theuseless

Alchemy is the best money (vanilla) but the skill (seems to) advance quickly. Making potions and poisons is the best way to get by on hard difficulty. All beginners should try this skill out. Don't pick as major however as it does advance quickly and the rest of your attributes will suffer.

Hey, I use an external program called Xpadder. It is cheap (like $10 if I remember) and very effective. You can program your buttons to any key(s), including multiple keys for each button (some keys only work in menu, vice versa). I hope that an admin doesn't think I'm trying to make an advertisement, if this is out of line then I understand it would be my first strike. But the program is awesome and worth a strike to mention. I use it for all my games now, even magic the gathering online. It operates by identifying your controller as a keyboard/mouse. I use my gamepad as a mouse a lot of the time, even out of game. You must disable gamepad/joystick functions if you wish to use this however, as it is read as a mouse/keyboard but the controller is also recognized by the game, which tries to place its functions there as well, causing chaos. Just thought I'd share a cool program that I can't live without now. theuseless

I like the anime armours, but I like to have more than just that as well. I agree that it would be cool to see somebody make a mod that adds draperies (I don't know the proper term) to cover armours with. Traditional plate mail was often covered in a fabric to protect against heat from the sun, identification, etc. The logistics mean that one would have to limit the armours worn underneath to only vanilla, as they might look odd with some other amrours underneath. I like that idea, but I don't have the skill now to attack the task.

That sucks. Glad that I asked though. Better to be safe than sorry

Is it legal to use textures/meshes from fallout in oblivion and vice versa? can I retexture castle tilesets from oblivion for fo3, or use gates/doors from fallout3 in oblivion? I tried to read the legal documents (sign this in blood or your soul is ours kinda stuff). I can't find anything in the fine print about cross porting the games. Is it legal 'cause the games are released by the same company? Or is it illegal because you said you wouldn't reverse engineer the games in any way? Just a thought, theuseless

I have been using oblivion with OBSE for a while but I have the original disks. I know that if you want to run OBSE you have to run the kicker program to launch oblivion. If you download Wrye Bash, it should detect and run the kicker program if present. I believe that the steam version of the kicker is available as well. If it's not listed then they must have integrated it into the regular version. Basically, if you run oblivion from the OBSE kicker, it should work. If it doesn't work, I believe the steam version is the best out there as they fix bugs and issues that the bethesda company didn't or couldn't forsee. I know that the steam version of fo3 is much more stable (the retail version ctd's for me and many others after 5+ hrs continuous gameplay). I personally like to have the physical disks however, as my internet sometimes gets shut off (due to negligent payment lol). I'm not saying that you do, but if you have a downloaded version, just download and play, you need to buy the game. Those downloaded versions are often encrypted or missing pieces to fit a smaller filesize (other than steam).

First off I followed the advice in the pinned article on re-installing oblivion and followed, to the letter, the instructions. There were some other registry entries that I deleted on top of that article's advice, all pointing at bethesda software. @ Darthlvlaul: Thanks for the advice, I enabled hidden files and found a number of files related to oblivion in the prestart folder. This unfortunately didn't help any. @ BBen Thanks for the registry cleaner advice. I went through and manually deleted any registry entries that I could find but I'm sure that there must be something left after. Hopefully CCleaner will help. I've been looking for good freeware reg cleaning. I will run the disk cleaner as well, I hadn't thought of doing that. I'm sure that what you have said is true about tes4edit removing files from the oblivion.esm that were updated by SI. It is the only answer that makes sense after reading the manual for the fo3edit (basically the same program). The only thing the manual didn't tell me is how to reverse my particular change. wierd huh? I totally agree with your motto: "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you went after." I think that I can use the tes4edit now safely when I reverse my change. In general, I'm not too upset. I'm figuring it's either got something to do with a virus I can't detect or I'm an idiot. Maybe my video card or something. In any case, I'm gonna back up anything important and do a wipe as soon as I can. Thank you both for your help and advice, but I think that I'm beyond an easy fix and need to just make a clean install of XP. Untill then I'll be learning the GECK as it still runs fine, theuseless

Have you checked out the large scale armour packs yet? Sin's Expanded Light Armor Armory of the Silver Dragon Armamentarium Bob's Armor All these packs are huge, the armamentarium one alone adds over 1000 re-texured (colored) armours and weapons based upon the vanilla ones. Same with Sin's. The Armoury of the Silver Dragon is one of my personal favorites as it adds some really cool armours and helmets (can you say bassinet?). I am new here so I don't know how to link to the nexus but if you search for those you won't be dissapointed. As a side note, make sure if you get the complete armamentarium here http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18417 you get the mod it relies on here: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25309. These are leveled loot so make sure you don't level up too fast or you might spend a while looking for the last piece of that leather set or whatever. The silver dragon is only available to lv 20+ however. If you don't have Castle Seaview yet you can get a horse and set of custom armors there as well. Poke around for mods that come with armours, you would be surprised. I believe Castle Almgard, Castle Ravenloft and the Dune mod have some extras as well. But the four mentioned above are the larger ones that I've found and well worth it. If you want a mace as a shield, you got it. Hope I didn't tell you about common stuff that you already knew about, theuseless

I win again

I just downloaded the f03edit manual, so I will troubleshoot this on my own too, but I'm not sure if I can. I know a bit about the game mechanics, but the tes4edit has a lot of features I just don't understand yet. I ran tes4edit to clean a mod and clicked oblivion.esm into the order as well. I thought the guide said to load any dependent files, so loaded that one. I followed the auto cleaning guides online and auto cleaned only the plugin file. Now oblivion is all fudged and won't display anything from shivering isles. At all. I have done a complete re-install (down to the registry edits). I ran disk defrag, scanned my HD for viruses (with 3 scanning providers and no they don't all run at the same time). As far as I can tell, I have wiped all traces from my computer and re-installed a fresh, clean copy of oblivion w/ shivering isles (from disk, not bootleg). I run the game and all the SI meshes/textures are gone! When I install and run the CS, it says that the meshes are missing from pieces that I used 3 days ago. I have loaded every save of my mod and they all are missing every SI mesh, crashing my CS to desktop with error messages. Nothing that I can figure out is fixing this. Please somebody help. I have too much on my computer I don't want to lose and can't afford to back it all up for another 2 weeks. :wallbash:

Thanks for all the help. I was wondering why it seemed to be random for me. I will use the middle mouse wheel idea. I like that, should have thought of that one sooner (lol). I had been cut and pasting to wordpad to read, but the middle mouse wheel should help me to respond when I think I've got something relevant to add. Peace, theuseless

Hey, I'm making a large scale mod that will have a castle roughly 4-5 times the size of the vanilla ones. I'm about a third of the way through with the castle and have started adding quests. As vampire quests are something of a rare item, I was looking for people that have quests they would like to see made. I have a plenitude of ideas for the vampires, but the vampire hunters are lacking. I don't want them to just say "go kill these cool NPC's 1 at a time." I don't have any ideas beyond having you look for vampire slaying weapons/armour. I plan on making the vampire hunter faction into another branch of vampire clan as a secret twist but don't want that to dominate the plot line. If there are other people out there working on vampire mods that would like to link and cross story lines, I would be totally open to that. I started this project with the aims of making vampirism more dynamic. I want them to have their own faction(s) with epic quests and I have the notes for a fun story started. Any takers either post here or mail me directly at: [email protected] The email is somewhat spammed so CAPS and write mods or oblivion in the title so my eyes catch it. I don't have a hundred spams a day, but I don't look any further than the email address usually. each main quest will have 3 ways to solve them. They will add a number of variables like wickedness, cowardice, cheese, etc. Each of these factors will build and open optional ways to solve the main quests. I do realize the scope of what I am saying. I'm not just over stepping my goals. the 11 main quests (as of now:) 1: gaining access. I have a clean, fully functioning portcullis script which keeps the switch locked. It has an operator that will open it for you once for a tour, then you must bring skulls. This keeps you exploring the rest of the game. She opens the gate for you all the time for free when you are in the faction. 2: tax collection. Vampires would impose taxes on their cattle... It might get a little bloody when you try to extort the butcher though 3: Poison Crafting Find and return poison ingredients for poison recipes/finished poisons. 4: Random Killing You must keep a terrifying profile. The occasional random slaughter shows the cattle who is in control 5: Sell "Life Insurance" Its been done to death in horror movies, but what's a good horror plot without fun cheese? 6: Seduce a wealthy widow/bachelor and then poison them. The coffers are never empty thanks to you. You keep some cool stuff too, of course how much is up to you. 7: Subdue Bravil Guards. Be it with money, sweet/mean talk or a fight in the middle of the streets, you must command your respect as the bloodline grows (clan is so lame). 8: Recover Imperial Commerce records Traders found something interesting. The imperial scum are trying to keep it for themselves... 9: Grave-robbery The only piece you need to find the lost temple is buried within a noble's tomb. Looting this tomb is going to be no easy task however. I will be a fairly small cave/tomb with a large troll. 10: Find the blood of the key A certain family trait is required to unseal the ancient vampire tomb. 11: Final boss fight Find and confront the ultimate vampire daedra. I want this boss to have the "emerald weapon" feel from FFVII. These are all the stages that I have planned out now, with a total of 5 NPC's not including the gatekeeper. There will be a couple of other NPC's to populate the castle and some servants, but they are just AI packages. Maybe add a master of the hunt with side quests or some other later. The (massive) dining room has an arena inside with working, pathed gates that will involve placing the main character in the middle of a fight unsuspectingly, later having you be the switch operator if you want. Also a way to make money. Of course the hunters will want you to kill the bloodline, but I want that to take place later in the plot. They are rivals but aren't as open as the bloodline. I want the hunters to have the real paladin or witch hunter feel, but I can't relate to that so well I've seen a thousand posts discouraging newer modders from large projects, but this is something that must be done for the sake of vampires across Tamriel. I have completed numerous tutorials and now understand the clean from dirty ways to write script, etc. This will be a reality. The castle itself will be the former home of none other than Jagar Tharn, master thief and later in death a vampire.

Sometime the width of the page goes out of control. It doesn't give me any bars to scroll over. It just extends the screen to the right. I've tried different monitor settings, reloading and everything. It seems to happen after I post (which means that I might not be able to reply to this :wacko: . The only thing that works for me is to restart my comp. I don't want to reboot every time I wish to post. Also, it doesn't affect every page. I was able to get here, but it shows most other pages on the forum as wide. I also just got the latest firefox upgrade. It seems to have (dare I say new) features but is kinda buggy. Any advice would help

Hey there guys. You can attatch the following script to an activator. Attatch the following script to it and it should work. You can leave in the annotations if you like or remove them. scn XXXyourScriptNameHere ref gate ;declares reference variable 'gate' but still needs to be difined ref self ;declares ref variable 'self' but still needs to be difined short triggered ;declares variable 'triggered' and defined at 0 begin onActivate ;this starts the script when the switch is activated set gate to getParentRef ;defines variable 'gate' as what this switch is parented to set self to getself ;defines variable 'self' as the switch if triggered != 1 ;says if the animation is in default position (triggered is not equal to 0) self.playgroup forward 0 ;says to play the animation on the switch gate.playgroup forward 0 ;plays animation on the parent set triggered to 1 ;tells us that this has been done, animations are not in default state elseif triggered == 1 ;says if that didn't work because the animations have been run self.playgroup backward 0 ;reverses animations gate.playgroup backward 0 set triggered to 0 ;says that endif end All you need to do is attatch that script to any (unique) activator. Make both the target and the trigger persistant. That's all for a basic trigger. No, not all activators have animations attatched, but you can rotate a door untill it is sideways. So you're asking, yeah but how does this help me? Or you are saying, yeah, I already know that. Well then we will make a trap door that activates when you are over it. First find your door (like doors/archetecture/castleInterior/narrowSections/ SecretDoorLeyawiinPrivate. This could be a suitable alternative if scaled and rotated properly. You don't even need to attatch a script to it! Then make a unique trigger for it by going to world objects/activator/misc/triggers and find one that looks the correct size. Edit the trigger's ID (make it UNIQUE) and then make the following script and attatch it: scn XXXyourScriptnameHereXXX ref target begin onTrigger player short triggered ref target short triggered begin onTrigger player if triggered == 0 set target to GetParentRef set triggered to 1 if triggered != 1 target.playgroup forward 0 set triggered to 1 elseif triggered == 1 target.playgroup backward 0 set triggered to 0 endif endif end end It works in exactly the same manner as the other script, but since the trigger is not an animated object (reference), we don't need to playgroup it forward or backward. Also they trigger "begin onTrigger player" instead of GameMode or onActivate. You should now have a square brick that moves like a trap door, activated when the player passes over it (you are giong to need to get a little more advanced to make it trigger on creatures or NPC. You will need to path it then). I hope that this solves your issue. I recently went through the same thing, so all I had to do was cut and paste :biggrin: best of luck and hopefully you help me someday :wink: theuseless

It would be cool to get a candleholder that has a little saucer and handle that gives off just a little less light than a torch, but cool for style purposes. I would love to see that one made.

Bow to the temporary might of theuseless!!! Behold simple mortals, I am he who is the winner!!!!

Hey there buddy. Back again. I found a portcullis that works with any of the aforementioned scripts, tho not nearly so grandiose. It is located at Activators/Dungeons/Caves. You get the CGate01 and the open version as well. I have tried these extensively with all the aforementioned scripts and other, vanilla, scripts. They animate perfectly as long as you use Vagrant0's first script as is. If you want to link them to other stuff, the scripting is already present vanilla. For a funny repeat effect (funny after I found my fix lol) try triggering the doors with vanilla rfswitch01. I haven't tried to modify the scripts to add the damage effects from the mace traps, but I'm sure its possible. Anyways, you can scale these gates up if you so choose, just remember to make a unique activator with functioning scripts attatched to open them. I hope this solves your problem (the portcullis style gates come fully decked out with architecture to make them look nice and smooth. I'll pm you this as well to make sure that you aren't wasting all your time looking for answers like I did :thumbsup: Hope this helps you out, theuseless

It sounds to me like you need to follow the advice of the pros and re-order the unrecognized mods by hand. You might try to load w/o them and see if the SI quest advances. If that works, find similar mods and re-order by hand (using full balo is easiest for me, but you can re-order through Obmm if you want). example: Order house mods with house mods,weapons and armours together, mods that change the environment with mods that do the same, etc. Patterns will emerge. Then place bashed patch last and rebuild it. Not sure, but this should fix it. It is almost certainly a load order problem, and I've never seen a load list with mods after the patch. That means that the mods you are loading last are modifying the bashed patch's hard work and nullifying parts of it. This is more than likely where your problem stems from. I would strongly recommend trying to load your game without all those final mods (the unrecognized ones) to see if that's the problem. I would put money on it and I'm not the most experienced. Second, there is at least 1 problem and 1 redundancy that I can spot off quickly skimming the list. error: EiAmod.esp . Note: Use 'EiAmod_ShiveringIsles.esp' compatibility patch if using Shivering Isles. You probably should use the SI version. I am only assuming that it is named differently. That might help And I assume that you have the Mobs version of the UO SI patch. UOP Vampire Aging & Face Fix.esp is redundant with CosmeticComp. CosmeticComp changes the vampire aging and faces. The bashed patch is using the data from CosmeticComp to overwrite the UOP. This mod should be deleted as it is causing your data folder to bloat. Check the list of changes affected by CosmeticComp to find other redundant files that don't need updating. This list pointed me to some cool mods, but I don't have the time to test it for you. It looks like if you re-order your mods, update your EiAmod and rebuild your patch last you should be able to play. I'm familiar with some but not all your mods. I hope that you find your answer. Again, I'm putting my money on the load order problem. If not, smegmus maximus.additem 'gold001' 10000. Hope that I could be of help, theuseless

I am fairly new to making mods, but have played mods enough to think that you might have a problem with 2 of your mods. It sounds like something minor (like a timer, short counter or ref) got confused and is trying to modify with scripts that it wasn't intended. I had a problem like this that didn't start immediately. I had Reneer's Guard Overhaul and I can't remember what was affecting the problem. The problem was that the doors to cities would always be locked. I didn't think it was a mod conflict either until it happened over and over with new saves, only after time. I uninstalled any conflicting mods and playtested until I found the problem. I'm sure that there's an easier way to fix conflicts, but I haven't gone into the mod cleaning tutorials yet. That might help, might not. Also, is your patch up to the 3.x unofficial fix? That helped me with a lot of my issues when playing with a hundred + mods. If I didn't add anything usefull, I'm sorry. My name states it all, theuseless. Just thought I might interject my opinion (not necessarily advice).

It seems that for some reason, I can't always see all the text posted in a topic. I find that I have to cut and paste to a simple txt doc. Is this something that I need to set in my Firefox settings? I just upgraded and the bastitches didn't save my preferences (wish they'd give me an ini file lol). It is somewhat annoying and having to copy/paste, but worth it for some of the posts in here. Also, its not that way all the time. It seems to be somewhat random (I haven't discerned the pattern yet at least).

I seem to be having the Exact same problem. I have the playgroups set fine, the scripts following work perfectly for me with other gates. I'm only having issues with this one gate for the moment, KvatchCastlePortcullis02. I have the following script running on the Switch: scn tUL665TharnstEntOpenerScript ; activates parent after a 2 sec delay short open short next short busy float timer ref mySelf ref myParent begin onActivate ;tells the switch what to do when activated if busy == 0 if open == 0 playgroup forward 1 set open to 1 set next to 1 set timer to 2 else playgroup backward 1 set open to 0 set next to 1 set timer to 0.5 endif set busy to 1 endif end begin gameMode ;sets up references and tells the switch that when it is activated, to activate it's parent reference if next == 1 && timer <= 0 set mySelf to getSelf set myParent to getParentRef myParent.activate mySelf 1 set next to 0 endif if isAnimPlaying == 0 && busy == 1 set busy to 0 endif if timer > 0 set timer to timer - getSecondsPassed endif end begin onReset ;resets the switch when the cell resets reset3DState set next to 0 set open to 0 set busy to 0 end and the actual gate script: scn tUL665TharnstEntDoorScript short init short next short lowered short busy ref mySelf ref myParent begin onActivate ;tells the drawbridge what to do when activated if isActionRef player == 1 if lowered == 0 message "This gate is lowered remotely." else message "This gate is raised remotely." endif elseif isActionRef mySelf == 0 && busy == 0 if lowered == 0 ;if activated and the bridge is up, push the bridge down playgroup forward 0 set lowered to 1 else playgroup backward 0 ;if activated when the bridge is down, pull the bridge up set lowered to 0 endif set next to 1 set busy to 1 endif end begin gameMode if init == 0 ; set up ref variables set mySelf to getSelf set myParent to getParentRef set init to 1 endif if next == 1 myParent.activate mySelf 1 ; this says "if I am activated, activate my parent reference" set next to 0 endif if isAnimPlaying == 0 && busy == 1 set busy to 0 endif end I copied the script from a tutorial I went through. It is missing a small bit of code (to reverse the gate/bridge's original appearance) to try to attempt to fix this. (I omitted the enable/disableLinkedPathPoints in this one for clarity) There were no changes. Did nothing. The code looks clean on paper... So then I found my way here and tried the script that the brilliant Vagrant0 posted. I had to set the playgroup variables (i set them to 0) so that the code looks like this: scn tULTharstEntOpenerTESTScript ref gate ref self short triggered begin onactivate set gate to getparentref set self to getself if triggered != 1 self.playgroup forward 0 gate.playgroup forward 0 set triggered to 1 elseif triggered == 1 self.playgroup backward 0 gate.playgroup backward 0 set triggered to 0 endif end This works like a beauty on everything else, but won't solve the problem with the animations. Now I know that its a problem with either the CS, the gate anim, or my comp. Thanks for the code to kill clutter scripts Vagrant0. I will still use the longer scripts for complex daisy chains, but those simple ones help a lot. I hope that there is a solution to this, Matt (Inggrish). If you happen to find either a solution or a mod that allows a cool gate as a modder's resource, please let me know. I will do the same, theuseless

As I am new to scripting, I don't even know if it is possible, but wouldn't it be cool to order your companions to serve you in your castle? What if a mod had jobs that you could assign to npc companions. Like a castle that is devoid of servants to begin with, but then you find somebody for the master of the hunt, your cook, the peasants and so forth. Just a random idea. So each companion would be ordered to specific job titles, which would place them into the scripting written for each of the jobs. So you could grab a non scripted npc and insert them into the role. I think that would take it over the top. If this flat out isn't possible, please let me know. I will add this to my list of "coolest long term goals" until then.

I would like see a feature that allows us to rate each article of feedback on our posts. I already look for kudos and all, but it would be nice to be able to see individual relevance as set by the topic's creator. Thank you for making such a wonderful website. I wish that I could have read your tutorial on how to install mods when I started playing them a couple of months ago. Now, thanks to your community, I am making my own mods better.

Wow, thank you so much Vagrant0! These are precisely the answers that I was looking for and such a fast response. Load times don't make too much of a differnce with my comp, but these guidlines are very useful. I do want to use large rooms still, but now I know how to break them up. They are each roughly each 2,000 - 2,500 in distance at the largest, from one wall to the other. I like your idea of black fog tho, I'm gonna use that, along with spider webs and darker lighting to hide visability of hidden doors/chests. I will also release a version with it broken down into cells based on rooms, but for now I'm building it as a whole (I can split it into individual cells later). If there were a way to rate usefulness of comments in here, I would give you a perfect 10 (which is unheard of for me). Thank you again with your informative, quick and easy to understand response :yes:

I am new to making my own content, but I have completed a number of tutorials on how to make a mod. I now feel like I have the hang of it and want to take it to the next level. So i have a floorspace that took a week to lay down and fit seamlessly. It is a huge castle with many secret passageways and secret rooms. I have been looking in these forums for hours and googled myself to death but I can't find an answer to my question. How many cells should i split the castle into, and how much should each cell contain? I ask because as it stands now, I am ready to add items, npc's and quests (I'm a tutorial hound and have tried and tested many on small scales). Is there a recommended range for how much is loaded in a single cell? Can I make an open castle that contains all the combined info in one cell for high performance, and release a multiple celled version for low performance comps? As I stated earlier, I am new to modding but I am willing to learn and open to any suggestions please. :thanks: