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Resource Query, part 2


BlueSteelRanger

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Salutations!

 

It's BSR again. So I've followed the instructions on this tutorial to add a set of "crown jewels" into my home mod. Except I'm experiencing some strange issues.

 

The tutorial: http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/tutorials/article/46-howto-using-modders-resources/

 

The resource: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/16426/?

 

The issues: My items have an odd purple colour. When I tried to place one of them on an "altar" (a static stone slab with no activators), the CS outright froze/crashed.

 

I don't think I have my place too heavily cluttered.

 

-A second query-

 

I wish to add a custom book into the house to add a bit of lore behind the house itself. Is there a way to do that?

 

Many thanks!
--BSR

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Did you keep the original paths to the meshes and textures intact, and use all of the texture files included with the resource?

 

The path to textures for a mesh is defined in the mesh itself, so if you have changed the texture path the game won't find them. My understanding is purple is a missing colour map file (the ones ending in .dds as opposed to those that define the normal map ending in _n.dds).

 

NifSkope can help you find the texture path the mesh expects (open the various branches in the left hand panel until you find the one with the little purple flower ... it will display the expected texture path).

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@Striker879: I did that, yes. I tested the mod in-game and got some interesting results. Whilst they're on the slab, they have that purple thing going on. BUT! When I equip them, they appear flawlessly. All properly coloured and everything.

 

The only thing they actually lack now are icons. I have them all directed to where they're supposed to go, but when I try to apply its corresponding icon, the CS says "invalid directory". I shall note here that I do NOT have any of the vanilla BSA's unpacked.

Should I unpack them?

If so, is unpacking Oblivion BSA's safe for the game to handle?

 

On a separate note, I am almost done with my player home. Except for one odd thing. My concept is "Castle in the sky" kind of thing, with a stairway that leads up to the place. The door however, acts strangely.

In the CS, it appears in its proper place.

In-game, the door appears free-floating on the ground.

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You are aware that items worn use a different mesh than items on display/just laying around on the ground? The world items are the _gnd.nif files, so check those in NifSkope to verify your textures are correct.

 

I only extract the files I need from the vanilla game (or mod added) BSAs. At one time I used Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) for that but now I use BSA Unpacker (which is just the same tool from OBMM but you don't need to load all of the rest of OBMM to use it).

 

Keep in mind that load door locations get baked into saves, so for testing you need to start from a save that has never been close enough to the door location that the game registered it (in your case I'd start from a save in Bravil or Leyawiin, which provided you are not using a mod that changes cities to "open" (i.e. part of the Tamriel worldspace) would put your character in either of those city's worldspaces).

 

Yes, I do all I can to make testing tedious.

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"Invalid directory" usually pops up, if you try to point a game record to a resource in a path outside of where this specific kind of resource is expected to be. Many resources in Oblivion can lie scattered around almost anywhere, as long as it's inside the Data folder. But especially in case of icons and the like they are only allowed within a very strict location. Take a look at the paths of other existing icons where those were placed and keep the top-most folders for where your new icons are identical by all means.

 

There's some additional confusion going on with different resolution icons found in different folders but you only allowed to select 1. I'm by far no expert myself, but have a look at this CS Wiki page explaining all about icons, their file format specifications and where they must be put and why: https://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php?title=Icons

 

 

If your door is floating some above the ground inside the game but perfectly aligned when looking at only your mod inside the CS, then there's other mods loading into your game which change its surroundings some, landscape mods maybe, or it's close to another modded location perhaps.

You could make your mod so the door's position will always be perfectly aligned to when you use those other mods, or you might have to do patches for use with -and- without those mods. Or maybe find out what's altering the landscape in the area and how much, then move your door to a position close but different enough for the changes to no longer make it float in either case.

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@DrakeTheDragon: I'll take a look again at my Nifs. To make sure my coffee-deprived brain gets this straight, the "gnd" files are the ones you "wear", yes?

I read that icons are in the Textures folder, but that seems to be packed into the BSA. The mod uses vanilla gemstones in its pieces and those show up flawlessly.

 

@Striker879: "If your door is floating some above the ground inside the game but perfectly aligned when looking at only your mod inside the CS, then there's other mods loading into your game which change its surroundings some, landscape mods maybe, or it's close to another modded location perhaps."

 

Thankfully I have no mods altering the location of this house and the vanilla Oblivion Gate that spawns nearby is far enough away that nothing gets messed with. That tested out perfectly.

 

"Keep in mind that load door locations get baked into saves" .....Hmmmm. So in essence, I need to create an entirely new save-game to fully integrate the door, it sounds like. Am I close?

 

To give you an idea of where exactly my mod is placed in the Overworld, its direct coordinates on the map are 20, -1. Southeast of Culotte, slightly northeast across the water from Veyond Cave.

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Yes to test you need a save made from before that character has ever been anywhere remotely close to that location. I'm a packrat, so I have my old saves for each character going back to their game start. In the case of your location I would use a save from the very first time that character was at somewhere no further than Pell's Gate on the road towards Bravil. The safest bet is use your save from before exiting the sewer (or from immediately outside the tutorial sewer exit). I always have those saves backed up for just such "tricky" situations.

 

What you see in game when you either drop something from inventory or you look at something placed in the world via the Construction Set are the _gnd.nif files (ground files). What you see on your character (so clothes, armor, rings and amulets etc) are the files without any _??? before the NIF part (so cuirass.nif displays on your character and cuirass_gnd.nif displays when you drop it from inventory or load up a mod that doesn't place their new cuirass to the game by placing it in the chest ... plenty of old mods that just scattered stuff around the Market District for example).

 

Natually what you see in your Inventory screen is the icon file cuirass.dds which as Drake points out must be located in a subfolder off either Data\Textures\Menus\Icons (or Menus50\Icons or Menus80\Icons depending on the screen resolution ... many mods don't include an icon texture for lower screen resolutions, which gives me some "work" asking the user what game resolution they are playing at).

 

You can unpack any vanilla game resource you want to use from Oblivion - Meshes.bsa or Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa and either use the same folder path as vanilla (in which case your item will be a replacer for the vanilla game item) or by giving the item a unique folder path for the various assets (meshes, textures, icons etc).

 

You always need to remember that the vanilla game's assets are almost always found in a BSA, which is why I find BSA Unpacker such a useful tool (even just as a browser to see what options can be found when looking for resources such as icons suitable for something I'm adding to the game that doesn't include icon resources ... the file names usually prompt a picture of the vanilla game item's icon to pop into my head).

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Ohhhh, okay. I think I will try to figure out how to back up a save from that sewer point as you do. That sounds like a useful trick to know.

 

Hmmm. I think I will acquire BSA Unpacker and use the thing since I can't seem to put my icons there. I wonder, can one use BSA Unpacker to do the reverse: Pack things so you can share your mod/s on Nexus? I wish to be able to share my first work with others. Even if it might not be to the quality of some more famous modders out there like Arthmoor, Gopher or Chesko.

 

Now all I must doo it sounds like, is fix that, then figure out how to create custom in-game lore books. :smile:

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Well, you can create your own BSAs from loose files, of course, but only very few mods actually did it so far. Mostly the really big expansion ones, which would otherwise dump some millions of files, a few GB in total size, loosely scattered all over your Data folder.

 

However, using BSAs also comes with disadvantages. One, you cannot have any replacing files inside a BSA. The game does not know an order or priority in which to load BSAs, and as such it becomes random from which BSA (the original game's or your replacement's) which file gets loaded.

Granted, there's nowadays ways to get around even that, SkyBSA coming to mind here, turning the entire resource management of the game into Skyrim's under the hood, but that's that. And two, folks over the years were reporting mixed results in test runs, spanning from better performance due to loading out of memory directly to significantly worse performance due to having to extract everything from the archives first, with most siding on didn't change a thing so far. So it's usually only chosen for really huge amounts of files and mostly only for sake of a cleaner Data folder. But that's all still debated even today.

 

Most people use the loose file concept instead, that is creating a folder structure in their mods which mirrors the folder structure you find inside the BSAs.

When the game starts it's like the BSAs get unpacked first, just not physically, nothing's put into your folders. Then the files inside your Data folder get loaded and added to it in a way. The result is a mixture between what's inside the BSAs and what we call "loose files", what's inside your Data folder. When Archive Invalidation is correctly set up, loose files will even override BSA contents with the same path and name. That's what's called replacements.

 

The only difficulty you'll have initially is that all the game's files are safely tucked away inside the BSA archives (dumb choice of name, as BSA already means Bethesda Softworks Archive, but they are archives after all), and those can't be accessed from e.g. NifSkope or the CS' file browsers. So if you want to select an existing Vanilla resource for your new item or the like, you'll be having a hard time browsing to it.

Extracting it from the BSA first is one way to get a hold of it, but you shouldn't leave it around in your game folders needlessly. Replacing a Vanilla file from inside a BSA with an identical 1:1 loose file copy without any change makes no sense at all and is only cluttering up your Data folder needlessly.

What you can also do is putting an empty file with the exact same name at the exact same place as where it is inside the BSA. You then can browse to it and select it. Then you can safely remove the empty placeholder again.

But both aren't really... ideal.

The CS can load everything right from BSA files quite fine. You just can't browse to any of those archived files with the selection buttons.

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@DrakeTheDragon: Hmm. Well, the icons aren't "game health necessary", they're just there to mark your stuff in inventory screens, right? It's the actual item's textures that seem to be the important thing.

 

Hrm. So what do modders do when they're finished with their work and it's time for release?

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