Extract DAO Resources and Maps

Extract DAO Resources and Maps Okay I spent over two days reading countless of DAO wiki pages in order to find out how to get and edit DA files in order to create my own mod with custom content and let me say it was extremely difficult... At least for those who have never worked with Biowares file types before. The Wiki pages suck, it so not straight forward and easy for a noob to use... Anyway I will take the time to share what I learnt... You will of course need to have installed the Dragon Age Toolset in order to mod Dragon Age... The way to extract DA resources is to use ErfEditor.exe and .erf files, located Dragon Age folder. ErfEditor.exe \\Program Files\\Dragon Age\\tools .erf files \\Program Files\\Dragon Age\\packages\\core\\data I got confused by . xls and .erf file types when figuring out where they are... but the game resources are in the .erf files. (DAO Wiki makes it confusing). First I copied the text name of the file I was going to extract and created a folder with the same name on my desktop and then proceed to extract the files. I did it this way because if I tried to extract the files and then created a folder for the files to extract them too, for some reason all the files wouldnt copy and came up with errors for each of them, and then a second try once the folder was created, it worked. Using windows 7 with two file pages on each side (data folder and tools folder pages) made this process go a lot faster... Anyway I dragged and drop the .erf file I want to extract to onto the ErfEditor.exe, I then highlight and selected all the files in the program and right clicked and said “Extract All Resources” to the folder I created on my desktop and there you go... hope that made sense... Okay now for the maps... those are located in the gui.erf file... I was using Photoshop CS4 with the nvidia plugin to view the .dds file formats... http://developer.nvidia.com/objec/photoshop_dds_plugins.html A map tutorial on how to create your own map and get it into Dragon Age... http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Map_tutorial I am currently creating my own Dragon Age Module, and will supply my resources I am using for you to use and explore for use in your own modules... Included as an awesome bonus is a massive HD DAO Map, it is different to the one used in game but I think that is because it was created before they created game and needed to make a few changes for it to work in game... To view my .psd file you will need Photoshop CS4 or higher with ... The HD map is .jpg format and the Game Maps are in .dds format so you will need the Photoshop nvidia plugin to view those files... Happy modding and if you have questions I will try to help you out as best I can... XD