Dragon Age: Origins Forum

Hi

The Gold ranking is when a game works without any tweaks.

Please check this forum post:
http://www.codeweavers.com/support/forums/advocate/?t=1;msg=64395

In the last post from Caron Jensen, she says:
"I request that any game that requires a tweak of any kind to get running be ranked no higher than Silver"

(edit)
I do believe that the Dragon Age Gold rating needs to be corrected. Since it has these errors
(on the mac):

• install stops on physX (which will confuse newcomers making them think that the game is not playable)
• sound does not work
• certain video clips do not work
• game crashes on full screen and/or higher then low graphic settings

Yes most of these errors can be corrected by tweaks, since one can install physX before installing Dragon Age. Sound can be turned on in the Dragon Age settings.ini file. Video clips will work when installing extra software (don't remember right now, but it might be a mix of installing physX, modern DirectX, and .net3) Game crashes, I have not figured out yet.

If one downloads the 1.04 patch, video will work (right out of the box I believe), but the other problems are still there.

What we need is a C4p file with the tweaks built in. Is this possible?

Nice catch!

I've sent a message to all of the Advocates on this application to review their ranking. I've also requested that our developer who created the c4p review your suggestions.

Cheers!

Great,

Well i added PhysX as a predependency. If you can tell me what other things need to be installed I can add those also.

For patches we can make a c4 entry for the patch also allowing it to have a c4p file to click to install also.

Howdy,

Originally, the gold did always seem a bit optimistic to me. However, there are two main reasons I went with the gold ranking. 1) Other, more senior, advocates had already submitted this ranking and as a new advocate I did not want to rock the boat without due cause. 2) As per the medals page, the description for the gold and silver are all but the same save for the difference of "minor bugs" or "bugs that prevent them from running flawlessly." Also, I had read elsewhere that Wine/Cross Over is an imperfect product. So, taking this ambiguity along with the fact that using the C4P as it was at the time of my last testing, the game installed and ran fine with only a few minor changes to an .ini file (something I have done when running games under Windows in the past), gold seemed like the fitting ranking with the information that I had available to me at the time.

Anyway, I will likely change my ranking down to silver, as despite the possible ambiguity on the medal description's page the idea of a silver rating compared a gold rating more accurately reflects the subjective state of how well DAO works under Cross Over Games currently (on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS).

However, I would like to suggest that the medals page. Or something other than a buried forum post be readily available to new and old advocates that are trying to be as accurate as possible in their rankings (as I definitely put some thought into this, and didn't just willy nilly rank it as gold). Ideally, something like the quote you linked to should be added (in some form or another) to the medal page itself for clarification and centralization of the information.

Thanks for bringing this up. If I get a chance I'll reinstall from scratch and then reevaluate my rank.

Cheers,
daemox

Aric Stewart wrote:

Great,

Well i added PhysX as a predependency. If you can tell me what
other things need to be installed I can add those also.

For patches we can make a c4 entry for the patch also allowing it
to have a c4p file to click to install also.

I'm not sure if the C4P can do any or all of these but this is what I needed to get a nearly flawless setup with DAO (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS x64, Cross Over Games 9.1.0).

1) HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D/UseGLSL = "enabled" (also see Tips & Tricks)
2) No Sound Trick (from Tips & Tricks)
3) Little graphics tricks (from Tips & Tricks)
4) I also had to enable voices in the in game UI or the .ini as the audio as a whole was working, but the voices were set to 0 by default.
5) There was probably one or two other little things I did, but I no longer recall.

Thanks,
daemox

Sorry but my idea of Gold is NOT having to make any changes to the game to have it run. I would say this is true about games I buy on CD/DVD. If I have to change anything to make it run, I'm not talking about my preference for video/audio settings. If the game doesn't run "out of the box" then it doesn't run. If the major graphics in the game don't run even at the lowest setting (aren't visible, jumps past them, etc) then the game isn't gold.

The highest it could get would be Silver.

Sure CodeWeavers is an imperfect products. Don't get me started on Windows here as for imperfect products. CodeWeavers is at a lot higher quality here.

Dragon Age needs to be dropped to Silver at the highest.

I agree. Silver is the highest Dragon Age should get. Geek/nerd tweaking does not count for making it gold.

Dragon Age deserves no higher ranking than Silver. All that is telling me is the people saying it should be gold are fan boys of Dragon Age.

Keep in mind the audience CodeWeavers is trying to impress. And that is people who don't or won't run Windows but they are looking for ways to run games that are only available for Windows or the performance for their OS is pathetic.

Gold = "working out of the box". If you have to tweak ANYTHING it is not gold.
Silver = There are annoyances in the game "out of the box" but it will still run.
Bronze (yes to me) means that you "have" to tweak things outside the game to make it work.
Below that is anything that, even after tweaking it, still runs crappy.

Gold is not the correct rank by a long shot. While the game will run it is not without bugs. Including the fact that the add-on installer does not work. Errors During install.

I gave it Silver in 9.0.

I really should update to 9.1 soon.

Ok i updated the C4P to set the UseGLSL key automatically on install.

I see a range of dependencies listed in areas (some people saying DirectX or .Net or Visual C++ 2008)
what is needed and I can add it.

Great to hear that the C4p file is being adjusted!

From the Thread: Dragon Age Origins 'PhysX'.

1. create a new xp bottle
2. install DirectX modern
3. install .net framework 3.0
4. install the Visual C++ 2008
5. manually install the PhysX file

From: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx-9.10.0513-driver.html (this is the newest driver) a slightly older
http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.1112.html

6. install Dragon Age

open the DragonAge.ini file and set SoundDisabled=0
The file is at /home/{yourname}/.cxgames/{yourbottle}/drive_c/users/crossover/My Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age/Settings/, at least in Linux. Also a similar place on the mac.

And that's it! It's running perfectly in CXG 9.0.0b4. All the movies, all the audio, not constrained to low graphic details, not constrained to any resolution. Definitely a Silver, only because of the installation difficulty.

I have not tested this exact setup yet on my mac but a similar one.
Having the C4p automatically installing the xp bottle, directx modern, .net 3 framework, visual c ++ 2008, physx file, and if possible adjusting the SoundDisabled = 1 to 0 will help tremendously to get this game to work as it should.

With the 1.04 update I will need to do some more experimenting. But it should be similar to the one above.

Ok the new c4p file now does steps 1-6 for you.

So that will help things. Unfortunately right now we cannot modify the ini for you. So that will still have to be done by hand.

If you could test that would be greatly appreciated.

Aric you might not be at work since it is past 5pm Minneapolis/St Paul time but I noticed an error came up with installing the new C4p file.

I am getting a runtime error with the C4p installing Visual C ++
The game is playable but it is difficult to close the error and it comes up again, so I would suggest leaving the C4p file as it was, and I'll do some more testing, and give feedback here on the forum. I would also suggest for others to do the same. We can use a part of the weekend testing.

R6034
an application has made an attempt to load the C runtime library incorrectly....

So I suggest making a change to the reinstalled programs, but I will need to do some additional testing before it is added to the c4p file.

.NET 3.0,
DirectX Modern,
Visual C++ 2005, then 2008,
MSXML 3 then 6,
and physX

I'll do some more testing on Sunday.

That looks great.

This URI always points to the latest PhysX: NVIDIA PhysX System Software

Maybe some day C4P can crawl that page, find the A tag that contains IMG[alt="Download"], and automatically download the newest version 😀

Silver is about as high as it should go. There are very few gold labeled software for a reason: with drm and other fixes needed, there is only a few that deserve gold status. I would say maybe WOW or source, but Dragon Age is a nono.

The change to the C4p file I suggested which you added to the file might work better on Linux then on a Mac.

I would suggest to include in the c4p file:
Modernx and physx as a start and we will test out additional software.

Here is another recipe for Dragon Age (thanks Mike). I tried it again this weekend and from what I have seen it works pretty well.

.NET 3.0,
DirectX Modern,
Visual C++ 2005, then 2008,
MSXML 3 then 6,

---when installing version 6 I received the message "A lower version of this product has been detected on your system. Would you like to upgrade your existing installation?" Press yes for the installation of 6 to finish.--- It requires a username I just pressed space.

and PhysX (in that order)
installed the newest version 9.10.0224.

Audio configure utility
The Configuration Utility works with this setup. One can actually change the Audio and uncheck the Disable Sound (no need to adjust the settings.ini to turn on sound since this is unchecked.)

Video configure utility
If Vertical Sync and Frame-Buffer Effects are on, they will make some of the interactive video clips blurred. So uncheck these.

If graphics are on medium it will make the game lag, but it looks nicer. You might need to turn it to low.

The above setup works with Dragon Age 1.0

I installed the 1.04 patch and received the visual c++ error. The game did not start.
I will need to do some more testing with 1.04 patch. I have installed the above except Visual C ++ 2005 and 2008 and it seemed to work.

Greetings,

I have yet to give my ranking. I would give the game the ranking platinum. Why? It's rather simple!

When I first tried to run Dragon Age, I failed miserably. So, I searched this forum, and voila, I stumbled upon the c4p file. At first, I did not know what it did, and frankly, my expectations were not too high. However, I simply opened the .c4p file, put in the CD, and I waited. It indeed took a while to finish, and it crashed at the hand. For a moment, my hopes were shattered and I was about to curse myself for buying the product. Fortunately, however, not many seconds later, the App did its job and I got the .app I needed.
I merely double-clicked the .app and I played the game for days. WITHOUT. A. SINGLE. ERROR.
No graphical errors, no cutscene error, nothing. It worked like a BLAST.

I used (and still use) a 27" iMac from mid 2010.
I set the graphic detail to mid/high. (It lagged a little on high.)

So..
That's my story.
I thank whoever made the .c4p file, and I thank Codeweavers for making this product.

Best regards,
Vulpone

Frans, that's fantastic news. And I would not begrudge your choosing Gold for DA:O.

I think the overall ranking should be Silver. But if individual cases result in Gold, well, it's a bonus! When most of the individual reports (for the newest CXG version) are Gold, then the app itself should be Gold too.

Sorry but I you have to make ONE single change to get everything to work, it is automatically Silver at best.

Gold should ONLY mean that everything works, "out of the box".

Platinum should ONLY mean that not only does everything work out of the box but it works far better than advertised or could be possibly be expected. Anything less than that is not platinum.

I'm not sure I would even go with Silver.

AFAIK, none of the DLC content works properly, you can't download it in game and even if you can copy it over from a windows install it wont authorize properly. I would call that Bronze, especially since the "real" ending (Witch Hunt) is coming out on DLC tomorrow.