Hi everyone, stumbled upon a curious problem recently.
When playing something like ME2 or Dragon Age 2 and trying to import a character from a previous game I get an empty menu without any actual choices. But the thing is, saves from previous games are actually in the needed folders according to games, in the same prefix. Tried this both with Lutris GE and Proton GE, same result.
Any tips?
P.S. Yeah, if you saw the same post on Reddit - it was me, just trying to collect as much info sources as possible, Google only led me so far.
Iâm trying to remember the location (I havenât had the ME originals installed for some time) but I do remember having to put the saves in a specific place in the wine prefix for the character import to find them. If I find my old notes anywhere (I probably posted it in a forum somewhere) Iâll reply again.
One thing I also remember, if you go to the configuration utility first, ME2Config.exe (a filename something like that) you can import them first and it will COPY them to that location so when starting a new game they will be available for import. I think thatâs how I even knew the specific location that I have now forgotten. With Origin already running, go to ârun exe in wine prefixâ and browse for the mass effect 2 configurator.
I canât help you with Dragon Age 2, as Iâve not played those games but Iâm guessing youâll figure it out because it will be a similar location.
If you just make sure both games are in the same wine folder, shouldnât it do it automatically i have not tried those two games in wine yet, or are we talking about steam because steam makes a prefix pr game, so importing them automatically can be a pain in the ass?
But just do like Grogan says, and most games make the save in the Documents, so Dragon Age 2 may be in the same place.
Youâre right in what you might think for the general case, but no, it doesnât find them unless you use the configuration utility or put them in a ME1 directory in that location.
This is for the original versions of ME1 and ME2 (not the remastered Legendary Edition, which will just find them) in Origin.
I dealt with this for Dragon Age 2 a few weeks ago. On Windows the save game files would be saved to âDocuments\BioWare\Dragon Age 2â (or Dragon Age, or Mass Effect, etc.).
With a Wine installation using Lutris, itâs tricky because there are a few different locations that seem like they could be the correct location.
You need to drop your old save game folders under:
[Lutris installation location]/drive_c/users/[YOURUSERNAME]/My Documents/BioWare/
Note that it is not the âDocumentsâ folder that was also in there. It was the âMy Documentsâ folder.
Thing is, DA2 as well as DA:O saves are in respective folders in âDocumentsâ inside one prefix (in which I run Origin). Thatâs what threw me off. But maybe what either @ugly or @Grogan suggested would work, so Iâll check both options.
So, I tried both placing DA:O saves in the DA2 saves folder and placing them in âMy Documentsâ (which BTW wasnât there, had to create it) - no dice. This is the placement of them originally.
Oh, so you actually do have Mass Effect Legendary Edition (not the originals). This shouldnât be a problem at all, it should just find them. It has to be a completed playthrough though, where you defeated Saren, saved the Citadel, crawled out of the rubble and finished the game back to main menu. Thatâs the only thing I can think of here.
Within Save, there are ME1, ME2 and ME3 directories.
ME2 should automatically find the ME1 saves. Iâm sorry, I donât know why not. The thing about the masseffect2config.exe doesnât apply to the Legendary edition, thereâs no such animal.
Well, I actually used a friendâs save, presumed it was a complete one.
But DA:O save was complete for sure, and the result was as illustrated above. In ME2:LE it was the same: blank menu with only option to go back.
There was something in Lutris log about failing to read permissions so might be access issue. Although permissions seem to be the same across the whole prefix, odd.
Make sure youâre not running a Flatpak version of Lutris! The Flatpak is known to sort of sandbox softwareâs folder permissions, which is why my games mightâve been unable to get saves to import - they acted as though nothing was there. For Arch-based distros (Manjaro, EndeavorOS or Arch itself) Lutris is available on AUR, install it with your AUR helper of choice (like pamac or yay) or build yourself.
Upon setting Origin up this time I also had to install a lib32-gnutls package for my system, maybe it also played part.
Have set up a new OS (Arch) and got it working this time.
