dao-modman

Terminal based mod manager for Dragon Age: Origins on Steam/Proton (Linux), heavily inspired by MO2.

A tribute to a masterpiece

DA:O is, in the author's opinion, one of the greatest RPGs ever made. It was released in 2009, more than 15 years ago, and is still the best entry of its series. While the writing has aged perfectly, the graphics have not, and the mechanics only in part. Combat is still fun, especially at higher difficulty levels.

Motivation

The computer you are running this on is probably very different from the one you used when this game came out. If you have moved on from Windows to Linux since then like the author did, the goal of this project is to be the only tool you need.

Features

• Nexus Integration: Download mods from nexusmods
• Archive formats: .dazip, .override, .zip, .7z and .rar, also nested
• Conflict Detection and Resolving
• Mod Ordering: no more prefixes for mod directories - load order is defined in the manager
• Mix and Match: pick which parts of a mod you want, in the UI. This selection persists if you disable a mod and reenable it later
• Setup: to get the game running smoothly, dao-modman handles the technical stuff:
  • LAA Patch so the game can use 4GB of RAM instead of its intended 2GB
  • enabling the developer console
  • scaling down (modded) textures on heavily modded games to fit into the 4GB limit
• dazip installation: No need to run daoupdater or other tools via wine
• chargenmorphcfg.xml merging: runs automatically if you add/remove a mod containing character morphs
• Mixed mods with both addins and override files: these often need manual steps with the Windows-based mod managers. Some very popular mods have a lot of posts about this problem, like the Winter Forge.
• Configurable mods: supports the .override format introduced by DAO-Modmanager
• Item Browser: list items added by a mod. Automatically writes the item DB for Add any item visual deluxe when installed, freeing you from yet another windows tool to run manually.

Supported platforms

Currently only the Steam release on Linux (Proton). Windows and the GOG/EA releases are not supported yet. Porting is not a big deal, but it needs testing on those setups: volunteers are welcome.

Setup

Install it from PyPI with uv, or with pipx:

uv tool install dao-modman             # or: pipx install dao-modman

Then store your personal API key from nexusmods.com where dao-modman finds it:

mkdir -p ~/.config/dao-modman
echo 'NEXUS_API_TOKEN=...' > ~/.config/dao-modman/.env
chmod 600 ~/.config/dao-modman/.env

The token is read from the environment, ./.env, or ~/.config/dao-modman/.env. Go to Account Settings/API Keys to create a token. The usual security recommendations apply. If this gets more than 10 users, the author will apply for an app-specific API key.

Run

To run the mod manager in UI mode, use:

dao-modman                             # run the TUI

Most functionality is also exposed via a command line interface:

dao-modman nxm 'nxm://...'             # hand a "Mod Manager Download" link to the TUI
dao-modman install-nxm-handler         # register as nxm:// handler
dao-modman laa status|restore|patch --exe PATH   # Large Address Aware patch
dao-modman console status|enable|disable   # developer console
dao-modman revisions init              # keep a git history of the library's metadata
dao-modman chargen                     # check the merged character creator list
dao-modman conflicts                   # which mods ship the same files, and who wins
dao-modman conflicts accept NAME ... | --all   # mark conflicts as intended

.rar archives need unrar, 7z or bsdtar on PATH; they are tried in that order, since bsdtar cannot read solid archives. Some mods on Nexus are only available as .rar.

UI Hotkeys

The bar at the bottom shows the everyday keys; ? lists all of them.

Usage

See the user and behind-the-scenes documentation.

License

MIT: free to use, change and pass on, as long as the copyright notice naming the author stays with it.

Disclosure

Most of the code in this project was co-authored by claude. In-game testing was all done by a human, namely the author of this project.

Contributing

Testers on other platforms are very welcome: Windows, and the GOG and EA releases of the game. If you have such a setup and want to help, open an issue and say what you run.

Pull requests are welcome too. Please run the tests and the linter (see below) before sending one.

Development

To work from source, clone this repository and run uv sync; then start it with uv run dao-modman.

uv run pytest                                  # tests
uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format .    # lint and format