Dyshein

If it's an ESP file, you can't separate it. You can only separate files from ESM because ESM files never change themselves, they are only changed by proxy through ESP files. Why can't you just re-download or reinstall the original plugin and just rename the changed one to yours?

You could always get a program like AVI codec that lets you examine the file in-depth and perhaps compare it with an mp3 that works; perhaps it had some sort of strange encoding, or perhaps it has something to do with the filename. These kind of problems are always frustrating but there's always a reason, even if computers make that reason extremely difficult to find. I know at least that oblivion is very very picky when it comes to dds formats, it has to be the right encoding or it won't register it at all, perhaps it's something similiar with music.

NPCs sometimes don't show up unless you reload a mod or cell. For example, if i have a save in a dungeon I made and place and NPC there and then load up the save, the NPC will not appear. I would have to load a save outside of the dungeon or perhaps even a save made before you interacted with the mod. This may be your issue, worth looking into at least. And what do you mean by overridding the offical plugin?

Well, the method of deleting it through the construction set rarely works in my experience, it usually just comes back as soon as I reload the mod. External programs like TES4Edit and TES4 Gecko work much better for getting rid of them.You should learn one or the other anyways, they really help for cleaning up your mod and you can actually browse alot of things (like dialogue and items) much faster than in the construction set. I always use TES4Edit after making a landscape mod to make sure I didn't accidentally alter any cells in the main game.

After spending a great deal of the summer modding, I have finally finished my third (and probably last, given how time-consuming my mods tend to become) mod for Oblivion. The mod adds a new worldspace, and a rather fanciful one at that, with four distinct plateaus that the player may progress through in a non-linear fashion. There are plenty of new quests, npcs, some new creatures/weapons/armor, weird potions, jumping quests, and even a final boss with an obscene amount of HP. While I don't think I'll be starting a new mod anytime soon, I may still critique this one based on comments and criticisms, so any and all input is appreciated. I figure other modders are a bit better at giving substantive commentary about things. The Gateway Realm - Version 1.0 Plenty of credit goes to the talented modelers and texture(ers?) on the elder scrolls nexus, as much as I love mapping I've never had any talent for creating new meshes and textures.

I wish I would have seen this sooner, I've been testing my current mod for nearly a week now >.>. But you are certainly welcome to review it if you wish, I'm 99% done at this point all I'm doing now is just some last-minute testing and proofreading >.<. I should have it uploaded by the end of the week, if not sooner. It's always nice to get good constructive input on your mods, comments are nice but they never really say enough.

if I didn't know better I'd say you're having a case of the reference ID bug. I had it once and lost a ton of stuff I had on display in my Skingrad house. Make sure your game is all patched up to the latest version.

A script effect silencer mod, really? Does Oblivion need that much more bloat added on to it? Even if that does fix the problem, it's just adding to the TC's already huge mass of mods. There's obviously a problem, be it a mod conflict or simply a misfiring quest script within one mod, but one that can actually be fixed, not just covered up with another mod.

It sounds like a cut and dry script specific problem to me, 5 seconds is how long it the game waits before runing any gamemode scripts. Then again I've never had so many mods that load order has been an issue for me.

I also tend to avoid mods that change alot at one time. But at least in oblivion it's easier to uninstall, I remember having to click through error messages for literally 2 hours in morrowind once because I uninstalled some gigantic glitchy mod and wanted to load up one of my saves made while it was installed. Just because mods are popular doesn't mean they are devoid of glitches >.<.

My link Alternatively, you could use TES4Edit and load up the mod in conjunction with whatever master file it has (probbably oblivion.esm) and then search the scripts tab under the mod, as it will only display those scripts that are unique to the mod.

If it happens every 5 seconds, then it has to be a Begin Gamemode script that is looping infinitely. I don't know how confident you are in using the editor, but if you feel pretty confident about looking at scripts I would load up the mod in question and look through the quests scripts. It seems likely that there is an "if" loop that is running infinitely perhaps because some sort of glitch prevents the conditions for ending the loop from being met. If it's a sound, it'll make it easier to find, just use control + f and then search for the word playsound

My 2nd mod was an underground city actually. As for location, you should worry about that last honestly, you can just set up a test door and then after you have a good story decide where it would fit best in cyrodil. There are always many things to consider for a town; if you want to include an origin story, relationships between characters, and also if the town offers anything that is not found in the main vanilla game (unique shops/items/ect). Story is gonna be something you probably want to work on first; you should try and explain a little about why the people are underground >.<. Also, will the quests take place mostly in the city or outside, and will there be other parts such as caves/dungeons that can be accessed from the city. As for security, you need to consider if you want guards or not; if you want an actual prison system, it's possible but it will require a fair deal of messing with factions/scripting/ai and dialogue. For items and whatnot, I find it's best to just play oblivion for a bit and get a feel for what the game has too much of, what it doesn't have enough of, and what players might want. I'm not sure what you mean by owning the city or not, do you mean depending on how you access it you can end up owning it? In any case good luck, feel free to check out my mod if you like. I kinda focused more on the dungeon aspect so my underground city was pretty small, but still.

You can't link it, you'll have to simulate linking it to a door by placing an Xmarker where you want the door marker to be and using player.moveto doormarkerref in the door/activator's script. Of course, you won't have sound, but you can look up the list of sounds and use the play function so you aren't just teleporting silently. Then just do the same thing with the door, use an OnActivate block which will stop the door from teleporting normally and then just use the player.moveto xmarkerref to move the player back to the activator. Of course this involves learning scripting, but there are plenty of good resources for that.

Double click the NPC in your object window, click on the AI button, right click under AI package list and select new, leave the time and day any (so it will always run) and then go up to the top right of your new window and select find for the package type. Then click on the target tab, check any object, and now you can either select furniture under object type (so the NPC will use anything from chairs to benches to stools) or you can select a specific chair from the editor and the NPC will sit in any of those chairs (for example, if you select LCChair02R, then the NPC will attemp to find any chairs that use that base and sit in them.)

If all you are doing is adding new quests/areas there shouldn't be a problem, but if you change existing quests you could causes players to have problems if they have a save file in the middle of said quest (for example, if you change a quest stage requirement and the player is still stuck in stage 20 when they should be in stage 30). So basicaly, just be careful if you are changing around what is already there, and be sure to let people know in your description if any potential problems might arise.

I'm in the final stages of finishing/testing my mod, but now I'm in what I consider to be the most frustrating part; creating creatures, assigning them spells/combat styles, and getting them to ACTUALLY USE THOSE SPELLS. Now I understand how to edit combat styles, but what I don't understand is how to get creatures I make to cast the spells I give them on a consistent basis. Sometimes they end up casting one after another like a madman, other times they just stand there and do nothing like I haven't even added any spells to them. Even using attack styles from creatures that only cast spells doesn't seem to work sometimes, and other times isn't even needed. I just get so frustrated by the inconsistencies in creature AI. Has enough had alot of experience in creating creatures and AI for them, is there something I"m missing that would allow me to more effectively control how they use spells?

You'll have to use an external program like TES4Gecko or TES4Edit. I use the latter and basically just load my mod up and delete everything that is added by the master file (it sorts things in a similiar way to the cs, such as cells, containers, npcs, ect). Of course, you want to make sure your mod isn't using any textures/meshes and whatnot from the master file or else you could run into some problems, but I understand the frustration. It seems like once your mod saves with a master file dependency it can't get rid of it through the cs, even if you remove it from the dependency list. TES4Edit is also a great program to "proofread" your mod, so to speak, makes sure you didn't accidentally alter anything in the main oblivion master file or just allow you to scan through your items and such more efficiently than the CS>

Also, I learned this from tinkering with my own mod, they don't work in interiors unless you set them to behave as exteriors, in which case you'd have to alter the climate to make it dark unless you want a brightly lit cave or something >.>. Just a heads up if you plan on using them for asthetic effect in any caves or halls or whatnot.

I wouldn't see a problem so long as you give credit and/or link to the authors work. It's not like people upload things to this site in order to make a profit, and you'd be giving the mod potentially more publicity which is always good. I think it'd be better to use it than to re-write the scripting yourself, you'd just be copying from the mod anyways (albeit not verbatim).

I'm trying to create some potions and poisons with script effects, but I'm having some problems with having potions use magic effect scripts; specifically, I can't seem to make the player cast a spell on himself. I've tried player.cast XXX player, playerref.cast XXX player, and I've even assigned the player to a variable and tried it that way, nothing seems to work. The CS wiki claims that it is possible to force a player to cast a spell on themselves, so how is it done? Or should I alternatively have the potion cast the spell (which I would imagine would be much harder than calling a static or an activator).

It sounds like your script isn't running, which could be because your quest isn't running. If you aren't activating your quest from an outside source, you could just do this: Begin Gamemode setstage questname 10 If Player.GetItemCount noterefID >= 1 && GetStage questname == 10 doorrefid.enable setstage questname 20 endif End This will make the quest start itself pretty much as soon as you load the game up, assuming you have start game enabled checked in the quest data tab. Scripting is all trial and error, the more you mess with it the more you learn. I just figured things out by reverse-engineering the scripts from other quests in oblivion.

Ah, sorry, I was just using parenthesis to show what you are supposed to fill in, you shouldn't actually use them in the script >.>. The best way is to find the refID and use that, like 000112EE.enable. Make sure you are using the RefID and not the Form ID (The formID is the id of the item in the editor, the RefID is the id of a specific item you have placed in the world and can be found by double clicking on it). for quests use Editor ID, not the name that shows up to the player if there are journal entries.

1. You'd need to make a script that uses variable to get the current time and compare it with the required time, but I'm no scripting pro so I can' help you with what it would look like. 2. I don't know if there is a way to get something to activate if you just read a note, but something like this will enable the door if you pick it up (and set the quest stage to a different stage so you can drop it and stil have the door open) Begin Gamemode If Player.GetItemCount (noterefID) >= 1 && GetStage (questname) == 10 (doorrefid).enable setstage (questname) 20 endif end 3. Just double click the marker, click on the marker data tab, check visible.

I link together strange interiors all the time, doors stones work well for the bottom and for covering left/right/top seams there are plenty of pillars you can use like freepillar01 or kvatchpost01 which are good at linking and still keep the transition looking realistic in the sense that wooden beams were constructed to support the tunnes. I like things with varied elevation and walkways/cliffs, my only concern is that perhaps with your sandy terran texture and the abudance of wooden bravil homes makes the island looks a bit too "brown", though I can see how you might be aiming for that look when it comes to a port town, but I think it might look a bit more lively in you worked in some color (maybe a few different buildings here and there or just some stone walls or trees or even rocks) have you given any thought to a backstory and/or npcs?