Day: November 6, 2009

DA:O Toolset Installation problems for Steam/Impulse users

Posted on by Nimgimli

If you bought Dragon Age: Origins digitally you may encounter problems installing the Toolset. Bioware is working the problem, but in the meanwhile here’s what I did to get it installed.

Run the installer. The problem happens while installing MS SQL Server, and specifically while configuring it. You’ll encounter an error with an ignore/retry prompt. Leave that floating on screen.

Open:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dragon age origins\tools\toolssql\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Install\sysdbupg.sql
(substituting paths as required; I did this on Windows 7 Home 64-bit)

Search for:

SELECT @certificate_name = QUOTENAME(@certificate_name, ””)

and replace the line with:

SELECT @certificate_name = ”” + REPLACE(@certificate_name, ””, ”””) + ”’

Now hit Retry. You will probably get a new error along the lines of “Unable to Create database.”

Now open:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dragon age origins\tools\toolssql\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Data

and delete these files:
temp_MS_AgentSigningCertificate_database.mdf
temp_MS_AgentSigningCertificate_database_log.LDF
if they exist.

Finally go back to your installer and click on Retry again.

The installation *should* proceed smoothly. If it doesn’t, check the error logs in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dragon age origins\tools\toolssql\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\LOG
to see if you can tell what’s tripping things up.

There’s also a problem where the installer tries to write the uninstall.exe file to the wrong directory. Haven’t found a fix for that yet, but hitting Ignore lets you finish the installation and run the tools. Might mean some manual registry cleaning some day when you uninstall the tools though.

More details can be found here:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/8/index/109796/1

and here:
http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Installation_with_Steam

I tested this on my Steam install but forum denizens say it works for Impulse as well.

[Updated the steps to take out a shortcut that may have been causing problems (see comments.)]

Dragon Age Do-over

Posted on by Nimgimli

Well after a lot of consideration I decided to restart Dragon Age, replacing my Human/Noble/Warrior with a Human/Noble/Rogue. “Gillain” is a character I created over 20 years ago. He’s a fairly typical charming rogue. Not an outright thief but not above conning a rich man out of his coin. A bit Robin Hoodish, I guess. And he fights with dual weapons. Long ago it was dual axes but these days it’s dual anything. So I created him in Dragon Age tonight.

My first character was a Dual-Wielding Warrior, and I dunno… it just seemed silly to not go sword and board with a warrior, but I love the idea of a whirling dervish of twin bladed death /hyperbole.

I did learn the bonus/dlc rings and things appear for every character, so that was good news.

I thought I’d just whip through the opening moments of the game and catch up, but once again I got engrossed with talking to people and (re)reading the codex. The conversations were different enough to be interesting a second time through.

If you play a Noble, at least the Warrior or Rogue, your first quest is to go talk to your brother, who is saying goodbye to his wife and son (he’s headed out on campaign). Once you find him and do the ‘forced’ conversation, be sure to talk to his son before you leave the room. The kid is a hoot!

And here was a surprise. I was messing with Tactics and just seeing how my party would fight based on my limited understanding of the Tactics system and… my party wiped! Mind you I had a ton of poultices, I just wasn’t paying attention. But the Warrior waltzed through those early encounters on auto-pilot. So either the Rogue is a lot squishier, or my tactics were horribly broken. 🙂

I continue to be amused (and at times slightly disappointed) by the amount of gore in the game. Here is me and my trusty hound Milo after we killed a few rats. Lots of blood in rats, apparently!

rat_killers