User:Neovalen/Origins Revisited - Ultimate Edition

Origins Revisited: Ultimate Edition
A STEP hosted mod guide created and maintained by Neovalen.
Last Update: 5:58:20 6 September 2014 (UTC)

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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.

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 frame buffer effects 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.

Using DAO-ModManager and Resolving Conflicts

In Dragon Age: Origins (hereby referred to as 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.