Blog:Alvaro's Programming Tech Tips: Dragon's Dogma

Note: This is the first article in the series! Dragon's Dogma, one of my favorite games of all time, has many things to do, modding is not the strongest part of this game, since the modding support is much inferior compared to other games, this game has plenty of support.

Converting Saves
Ever played the original consoles like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, but never played the PC version and don't want to start from scratch? So there's a option that can help most your problems, it's called DDsavetool created by the legendary modder FluffyQuack, this program is used to convert Xbox 360 and PS3 saves to the PC version of the game, it's also used to unpack saves to XML, if you want edit/view the source code of the save.



Xbox 360
W.I.P

PlayStation 3
First, connect the USB Flash Drive to the USB ports of the console, at the XMB menu, go to "Game" bar and select "Saved Data Utility (PS3™)" and find the Dark Arisen save at the folder, once you found the save, press "Triangle" and select "Copy", to copy the save file to the storage device, copy the save and have patience waiting to transfer, then remove from the system.

After finishing the storage management, go to a PC and connect the USB Flash Drive on the USB ports of a desktop or laptop. On Microsoft Windows, open Windows Explorer.

Open the storage device and go to "PS3".

Go to "SAVEDATA"

Then Right-click at BLUS311550 (the name of the Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen PS3 save data) and click "Copy" or press "Ctrl + C" when the folder is selected, copy this folder to any location on your computer, "Right-click" and click "Paste" or press "Ctrl + V" to paste the folder on any location.

After the transfering process, use Bruteforce Save Data v4.4.2, which can be downloaded here, the package is RAR file, so you hace to use WinRAR or 7-Zip to unpack the folder, after unpacking, run the Setup Wizard.

After running the setup wizard, click "Next >".

Click "I Agree".

When seeing this, just click "Next >", also you can change the Destination Folder to install.

Click "Install".

After beginning to install, wait to install until gets finished.

After installing, you can finally close this Setup Wizard safely.

Note: Before opening the program, you have to download MSVBVM50.dll from the internet and extract to the Bruteforce Save Data folder, without it, opening the program will show a critical error, informing that the specified file is missing.



Down below, will show a comparison between if you have/don't have the mandatory file.

Warning: There's a notorious bug in the program that when you try to update, it causes the decrypted save file give a error when trying to convert to the PC save using DDsavetool, however, it will update but it will ask again when you relaunch, so you have to reinstall the program, never use updated version or else troubleshooting happens.

After opening the program, when seeing this message, click "Close/X".

If you see this message, press "No".

After doing such work, you're able to see many features like Update Account ID, "Patch SFO, "Decrypt PFD" and even Cheats, down below will show how to decrypt the save file.

First, select a PS3 save that is the "..." button and find the folder.

Then after selecting the folder, you're able to decrypt the save file, also you can see alot of details of the save.

Now click "Decrypt PFD".

Then click "Decrypt All Files".

When seeing this message, click "Yes", have patience to load and it will decrypt the all the files in that folder, remember it is affectable, use with your own risk.

After it's decrypted, you can see the green color showing.

After decrypting the files, close the program and click "Yes".

After the decrypting process, go to the decrypted BLUS311550 folder (it also comes with a log text file to show it's actually decrypted) and copy the DATA0.DAT to the DDsavetool folder. C:\Users\username ID\any folder\BLUS311500 Copy to C:\Users\username ID\Downloads\DDsavetool (unzipped) Remember to copy the PC save called ddda.sav to that folder.

Steam version: C:\Users\username ID\AppData\Roaming\Steam\userdata\steamuser ID\367500\remote\DDDA.sav GOG.com version: C:\Users\username ID\AppData\Local\GOG.com\Galaxy\Applications\49987265717041704\Storage\Shared\Files CODEX version: C:\Users\username ID\AppData\Roaming\Steam\CODEX\367500\remote

Doing that, open Command Prompt or press Win + R and type cmd.exe and click Ok.

Now, if you don't know to run the program, use this instruction of code. cd C:\Users\username ID\Downloads\DDsavetool (unzipped) Then enter. DDsavetool.exe Copy and paste this code into the Command Prompt and enter the code to convert. DDsavetool -c DATA0.DAT ddda.sav After doing it, a message in the log showing "Converted save to ddda.sav" means that the PC save has the source code imported from the PS3 save.

Now copy the converted PC save to the save folder overwriting the original one. Remember to make a backup or else you lose all your progress, also it's not recommended to do this in the Steam and GOG.com versions, because encourages cheating and you can have potential to get banned, use with your own risk.

Ripping Content Files
W.I.P

Editing Textures
W.I.P

Swapping Pawns
W.I.P

Dinput8
W.I.P for rest.