#DAV Tutorial

[flowersforthemachines]

Giving your Rook a custom name for the subtitles in 5 minutes - A modding tutorial

The tutorial is also available on Nexusmods as a PDF-file, and as a Google Doc.

Hidden under the read more for length, but it's actually super easy! Anyone can do it following instructions, I promise!

The guide assumes you’ve already installed Frosty Mod Editor, so I won’t be covering its basic set-up. If it’s your first time using the Editor, please refer to this guide by Gabbet. Gabbet's guide may look somewhat intimidating, but to prepare for my tutorial, you’ll only need its “Frosty Editor Download & Installation” section.

Open the Mod Editor and navigate to View >> Localized String Editor

2. Once you open the Localized String Editor, click on the leftmost column inside it, input the following string ID: "0002F709" (without the "") and press Enter. It should display one search result that says “Rook”. 

3. Click on the line in the search results to make it appear in the column to the right. There, erase “Rook” and type in your custom name using your keyboard. In this tutorial, I’m using “Ghilasara” as an example. 

4. Once you finish typing your custom name, click “Update” to save the result.

That will refresh the line’s contents in the search results.

You’ve made all the necessary edits, and your mod is now ready to be exported :) 

5. In the Editor’s main window, click on File > Export to Mod

Feel free to fill in the contents of the pop-up window as you see fit. Note that the first line, “Title” will be the name under which your mod displays in the Mod Manager. I named mine “Rook to Ghilsara” to make it easy to find in case I need to remove it or turn it off. 

And, that’s that! All you have left to do is to import your mod into the Mod Manager. 

[pinkyjulien]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

▶ Extracting Files - Pre-Tools Guide

A quick and dirty guide on how to browse and extract DAV's files as of November 2024 without proper modding tools! Using the publicly available WIP tools: - Frostebite Modding Tools "FMT" - FrostyToolSuite

[tblsomedoodles]

Priorities are had lol.

i can't say i've played a lot of veilguard but here's some sillies for the beginning of it anyways. b/c, ngl, i kinda wanna see what exactly would happen if Solas took down the veil. But if he had actually killed Verric i would have quit then and there.

[peteyashiro]

Diferent universe, diferent hair,same Sarah

[nightolmaster]

Here are Instructions of how to make your own Paper Pilot Pug-Plane and Krazy Kopter with George and Harold. I've mention this in my latest videos, but not Krazy Kopter. Also, I didn’t mention Goofy Gliders because it was never finished.

[oopsallmabari]

sorry i'm gonna whine on combat some more (acknowledgment that this is a me thing) also assuming based on this that we won't be able to control companion actions during fights? like. for the new type of combat does it make sense to only/mostly rely on NPC AI for fighting and hopefully that does help me if i SUCK ASS at combat but. :( i liked the prev games' combat mostly because i could usually auto-hit in some fashion it was just a matter of me being strategic about technique and insta-pausing to reassess/move out the way

there is at least some combat pausing for rook and i'll def reserve final judgment till i play i just. what if we made video games for people like me who like story but are bad at gaming :((((

[esseastri]

TALYA TALYA TALYA TALYA TALYAAAAAA LOOK AT HER!!!!!! LOOOOOK!!!!!

Hi everyone, here's Tetalya Mercar, the shortest, most sarcastic human in existence, with absolutely no sense of self-preservation.

And yes, I am a basic bitch and I will be romancing Lucanis with a Tevinter mage.

[girlbob-boypants]

Friend and I were playing FW and we spent two hours not even playing and just talking about stuff like how natural the animations and expressions feel alsjskf

[dalishious]

Just curious for your take so far, but the majority of critique of DAV seems to be about the tone of character dialogue and that it feels “homogenized, safe, like tutorial writing” and “sterilized, typical of writing like Starfield” and that characters almost treat Rook like a child, nothing overly dark, confrontational or edgy is ever said, and dicy aspects of slavery and religion in the setting is almost swept under the bed most of the time. That “the dialogue is treated as a vehicle for the game rather than to immerse you” And that it’s a far cry from the political intensity of DA2. Wondering on your further thoughts on this once you finish the game.

I have never played Starfield so I can't compare it. But I see nothing wrong with the dialogue for the most part. I've only encountered a couple of scenes that were kinda cringe.

Without spoiling anything, I really don't know where the "there's nothing dark" crowd is coming from. There is plenty of dark shit.

However, it is indeed not anywhere near as politically intense as DA:2 so far.

[isitfurbait]

In celebration for the release of the trailer for new Dog Man movie (and with how adorable Dog Man looks), now would be the best time to feature the equally adorable Petey on this account…right?

(Posts I should have put out a month ago)

So. My main job at this point is to help students with disabilities learn, and one way they seem very motivated to read is Dog Man comics. As a result, I have read these comics that I would have shelved, thinking "Ah, somebody probably likes this, but not me. Never got into that Captain Underpants stuff." And so, I have read about this third-dimensional character and how his life changes from his bite-sized clone of himself, who is like him, but with a better upbringing as a child. Not to spoil what future movie sequels there may be, but he (main text, not subtext) essentially shares joint custody of Li'l Petey with his nemesis, and genuinely starts to meet halfway.

It should not be a surprise that the furbait guy put on a joyful queer reading of a text of a children's graphic novel series with an anthropomorphic character or two (More on Dog Man, himself, one day). I'm not going to mind one way or the other if Dav Pilkey weighs in on this ruling, but I will contest it. Petey is furbait. He's a very intelligent cat in a world of normal humans, just to be an antagonist of a very fun world where surgically putting a dog's head on a man's body is a feasible medical procedure.

Sorry for the large block of text. I needed a venue to share how much I really like these books and appreciated Pilkey for putting them out in the first place. I also appreciate him offering drawing tutorials of all his characters in the back of the books so children can feel like they can contribute with art toward the world at large.

[city-of-heavenly-heartbreaks]

I realized something very important today - I'm a grown adult with free will and money to spend on things I don't need.

Just a couple of days ago, I was feeling very down about my lack of artistic skills, so I thought, why not just learn to draw? Duh. So today, I went ahead and purchased a cheap drawing tablet for my computer, watched a couple YouTube tutorials, and I've officially drawn...a blank head! It took me 4 hours to complete, between figuring out the program and getting frustrated every five minutes, but I still did it! I might have a breakdown if I have to give it a face tonight, so we're sticking with the blank mannequin head for now 😂

I really want this to turn into my current Rook in DAV, but I'm also terrified to mess her up. We'll see what happens!

Update: I decided to give her some hair! Also my reference photo for the ✨️vision✨️

[flowersforthemachines]

Masculine Casual Outfits For All - Mod

As I mentioned in one of the recent useless facts, all casual outfits have Masculine and Feminine models that are applied depending on the body type you chose in the character creation. This mod removes the Feminine alternate appearances from the game, making all Rooks wear the masculine versions of the outfits.

(in the previews, left is the feminine version, and right is the masculine version of each outfit)

Available on Nexusmods

[chilliadew]

i had a dream that i was playing dav (sad) and it moved like a mobile game and the tutorial level was collecting little shiny silver star like things with sera and summoning a sea creature with a pink wig…

i think im ready for the real thing…

[sapphim]

sorry to bother - im trying to figure out how to work with plot flags in frosty editor for dav, and i know you 1. made the bi cassandra mod (my beloved) 2. make modding tutorials. any chance of seeing a tutorial for how you did it? only if it wouldnt be too much trouble!

Well believe it or not, I didn't make Bi Cass in Frosty. I made it with DAI Modding Tool and a hex editor. I don't recommend it. ;)

While the details change between games, the general structure of a conversation (child or linked lines, conditions, actions) really doesn't, so I am going to recommend you check out the first two parts of my Dialogue Modding Tutorial. It was written specifically for Origins and DA2 but the basic overview is largely applicable.

The exact structure of plot flags IS something that differs slightly between the Eclipse engine games and Frostbite games, although their purpose is still the same. Iirc plot flags in Inq and Andromeda each have their own GUID (unique identifier) rather than being a GUID+int pair. They also have counters, sometimes, rather than always being boolean (true/false). And a lot of the time rather than referencing individual plot flags, conversations will reference plot schematics, which are a separate file that can compare the results of multiple flags and other variables. They're a lot like defined flags in the Eclipse games.

Uhhhh in my limited experience making romance mods for Inq and Andromeda, the exact plot flags and plot schematics involved were all very easy to work with, mostly with human readable names and everything, which is always a plus. Other plot flags were uhhhhhhhhhh not always nearly so nice, so it's kind of luck of the draw there.

I don't know if there is anything of use to you in these two other asks I've answered about Frostbite modding but I'll link them anyway just in case: On dialogue modding, and on war table missions. (I never did end up writing that tutorial I mentioned in that one post because I quit Frostbite modding shortly after. Nothing against Frosty editor, however, it's a very good tool and easy to work with.)

If you need any other specific help with Frosty or Veilguard, your best bet is going to be found on Discord. I have links to some servers in my pinned faq.

[kaija-rayne-author]

Review 2 in series for Dragon Age Veilguard

Spoilers for Veilguard

First part of review series is below.

I'm not an asshole disclaimer (same as the first one, if you read that, you can just skip down to the cut.)

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I'm on media blackout while I play this, so I'm only getting second-hand info on how awful it is right now in the DA Fandom. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

9 hours in, 7 hours playtime.

Negative review

While I'm incredibly grateful that I can play this game, because I really hope the story actually starts soon, (yes, I said it, the pacing on this is terrible, and I'm both an editor and a writer, I have a clue). I hate to say... I am soooo glad I didn't buy it. Or I'd be demanding a refund. I didn’t actually look at the price tag, but it must’ve been around $80 Canadian. Given our cost of living crisis, that's obscene but whatever. Games are expensive.

It's just not worth that much in its current state. Sure. Games on release often have bugs. I kinda hate spending money to be an unpaid beta tester. BG3 had nowhere near as many.

My computer comes down right around the middle of the minimum and recommended specs. DA4 doesn't even make it get hot like BG3 makes it. So I'm really thinking glitchy game vs computer issues. Considering I'm not the only one it's happening to... welp. (I looked the glitch up, it's pretty common.)

5 out of 10 loads, my character glitches back to the stock elf body. And if I continue playing, it corrupts my saves and they won't load. It has also happened mid-battle, too. So I have to figure out which save to go back to before the glitch bit. Which, without pics in the save files is fun /s.

'Balanced' play isn’t. I play on tactician/hard in most games. I'm on balanced, and keep fucking dying. TBH I'm not extremely awesome with the controls and moves yet, but I'm not bad either. I honestly just think the bad guys are too overpowered (way too fast, hit too hard, and it takes too long to break their armour) for beginning levels. And yes, I have my Rook in the best armour I currently have. Maybe if I could carry more than 3 potions, it wouldn't matter as much, but IDEK man.

And you know what isn't actually any fun in games? Dying a lot. Also? Having to drop my difficulty level for regular bad guys less than ten hours into the game. It's still teaching me moves ffs, so is sorta the tutorial. I'm not a 'get gud' type. I think that's ridiculous. Gaming is supposed to be fun. If it makes it more fun to drop the level for a boss fight or whatever, more power to you. But I usually don't have to until end-game material. If I have to at all. It's honestly pretty rare. Load time is ridiculous, so every time an over-powered not-a-fucking-darkspawn slams my rogue (which I swear shouldn't be possible, I know how to fight with rogues, they're my first and favourite class), I get creamed because I'm bloody stuck in a place I shouldn't get stuck in.

I know they had testing on this. Wasn't that why the date was pushed back? My memory isn't great since COVID but I think I might’ve seen that somewhere.

Solavellans will likely be disappointed in the first seven hours. You see Solas twice. He may as well not even be in the game.

And I really hate to say this, but I'm just bored. I wasn’t itching to play it like I usually am with good games. (If a game catches me up, it's about the only thing I want to do.) I still loaded it up tonight, didn’t have anything better to do. (Because I'd probably have done that instead.) I'm mostly playing so I know what happens in the story myself. And I was hoping we'd get some answers to all this lore that lives in my head, rent free. So, whatever, I'm still hoping it will catch me up. I'll keep playing in hopes we actually get something resembling a story at some point soon.

And the number of editorial errors is ridiculous. Both developmental and copy.

'Cause bodies can't decompose in the Anderfels? Because nothing external lives there? Granted, I have specialized knowledge there (former forensic anthropologist) but, that isn't remotely how decomp works.

Does your 3 week old raw hamburger not rot because it was in a cold, dark place without any external decomposers? (My 17 year old knew the correct answer to that, so did my 12 year old.)

The primary forms of humanoid/mammalian decomposition come from inside us. Bugs don't even start showing up for a bit. Why do you think bodies bloat? Our gut bacteria going wild. Why do you think bodies are routinely embalmed? No bugs (usually) in a funeral home or morgue either.

And y'know? I actually outright told Epler on Twitter (before it went to complete hell) that he needed a better editor or 4 after playing DAI. And DAV already has more editorial issues than I noticed in the whole first half of DAI. Way to prove my point.

I'm an exacting editor. I'm pretty good at it. And I don't expect perfection in anything. Perfectionism is a trauma response, after all. But so many errors so soon? Really?

I'm not even getting into the story issues. Because I'm still hoping we actually, y'know, get to a story? And if I'm really lucky? That story will cover some of the glaring errors.

But so far? I'm not impressed. I've never, since I started playing DA games, been fucking bored.

Next one is here:

[pinkyjulien]

Hello Pinkie! Thanks for your amazing tutorial documents on Frosty. Thanks to you I actually got sound file extraction for DAV working. 🙏 In the extracting files tutorial you mentioned where music can be extracted. Now I've been searching long and wide for the player character's audio - but couldn't find them. Do you have an idea where these NewWaveAssets may be hidden?

Heya!

Aaah I'm glad to here it's useful 🤗 Thank you for your kind words!

If you want to yoink the Voice lines files, I recommend using the search bar in Frosty;

Look up "type:LocalizedWaveAsset"

It should show you all of the folders containing voice files 👌