DSLOA Map Transfer Mod
Beta V2.2
July 17, 2004
by Irwin Ryan
(irwinryan@pacific.net.au)
I. Introduction
There are two small dsres that make up this mod that will allow you to turn Regular/SP mode
into Veteran or Elite modes. The advantage of this is that you can play singleplayer campaigns
on them and save your game at any time. This feature works for Legends of Aranna, Kingdom of Ehb,
Legends of Utrae V2.0 & Utraean Peninsula (Singleplayer in the UP World can only be accessed
through DSLOAMod, but after then all games can be saved & loaded as normal). You can even
recruit all of the old recruitable characters at levels appropriate to the mode they are in.
ie, Ulora is normally recruited at level 1, in Veteran she'll be level 56, in Elite she'll
be level 86 and in Xtreme she'll be level 106.
There is also a Xtreme mode, which comes after Elite, and it works for Kingdom of Ehb & Utraean
Peninsula. Xtreme mode is based on the Siege Addon for the Utraean Peninsula by Dave Beckett ,
and will not be updated to work with the other two maps as it is, quite frankly, not fun for me
to play due to the ridiculous bug in singleplayer games where your characters drop all of their
items on death (and you will die, heaps, if you play this mode, you were warned).
By itself this feature would be worthless as a new character wouldn't last long in one of these
Worlds. However by using DSLOAMod (which is a part of the Dungeon Siege Toolkit V1.5, 1.6 or 1.7)
you can transfer your party from the end of the normal singleplayer game into the beginning of
the modified World where you can continue playing & building up your party. You can even import
multiple mp characters into a singleplayer game and play with them.
The ability to transfer their singleplayer parties into other maps has long been of great interest
to many players. Normally you can only transfer one character into the multiplayer mode of Dungeon Siege if you want to continue playing with them. While the ability to use DSMod & now DSLOAMod
to transfer parties from map to map has long been known and tried, flaws in the retail maps makes
this extremely difficult to do for most players so they give up attempting to achieve this.
In Legends of Utrae, I was able to get the DSLOAMod method working with 100% reliability by
removing the cause of the item mismatch errors which generally cause games saved under
DSLOAMod to be unable to be loaded in the retail version. The problem was debugging objects
called development path points which are only used by DSLOAMod, but are ignored by the
retail version of the Engine. However these development path points are still saved in
saved games as objects, but are unable to be loaded in the retail build as it doesn't
recognize them, these causing an item mismatch error.
This mod basically removes all the development path points from the retail maps so that DSLOAMod
now works correctly, as well as adding extra content so that players will be playing a close
copy of Veteran & Elite Modes. Otherwise the maps would be too easy & boring to play.
This version adds a fix so that the Kindgom of Ehb campaign saves/loads normally. There was a
command called cmd_report_gameplay_screen_player that also causes an item mismatch error.
It is unfortunate that Dungeon Siege was released before it was ready as the map bugs
also severely inhibit stability and optimization of the retail maps. My development version
of Legends of Utrea is approximately 10-20% faster than the retail map it was based on and
is more stable (players who had problems with the retail maps report no problems with LOU).
II. Requirements
Dungeon Siege Toolkit v1.5 or 1.6
III. Installation
As there are two dsres files included in this zip which are incompatible with each other,
I recommend that you unzip this zip into a special folder or use a mod manager.
Then just move the appropriate dsres into the DSLOA folder found where you installed the
game (ie, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Dungeon Siege\DSLOA ).
If you want to turn Regular mode into Veteran mode, use Veteran.dsres
If you want to turn Regular mode into Elite mode use Elite.dsres
If you have a death wish, try turning Regular mode into Xtreme mode by using Xtreme.dsres
Make sure that only one of these dsres files are loaded at any one time.
IV. Removal
Just delete or move either veteran.dsres, elite.dsres or xtreme.dsres
V. Compatibility & Known Issues
If you have any of these dsres present in the DSLOA folder, it'll either prevent you from
playing multiplayer games or cause serious issues (unless everyone happens to have the same
file present, just like any mod).###Carefull here, it may allow you to join multiplayer games
and thus crashing the server.
It'll cause problems if you have more than 1 dsres present at the same time. If you remove a
dsres, your game will eventually revert to a regular type game.
If you disband a party member in a map other than the one you recruited them in, then it
may be difficult to rehire them later if you find that you made a mistake.
You can import characters in from any saved game from Legends of Utrea v2.0, Kingdom of Ehb
and Legends of Aranna, and quite possibly other sp games as well (their templates must exist
somewhere that the game can find them and they may lose items or features if the relevant
resources aren't present where the game can find them-ie DS revived & Elys succubus). Characters
imported in from games other than Legends of Utrae v2.0 won't have the enhanced features.
While you can import at least some characters in from Legends of Utrae v1.0, there may be
problems as I couldn't test all of them at all stages of the game and they may not benefit from
the enhanced features of the new characters. The same goes for importing mp characters into the
game.
It is very important to note that if you have extracted the files making up any of the retail
maps by using Siege Editor, then this mod won't work as DSLOAMod will read any files located in
the Dungeon Siege or Dungeon Siege LOA folders located in My Documents, as well as the files
located in the game's folder (and the files in My Documents will take precedent over this mod).
If you have altered any of the files extracted by Siege Editor in the bits folder located
under My Documents/Dungeon Siege, then this mod will probably crash the game (but so then will
any mod loaded if you attempt to use DSLOAMod)
If you use this mod with Legends of Utrae, there will be hitches in certain regions, as that
map is more complex than the other three and uses a different method for the character transfer.
I haven't tested any other LOA mods with this one, but they should work as long as they don't try
to modify any of the map files. Generally if DSLOAMod finds something on one of your characters
that isn't supported by any mods you have currently loaded, it'll still allow you to load the
character but delete the faulty item.
This mod also hasn't been extensively tested in all maps to make sure that everything works.
To do so by myself would take an eternity for 4 supported maps and 10 potential modes of play!
There may be special encounters & triggers that may not work. Don't hesitate to let me know if
you find a bug that you think is caused by this mod.
VI. Transferring Parties & Characters via DSLOAMod
1. Have a saved game of the party with a simply name like Transfer (complex names & the time
stamp complicates things)
2. Copy the appropriate dsres into the DSLOA folder (ie veteran.dsres for veteran mode)
3. Start DSLOAMod (found in start/programs/dungeon siege toolkit). Please note that some mods may
cause the program to complain or even abort loading, giving out GPCore Error Failure notices.
If possible just click on Ignore Always and continue on. If it fails, you may need to remove
a mod/s until it works.
4. Start a new game & select Legends of Utrae V2.0, Legends of Aranna or the Utraean Peninsula
(It shouldn't really matter about the character though some players recommend using the same
character as that of your saved game hero).
5. Your character appears at the normal starting position in the map.
6. Press the tilde key (~) which is the key that's to the left of the #1 Key
7. Now point your mouse cursor on a large, empty, flat part of the ground. It is important to
note that the new party will appear where the mouse cursor is pointing. So don't point the
mouse cursor at a building or steep gradient. Problems could occur.
7. Type this: PARTY LOAD TRANSFER.dssave (doesn't have to be capitals) & press Enter
8. DSLOAMod may give out an Error or Message at this stage if it finds anything abnormal on any
of the characters but should still load them properly, minus the incorrect items.
9. Press the tilde key (~) again to close the console and save the game as normal (even a quick
save is okay). Exit the game.
10. Start a new game using the normal DSLOA shortcut and load the game you just saved and your
old party will be there ready to continue on the adventure in a new map difficulty (as long
as the dsres is present)
To transfer a multiplayer character just use the character's name followed by the .dsparty
extension, ie; PARTY LOAD CHARACTERNAME.dsparty
If there are any spaces between words in your characters name they must be eliquidated ( lord
boceifus kane would be renamed to lordboceifuskane)( you can do this in the my documents/ dungeon
seige (directory) And if there's a time stamp that must go as well.
To create a party of multiplayer characters use PARTY ADD instead of PARTY LOAD. You can continue
doing this until a full party is made up.
VII. Possibilities
This feature can be used in many ways. You can transfer characters in from anywhere. You can
repeat map modes multiple times if you wish. You probably can use this with the normal
Dungeon Siege exe & DSMod as well. However you will be restricted to the Utraean Peninsula and
Kingdom of Ehb, and there will be errors reported by DSMod (just click on ignore all).
VIII. Credits.
Thanks to the following who discovered all of this, and anyone else who contributed to the forums
where all of this was first discussed;
Killermondoduke
Xaa
Witness
Locust222
Dave Beckett
