignore Folder Structure" option to accomplish this.

JB3 Textures

Author: reative
Version: 3.1
Optionals: Armors, Creatures, Environments, and Props
Mod Notes: This mod gives the game new, resized textures (Using fractal method, fake HDR and my own photoshop methods) and many textures are reworked.

Retextured items for DAO

Author: Elelith
Version: Latest (9/2/2014)
Optionals: Environment
Mod Notes: This mod gives the game new, worked from the ground up textures for various objects in the game.

Lady of the Forest and Desire Demon Retextures

Warning! This mod contains nudity.
Author: DariusBlack
Version: Latest
Mod Notes: This mod retextures the Lady of the Forest and Desire Demon to the default intent, removing the obvious censorship to get a lower game rating.

Override Mods

Natural Bodies - All In One

Warning! This mod contains nudity.
Author: NewByPower, adriangi, Rebel o Conner, Horrid, Gray and mutantspicy
Version: 3.0
Special Installation: After installation, remove the override/NBaio/Qunari Male folder to fix compatibility with Qunari Update.
Mod Notes: Resculps the various bodies in the game to a better shape and makes them naked when wearing no clothes because love scenes with undies in the way offend my sensibilities.

DAZIP Mods

Armor and Clothing

Kirkwall Exports

Author: Amycus
Version: 2,17
Mod Notes: This ports the armors from Dragon Age 2 to the original game. The armors can be obtained via scripts found in the mods description or used by NPCs via other mods.

Character Mods

Qunari Update

Author: temp7704
Version: 04/19/2011 (dazip)
Mod Notes: This mod replaces default models of the Kossith race (better known as the Qunari) matching appearance from DA2.

Final Steps

TBD

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