Oblivion Mods

Duttybrew wrote:

For anyone who has used it, how much flexibility is there for architecture?

Until they release a mesh converter not much.

Duttybrew, right now everyone is waiting for bethsoft to release their nif importer/exporter. So as far as models go, you are limited by what is provided in OB right now. (Though really, considering the fact that you get to play around with texture and parallex mapping and all that good stuff, the same base model can look very different depending on the texture, normal maps, etc. that you applied to them, check out some of the new armor mod that was mentioned in the OB mod thread, In particular check out the new glass armor for female PCs, battlemage's armor, battle dresses, and Ceremonial Blades' armour, they are pretty amazing)

However, there are 3rd party importer/exporter that works, in fact, there are quite a few mods that introduces new models to the game. I just got Cloud's (from FF7) sword in the game and it looks sweet, and it is a completely new model made first in 3Dstudio Max.

here are some screen shots provided by phat39 on the OB forum thread
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y28...

The sword is huge... and it has multiple parts just like the FF7 movie.

So in short, bethsoft doesn't currently make it easy for modders to create new models, but it still can be done.

That is sweet. This game is going improve so much over the next few years.

Once I beat the game, I might be interested in working on some mod projects with you guys.

How about a spell that makes NPC's clothes disappear?!?!

if you're not using any mods for whatever aesthetic/laziness reasons, at least get the BTMod or equivalent. Believe you me and hear me now, seeing 20 items or 10 quests at a time...it's really nice.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Once I beat the game, I might be interested in working on some mod projects with you guys.

How about a spell that makes NPC's clothes disappear?!?! ;)

There is a mod for that already I think

Edit: Roo, I know you love alchemy, you should try the ingredient sorter mod, and there are also quite a few utilities out that will let you play around mixing your potions w/o running the game. (great way to kill those dead times at work )

Cool, lethial, i'm finally taking the time to go through lots of mods now, so i'll grab all the potion ones while I'm at it.

Speaking of which, I'm very curious whether anyone tried the Goblin War Party mod.

It seems there's already stuff coded in but never used for starting some serious wars between tribes of Goblins. Also it seems like you could use this to start major conflicts by bringing your own goblin war party into town...or wherever.

Definitely going to try this at some point myself.

I definitely wanted to try that mod Roo, however, I haven't stumbled on one of those big goblin caves yet, so I didn't bother.

On a side note, I KNOW that I read a preview (review?) where the author mentioned that one of the coolest thing that you can do is make goblins fight each other... I guess some time before the release, bethsoft decided to take it out... I really wonder about the AI of the released game now...

Sorry for so many posts in a row...I just finally got time to download *alot* of mods.

I can't seem to download big files from tessource, however. When it boots me over to the "big files" site, nothing happens.
if you have great google-fu, the mods i'm specifically trying to find are "Harvest" and "Dark UI".

thank you and now back to playing oblivion...with the 30 mods I just downloaded.

Roo, here is a planetES link for the V1.0 final of Harvest mod, along with the Skill based harvesting mod that is made to be compatible with it. Highly recommend using both.

here is DarkUI

As a bonus, here is a new UI that converts the inventory to look like that of Morrowind, here

Don't know if this has been posted yet, but I was getting mighty annoyed at the stupidly quick rate at which my supposedly good weapons were snapping. Did a search, and found this little mod which makes items more durable, but (if you want it to,) also balances that by making repairs harder. I don't know if it makes them more expensive at vendors, but whatever. I just found that the sensation of having a powerful item was destroyed when you couldn't adventure with it for more than five minutes.

Its also a little annoying that the game gives you no indication that an item is worn down or broken. Games have used the color coded mini-paper-doll for years and it does the trick nicely. Why go away from it?

Maybe actually knowing that your armor is broken in one hit was pissing off the testers so they took away the indicators as a 'fix'

Here's a nifty little mod I haven't seen mentioned that I'm loving... Droppable torches.

I've been running the darker nights and darker dungeons mod and I was finding it a little annoying that in order to fight something I had to put my torch away... and then fight in pitch black. What fighter worth his salt would extinguish and neatly put away his torch to fight? Reminds me of the whole flashlight/gun issue in Doom3. Anyway.. if you have a torch out and switch to weapons instead of putting it away you drop it on the ground (with full physics). It will last for around 5 minutes sitting on the ground or after the fight you can pick it back up. The torch casts it's own light properly (so if you drop it on a slanted walkway it will roll down and light up the hall as it goes). You can also drop as many torches as you have on you.

The one catch.. I believe this mod and the Illumination Mod (lights up exterior building windows at night) interfere with each other. Not positive about that as I haven't tried the Illumination mod, but I think some people have mentioned problems with the two in the forums.

polypusher wrote:

Its also a little annoying that the game gives you no indication that an item is worn down or broken. Games have used the color coded mini-paper-doll for years and it does the trick nicely. Why go away from it?

Maybe actually knowing that your armor is broken in one hit was pissing off the testers so they took away the indicators as a 'fix'

Poly I think you should try to get a PC copy Because so far every thing that bothered you has been fixed by user mods

Vega, did you get the Burning Kvatch mod along with the new darker nights mod? Kvatch looks much better in flames

lethial wrote:

Vega, did you get the Burning Kvatch mod along with the new darker nights mod? Kvatch looks much better in flames :)

Yep.. but haven't even been to Kvatch yet. Been too involved in robbing everyone blind and performing the occasional assassinations.

Vega wrote:

Yep.. but haven't even been to Kvatch yet. Been too involved in robbing everyone blind and performing the occasional assassinations.

hehe, I too have not really gone in to kvatch yet. I think my goal will be to do everything but the main quest for this game...

Just finished the main quest myself, at level 20. It really doesn't take very long, once you focus on it. I have some beefs with the way the final portions played out, but whatev.

lethial wrote:

Poly I think you should try to get a PC copy Because so far every thing that bothered you has been fixed by user mods :)

And a 2000$ computer to run it? No thanks.

I have the PC version to play with the editor. I havent bothered trying the 'oldblivion' thing to see if it runs any better yet. I'd rather play on a 120" screen anyways If I got a wireless mouse and keyboard I could probably accomplish that on the PC too, but those arent cheap either.

I spent under $1000 on my computer two years ago, and have put about $500 into it since then. It runs Oblivion just fine, even with the pretty water and stuff.

polypusher wrote:
lethial wrote:

Poly I think you should try to get a PC copy Because so far every thing that bothered you has been fixed by user mods :)

And a 2000$ computer to run it? No thanks.

I have the PC version to play with the editor. I havent bothered trying the 'oldblivion' thing to see if it runs any better yet. I'd rather play on a 120" screen anyways If I got a wireless mouse and keyboard I could probably accomplish that on the PC too, but those arent cheap either.

Am I reading that wrong? You have a 120" screen and you're worried about spending $2000 on a computer?

I wasnt broke-ass when I bought the big-ass screen (nor am I broke because of it.)

polypusher wrote:

I wasnt broke-ass when I bought the big-ass screen (nor am I broke because of it.)

The commutitive property of addition.

Projectors can be any size you want. I like to put mine about a foot from the wall, for that authentic experience...

When you have to add lines of code to the archiveinvalidation.txt file, does that text file have to be in your Oblivion\data folder? Or the root Oblivion folder? Also, can I just keep adding lines to the file, or do they have to be in a special order?

Draco wrote:

When you have to add lines of code to the archiveinvalidation.txt file, does that text file have to be in your Obliviondata folder? Or the root Oblivion folder? Also, can I just keep adding lines to the file, or do they have to be in a special order?

You put the archiveinvalidation.txt in the oblivion directory (the parent directory of /Data directory.)

You can add new stuff in there any order you like. But becareful of what you put in there. Remember that it is a file that tells Oblivion game that any file listed in that file and is in the original oblivion .bsa files, then DO NOT use that file.
If you need help with this let me know what mod you got and I can try to help.

I was wondering if some of you could help me out a bit in regards to Oblivion mods. I was using Jarrod's mod, which was working very well, but was sucked in by some of the shots with Qarl's mod, so I installed it. Now, I'm looking at a virtual slideshow...very pretty, but extremely jerky. I would love to roll back and use Jarrod's texture mod, but have had no success turning the tides, so to speak. What would be the best way to do this? I know it would be much easier if it was not a texture replacing mod, but alas, it is. Can anyone give me a hand?

one_of_47, if you still have the problem, what kind of graphic card do you have?

Did you get the 2048x2048 version of Qarl's texture or the 1024x1024 version? I know the latter shouldn't give you much of performance impact at all. Also, did you tweak your oblivion.ini in anyway? What did you change in your archiveInvalidation.txt? (Jarrod's texture pack contains more textures then Qarl's so if you just installed Qarl's on top of Jarrod's you could still just use "texture\landscape\s" to take care of all the textures in that directory)

That said, to change back to Jarrod's texture pack, you just need to extract and replace Jarrod's textures ontop of whatever you have right now. And make sure that in your archiveInvalidation.txt you have the line "texture\landscape\s". If you have already done that and your game is still slow, then try reboot your system. Oblivion is known for caching game infor across game sessions, so it is best if you just reboot so that you know everything is cleared.

let me know if any of that helped, and let me know your system spec. If you still have bad performance, email me a copy of your oblivion.ini and archiveinvalidation.txt and a list of mods you have running, I will see if I can spot anything weird in it.

Thanks for the help lethial. This may sound lame, but does it matter what way the slash marks are?

For intstance, Jarrod's huge texture replacement readme says add this line to the ArchiveInvalidation.text:

textures\landscape\s

But all the other mods that instructed me to add lines to the Archive Invalidation text have forward slash marks, for example:

textures/characters/imperial/headhuman.dds

Does it matter? Thanks.

Actually that is not a lame question at all. It turns out that the slashes DOES matter.

"textures\landscape\s" can also be written as "textures/landscape/ \s". Both syntax will tell Oblivion game to ignore every file, sub directories that are inside the landscape directory. (remember that the "invalidated" files are actually those that are contained inside the Oblivion Texture - Compressed.bsa file, NOT the texture directory that you created in the data directory)

textures/landscape/s will NOT work.

However, if you don't want to invalidate everything inside the landscape directory. (which is the case if you just use Qarl's pack, since he doesn't replace every texture for the landscapes) you will have to list out all the file that you wanted to be ignored using the "/"

ie:
textures/characters/imperial/headhuman.dds
etc.

I hope that helps, Draco.

Sorry if this has been posted before. I've read this thread, but it's lasted a while so I may have forgotten.
One of my biggest complaints is the lack of clothing and armor options, particularly unique stuff. I have the feeling that Bethesda planned on modders adding this in later. Three that I've been very happy with are:
Elegant Vests (just adds some more day-to-day clothing, but is high quality):

And here's a screenshot from my char:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j1...
Pants are kind of tight, but that adds hilarity.

A second: Blades Ceremonial Armor A set of heavy armor that is pretty unique. A lot of armor mods just re-color the existing armor, which normally doesn't add too much. But this model seems to be very well done.

And a third: Hattori Hanzo Swords These are very well modeled, and look great. Two swords that differ only in the emblem on the blade, as in Tarantino's movie. I haven't really enjoyed the original katana's, but with the Hanzo swords I'm inspired to start a new "ninja" character.

Edit: Here's a screenshot of both of those.