Larian Studios
Posted By: Lar_q Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 16/12/10 03:42 PM
Hello all,

We think we have the FOV2DKS patches ready which we promised here, but given our workload it will still take some time before we can get them tested properly. Since a couple of people here suggested they'd gladly help us testing FOV2DKS, I'd like to invite you to participate . You need to have (legal) versions of Ego Draconis with FOV installed on top of it, and when you apply the patch, the ED part of the game should now play like DKS. Warning though: installing this patch will prevent you from loading any of your previous savegames. That's the caveat of the FOV2DKS patch.

Let us know via support@larian.com if you'd like to give it a go, and we'll give you installation instructions (from next monday on)
Posted By: ForkTong Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 16/12/10 04:50 PM
To clarify: these are not the current FOV patches that are mentioned on this forum, these are the FOV2DKS patches, not FOV patch 2.
Posted By: vometia Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 16/12/10 04:54 PM
Are you looking for people to do a complete playthrough or just to do whatever bits of testing they can manage? If the former I'm probably too fatigued right now to do so in a timely manner, but if the latter then I'd be glad to help out. I just figured I'd ask before enrolling in the programme...
I will happily do testing laugh I mentioned in a thread before that if you needed play testers I would happily do so. I am at work right now but in about 6 hours I'll be home and I could get started then.

In case I'm not remembered from support before, I'm running the English(US) DVD version of ED with the downloaded FoV from the Larian Vault.
Posted By: Kein Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 16/12/10 09:17 PM
Restriction to have a legal copy is a bit stupid. I mean really, it is obvious that the best testing will be from DKS users, since they played it and can notice the bugs easily. But who in the sane mind would buy the same game TWICE?

I think you need to change the way hot users can test the patch. Just because you REALLY need massive testing consider the fact how buggy Div2 patches was :P Otherwise, you get another buggy patch, just more HUEG.
Posted By: vivaxardas Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 16/12/10 09:26 PM
Well, believe it or not, but piracy is a crime. The fact that it is so easy to steal software does not make it legal. To allow to use pirated copies is to encourage it.
Besides that, in testing people have to make sure the bugs are from their patch, and not a result of a pirated software.
Posted By: Astara Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 17/12/10 02:02 AM
What's in the patch?
Posted By: Astara Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 17/12/10 02:06 AM
I think you misunderstand the requirement:

You don't have to buy ANOTHER copy. You just have to own 1 legal copy -- this patch, patches it. You just can't start with a stolen copy.

Posted By: Astara Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 17/12/10 02:08 AM
???

FOV2DKS? Flames of Vengeance 2 Dragon Knight Saga?

Do you mean the combined game? Was FOV sold separately w/o DKS?

I only saw FOV sold w/DKS....

Posted By: vometia Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 17/12/10 04:33 AM
Originally Posted by Astara
Do you mean the combined game? Was FOV sold separately w/o DKS?

I only saw FOV sold w/DKS....

FoV was sold as an expansion to Ego Draconis, albeit only as a download in most countries. There're a few differences between ED+FoV compared to DKS which this patch presumably aims to eradicate; sounds interesting, at least from my perspective...
Posted By: XxGREENYxX Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 17/12/10 05:27 AM
I am confused. If you already own Ego Draconis and the Flames of Vengence, this patch will remove the need to buy the new The Dragon Knight Saga??
Posted By: ForkTong Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 17/12/10 08:56 AM
If you have Ego Draconis and Flames of Vengeance, the FOV2DSK patch will indeed bring your total game completely up to par with Dragon Knight Saga.
and again, just for clarification, if you install the fov2dks patch, your old save games will no longer work, at all. That's the price of having the fully functional DKS. Doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but maybe for some people it is?
The patch is downloading laugh I'll install it when I get home from work tonight and I'll let you know how it went. Thanks to Lynn and David for your help in this. Larian is awesome.
Well, so far the patch seemed to install successfully, but I can't install any of the updates for DKS as it tells me it can't find any installation of DKS, I'm thinking this is just due to the launcher's searching for a certain folder name, I'm looking into a way around this. If anyone knows of one please share laugh The patch DID install, setup completed successfully and the icon has changed, the game loads up the intro movie and then begins to load the menus. Alas, at that point only a black screen shows up. I'll post more as I know it. After I mess with it a bit I'll also send an email.

Update:

I managed to get it installed and I can load a game up and play, if you try to load pre FOV savegames it of course crashes, I did try, just to see what would happen. My saves from after arriving in FoV work as far as I can tell so far. There are issues with the graphics in the options menu, it appears that the menu is corrupt. I'll keep testing and post my findings here later. I did install the FOV2DKS patch into a different directory, and then I copied the FoV files into that new directory, that was the only way I could get it to load past the intro movie. Plus this way, if I go into the registry and change the setting 'addon' back to fov, I can still launch the game in it's previous incarnation, without having to uninstall and reinstall the game. To avoid any trouble that might cause, I've backed up C:\Users\'myuser'\AppData\Local\Divinity2\ both profile and save games, and deleted the information under the 'Profile' folder so that it reloads all the files from that folder each time I change 'addon' value. Oh, you also have to change the game path to the correct folder if reverting to the FoV installation.
Here are the images of the screens I've taken so far showing the corruption, and both the DKS main menu and the FoV main menu. As well as a shot of the possible graphics corruption. I've wrapped each photo in a spoiler tag and labeled it, so if you don't want all the images loading they don't have to laugh

Graphics corruption?
[Linked Image]

FoV Main Menu
[Linked Image]

DKS Main Menu
[Linked Image]
Ok, after much tweaking and then changing back to the way it was, I couldn't get farther starting a new game than the man at the entrance to Farglow before it crashed, and loading a previous save from FoV either immediately crashed or crashed within the first 10 seconds of playing. I've finally just uninstalled the game and am reinstalling from scratch after scouring the registry to make sure it's clean, and cleaning up all the info in the AppData folder. I'll let you know how it goes with a fresh installation.

Note:
I had also earlier mentioned loading original ED saves up in DKS, I am not quite sure why I was initially able to do this as after the game crashed and I had reloaded, all ED saves were dark and said 'Obsolete save game'
Posted By: ava Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 24/12/10 11:14 AM
No need to try install any updates of DKS, you're already completely up to date (1.4.9.70) and users who converted DKS from FoV will still have to use the FOV patches, which will serve both versions. But there are no updates at the moment.
Thanks for the information laugh The current standing of the FOV2DKS on my system is that if I try to install the patch, it seems to install fine, it also shrinks the game folder to ~6GB. However, if I leave it that way, the game loads and then I get only a black screen once the intro movie has played out and the loading screen icon spins. It looks like it really wants to try and load up beyond that point, but it will not. If I copy the files from the backup I made of my installation prior to the patch into the folder, the game does indeed load. All the menu and loading screen graphics are corrupt at that point though, and as I show in the picture of the options menu above, none of the options check boxes show up. The game also crashes when trying to enter Farglow if you begin a new game, or as it completes loading a save game from FoV, or within 10 seconds of loading said game. That is after a complete uninstall/reinstall of the game and the patch. If I don't install the FoV2DKS patch, the game works great as it always has. Also of note, after applying the FOV2DKS patch, in the registry under the DTP key, the version number there is 1.4.3, rather than the 1.4.9.70, though if you copy the old files over the patched version of the game, and do not overwrite the files that already exist, you can get to the main menu as shown in a picture above, and it displays the correct version.
Posted By: Flying gg Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 26/12/10 12:30 PM
Hi !

Seeing how great the whole game was (just finished it two days ago) and how you (especially Farhang Namdar and Bert Stevens, thanks again guys if you read the forum) have helped me with some strange bugs I had, I'd really like to help you with some testing if you still need help. Feel free to pm me or mail me about how to get the patch.

By the way, I don't know if it matters but I'm playing with a French version of the game.
Posted By: Tarro Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 27/12/10 05:38 PM
Originally Posted by Kein
But who in the sane mind would buy the same game TWICE?


I basically did. I have the retail disk version of Ego Draconis from January, and recently purchased DKS from steam. (I have had enough with disk DRM.)

I really hope to eventually be able to use my "Outdated" saved games though.
Posted By: Shaver Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 27/12/10 06:05 PM
I did too. I have the ED I bought from Amazon. I played it, liked it (despite all its shortcomings). When I heard that Larian had remastered it with a new game engine, I bought it, again, from Amazon.com. Best decision I've ever made when it comes to games.
Sadly, adding in the language to registry file did not fix the issues. Guess I'll just have to wait til they get back from vacation
If you copy your ED install to a different folder prior to installing DKS, you can go into your windows registry and check the registry setting for the game, write that down, then after install, add a new registry key with those settings pointed to wherever you copied your folder, I had to rename mine, I made it Divinity II - FoV just so I could keep them separate in my head, and launch the game that way. Doing that will allow you to play both ED and the new version, if you get your ED saves all the way to the end, they should import into FoV just fine I think, though I've not actually tested it that way. FoV saves of course work in DKS as that content is the same in both games.
Posted By: vometia Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 03/01/11 01:57 PM
I did something similar when testing out the patches but just renamed the folders as and when I needed rather than fiddling about with the registry... That said, they were different patch levels of the same game, so I'm not totally confident it would work when switching between ED and DKS.
As an update, I've still not yet gotten the Fov2DKS version to play successfully, I was contacted by support yesterday and told that the info I had provided would be forwarded on to the programming department laugh So hopefully soon we will hear of a fix.
Posted By: Lynn Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 10/01/11 01:06 PM
@ALL that have an issue with the FoV2DKS patch:

Could you please send the report generated by the support tool to support@larian.com and please reference this forum thread to ensure the fastest service possible.

Thank you and kind regards,
Lynn
absolutely laugh I am at work right now, when I get home I'll do this
Posted By: crpgnut Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 12/01/11 08:02 PM
I love starting over in games, but I'm not sure I have the games necessary. I have ED, disk version US I think and then the Steam version of DKS. If I have a version that can help test, let me know. I can dedicate about 4 hours a night testing.
Posted By: ForkTong Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 13/01/11 03:29 PM
Crpgnut: thanks for the offer, but no, you don't have the right games. You already have DKS. We wanna give people with ED+FOV the DKS experience. You already have it smile

Lazuranthas: we're uploading a US-English FOV2DKS patch, will contact you Monday.
Posted By: crpgnut Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 13/01/11 07:00 PM
Hmmm, so I'd need to buy FOV to be able to test for you, correct? Is FOV available somewhere here in the States? I could buy a copy and send it to that kid in the open letter thread, since I really don't need it except for testing. I'll google around and see if this is feasible.
Posted By: Raze Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 13/01/11 09:49 PM

FoV is only available as a digital download, either from the Larian Vault or places like Gamersgate, etc. You would have to check the policies on transferring ownership.
Yeah, I got my copy of FoV from the Larian Vault, well, my wife bought it for me from there as a birthday gift laugh Thanks ForkTong I am downloading the patch now, I just got the email about it being available this morning while I was at work. As soon as it's finished I'll begin testing. And I know it's been said by me and many others, but it deserves saying again; the support at Larian is phenomenal, I've never encountered better, you guys are the best.
Just got to Broken Valley with the new patch. The patch installed without a hitch, everything seems to be working great so far.
Sorry to keep double posting like this, update on the patch. I have imported my saves from FoV without a problem, everything seems to be working great with that. I have also deleted my save games totally and started a new character, that is working great as well. I just finished doing Lovis Tower and got the quest from Lord Lovis. Everything works well, there are no hiccups and the game loads/saves and plays as well as it did before, it seems to be smoother than before, though it was always smooth, so that's hard to say for sure. Anyway, everything is working great thus far smile Thanks guys.
Sorry for the slow play time, I just transitioned into the FoV area of the game using this patch, I did not notice any bugs or any broken game play. I'll let you know how the FoV goes when I finish it.
Hey sorry I haven't posted here in a while, I just recently had a new baby so I haven't had much time for anything else. Anyway, everything went very well with game post patch. I was able to complete the game with no issues. Good job guys, and thanks for allowing me to get an early peek at it all. smile
Posted By: Lynn Re: Looking for testers for FOV2DKS patch - 17/05/11 02:24 PM
Thank you, lazuranthas, for letting us know, it's appreciated.

And CONGRATULATIONS with the baby! smile party
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