So I went to Content in the Dragonfall Standalone, and in the content both Dead Man's Switch and Seattle were listed as content. However DMS was not playable (in that there was no play button when you selected it, as if you chose Seattle or Shadowrun Core).

So I got to thinking. I have the base Shadowrun Returns as well as the Dragonfall Standalone, is it possible to copy some files over and run Dead Man's Switch with the (IMO improved) GUI of the Dragonfall Standalone?

The answer is: "Yup.".

First make sure you have the most recent patches for both Shadowrun Returns and Dragonfall Director's cut. Next, assuming you installed both games in the default directories, you need to copy C:\GOG Games\Shadowrun Returns\Shadowrun_Data\StreamingAssets\ContentPacks\dead_man_switch\project.cpack.bytes

over

C:\GOG Games\Shadowrun Dragonfall\Dragonfall_Data\StreamingAssets\ContentPacks\dead_man_switch\project.cpack.bytes

That is what makes the play button appear, but the Dead Man's Switch campaign is not quite complete yet. You also need to transfer over the convos and scenes folders (really any folders missing from the Dragonfall version of DMS) from C:\GOG Games\Shadowrun Returns\Shadowrun_Data\StreamingAssets\ContentPacks\dead_man_switch\data

to

C:\GOG Games\Shadowrun Dragonfall\Dragonfall_Data\StreamingAssets\ContentPacks\dead_man_switch\data

Then DMS should be playable in Dragonfall. The Dragonfall engine improvements really enhance the game and this will save gigs of hard drive space from so much redundant data. Chummer.

Nice work. Always wondered if doing this would work when i noticed they had the Dead Man's Switch assets listed.

I feel like playing DMS again so I might as well play it like this.

So, you're saying that, once I do this, I can uninstall Shadowrun Returns and just have everything work through the Dragonfall install?

Yes, from the bit i've played it works fine and you can go ahead and uninstall Shadowrun Returns after doing it.

Thanks for the confirmation, MikeMaximus!

And mega-thanks to Staredown for sharing this excellent information. I can't wait to try Dead Man's Switch in the newer engine!

Even before the patch I have not actually played DMS all the way through on the Dragonfall engine. I played until I got to the morgue last night so it's just barely possible something else needs to be transferred/tweaked but so far, so good.

And today is patch day (for Windows users) and we get to see if our house of cards comes crashing down.

Update: I downloaded the new executable and installed it over my old install (I call this Lazy Man's Switch) and... well the house of cards didn't come crashing down, but it did sway a bit.

First thing I noticed is my DMS save had "Story Missing" instead of "Dead Man's Switch". So, knowing full well it was probably a bad idea, I went to load it and, surprising exactly no one over the age of three, it froze the program. I reopened Dragonfall and checked the content and yep, DMS didn't have 'play' any more. Interestingly, it looked like the copied folders were still there, so I recopied the project.cpack.bytes file, made another character (I stupidly deleted my old one. It probably would have worked after the cpack copy) and regot to the morgue.

So it looks like even after you verify that DMS works perfectly in Dragonfall it would be a good idea to hang on to the DMS project.cpack.bytes file after you uninstall Shadowrun Returns.

Ya that's a good idea. I had just made a zip of the needed DMS files and tossed it in my Dragonfall installer folder in case I needed them again.

So far i've played all the way up to the Telestrian Industries run and i've had no issues at all, except for a very minor interface issue in the Matrix where the interface buttons stop working, which you can fix by just opening the main menu and closing it again.

Update: Played through the entire DMS campaign in Dragonfall, no issues at all beyond what i mentioned above.

is it possible to play both campaigns (dms vs df) without any other files copying/moving? or are you able to paly just one campaign?

I'm not sure what you are asking here, but if it is 'Can i carry my DMS character over into Dragonfall and continue playing that character?' then the answer is no. Dragonfall is not the sequel to DMS, they are completely separate campaigns that literally take place on opposite sides of the planet.

That is right. This was actually the main point to me trying this (happily successful) experiment.

I recognize there were some errors (not game-breaking but annoying ruining game immersion) that plagued DMS impported into DC Dragonfall. Guess that depends on person skills and other thinkings, modder is the first person to ask equal to his/her skill.

I thought I ought to mention that I followed Staredown's directions in this thread after buying Returns and Dragonfall a few days ago. My first game of Returns (Dead Man's Switch) has worked just fine, with no problems.

It's very handy to be able to play it through Dragonfall. I don't even know what improvements were made to the game between Returns and Dragonfall, and I don't need to know.

Thanks.

I'd imagine that DMS would quite possibly be massively unbalanced in DF:DC due to the improvements made to combat in the meantime.

At least that's what I encountered when playing through some older UGCs in DF:DC that weren't optimised for it.

Really? In what way?

I finished my DMS playthrough in DF:DC, and it seemed fine, although obviously I have no experience with the old engine to compare it to. I played on Normal difficulty and it was pretty easy, but I sort of expected that from the comments I'd heard about the game.