mhahn123

As far as I know you cannot create a mod that isn't dependent on the Oblivion master file. A mod (.esp file) is by definition an alteration to the Oblivion master file. Hence it has to be linked to Oblivion esm. At least that is my understanding of things.

Changing ambient lighting is a fairly simple process. Once you have the CS up and running with your mod loaded, find the interior that you want to edit. Look in the "Cell View" window of the CS with "Interiors" selected. Scroll down the menu until you find the room you want. Now right click on it with your mouse and select "Edit". You should now see a pop up box menu with 3 tabs on the top right labeled "Common Data", "Lighting", and "Interior Data". Select Lighting. Now you want to edit the RGB values under the header labeled "Ambient". This you will just have to play with on your own to get the right look you are shooting for. A good starting point for a uniform medium gray light is 50 or 60 on all three colors. If your goal is to simply brighten things up just uniformly increase the numbers in all three value fields. Have fun!

All true and your bashed patch will ensure that water height, climate, and special lighting will remain intact for those cells. This is very helpful in cases where there is not a specific land height, placed objects, or path grid conflict. Bashed Patch is not absolutely required to make Better Cities and UL mods work properly together though, use of existing patches and proper load order will do that just fine without the use of Wrye. Every existing patch for the mods in question preserve those settings anyway. The statement that a bashed patch is needed to prevent landscape tears is erroneous. Bash patch won't fix land height conflicts no matter how it's set up. The huge rip in the landscape in that screenshot tells us there is a land height conflict going on here. A bashed patch would have kept the water in place, but you would still have a rip in the landscape. That is going to be fixed if we're fortunate by correcting a load order conflict, or by installing an existing patch file that is not already installed, or creating a new patch if it is a previously unknown conflict.

AFK_Weye does not strictly stick to the village of Weye and does in fact add an abandoned/ haunted house to the very spot you highlighted, which is why I mentioned it. With that said...getting away with only one mod conflict and not having to do massive landscaping is a plus in my opinion. There is probably enough room there to make it work.

That would run into conflicts for sure with AFK_Weye which adds a structure on that end of the isle, and possibly UL Imperial Isle. Can't remember how far out Roads of Cyrodiil makes edits in that direction or Region Revive...but I think it would be safe from those two at least.

No such thing. Landscape patches do not require a bashed patch to function at all. Better Cities and the corresponding UL mods/patches work perfectly well together with or without Wrye Bash installed. It would be helpful to know if there is a bashed patch involved though, making mod changes without rebuilding the patch could cause some issues.

That pic doesn't help much. It's a mod conflict to be sure but we have no idea from what. Please post your load order so we can get an idea of what mods you have installed and what the possible conflict might be.

I'm afraid you're going to find that most quest mods are unvoiced. Only a very few mod developers have the equipment and/or resources required to add in voiced dialogue. I can't answer for OOO since I haven't used it in a few years and things may have changed. But one good quest mod which does have voiced dialogue as an add on is Glenvar Castle. As for the bikini armors it does seem to be a disturbing trend. Try Francescos instead for armors. And Midas Magic may be a good alternative on that side of things.

Fantastic looking building...and man is it big! You weren't kidding about that. As for location...The area around Cropsford may not be too bad of a choice. You are going to run the risk of mod conflict just about anywhere, that area is less mod intensive than many others and fairly flat terrain. Lake Canulus may work on the North and West ends...UL Eastern Peaks hits that area and an older mod called Lake Canulus Village...but there are mods everywhere. Patches I think are the least of your worries with a building that size...landscaping terrain to make it fit in properly at the edge of that lake..or anywhere else the land is somewhat inclined is going to take some work. I say just pick a spot you like is somewhat mod conflict free and do your thing. You'll likely never find a spot that hasn't been used for something already unless you create a new island. If you need a patch or two whipped up later on hit me up.

I can't seem to do that. Textures only show up if I have it with the \data\ before the \meshes and \textures directories. That shouldn't be a problem though should it? Everyone has the same structure with the \data folder before their meshes and textures as far as I know... http://i.imgur.com/nAr6G2Z.png Nifskope will auto set the texture path for you as long as the source folder is registered in nifskope. To do this click on "Render/Settings/Add Folder" and then "Folder" to navigate to your mod folder...making sure to select the folder which actually contains the meshes and textures for your mod. So for example if your mod folder has a "Data" folder inside which in turn holds meshes and textures, you would want to navigate to the data folder. Now every time you assign a texture to one of your meshes nifskope will auto crop the texture path to start with just "textures". This is one thing that really matters...if your texture path starts with anything other than textures...people who download your mod will have problems.

Not to drag out this already extended topic...but just have to throw my two cents in on the abandonware issue. I think a mod authors wishes as stated on the mod page should always be honored. It's a simple matter of courtesy and respect. If you want to edit a mod for personal use that's fine, nobody ever has to know about it and certainly can't stop you...so long as it remains on your pc for personal use. However blatantly using someone else work without permission and uploading as your own is just plain unscrupulous. With that said there really are a lot of abandoned mods out there, with original authors who haven't logged on for years in some cases. I think it should be ok to work with long abandoned mods. Providing one makes every reasonable attempt at contact (pm, email if available, reaching out to a moderator in advance), gives all due credits, and clearly posts in the readme/description that the file will be removed if there is objection from the original author at a later date. We already have at least one known precedent of this with the fixed version of Verona House: Bloodlines. And I've personally used the same route when attempting to get permission for patch files. I don't see a problem with this course of action because every effort has been made and the authors wishes will be honored if they ever return. Anyway that's my take on things.

Oblivion is very playable...before or after Skyrim. Many in fact have returned after Skyrim. As far as I can see there is nothing terrible about the gameplay. While Oblivion suffered in some development areas...many things left unfinished upon release, that is precisely why it is so very moddable. And keep in mind that many of the wonderful features in Skyrim were borrowed directly from the efforts of the Oblivion modding community. There are some fantastic mods available that easily make Oblivion equal to Skyrim from a graphics standpoint. And as far as quests go there are more mods for that than you could browse through in several days. There are so many mods available for every aspect of the game you will be restarting several times to try out new things. Malachai had it right though....when it comes to suggesting good mods we all have our own tastes. I suggest by starting with Top mod lists and File of the Month lists. But mods making those lists aren't automatically the "best" out there. Simply the most popular. There are a great number of fantastic mods not found in the popular lists, and any number of hidden gems out there...you just have to put in some time browsing to find them.

Hi Carah, Thanks for replying and for keeping your eyes peeled. I have in fact checked at TESA and a few other places before posting here. But appreciate the suggestion just the same. I even hit up a few people who are skilled with Blender to make one for me...so far no takers but hey I understand everyone does this on their free time and we all have priorities.

I have Wikinger's resources on my PC and have made custom items from it. Some meshes are problematic because they are not in a finished state....and glitch as a result, this may be one of them. There are also meshes in the package for which there are missing textures. I'll take a look at that particular helm and see if I can identify the problem.

I'm trying to find a resource similar to Meos "Armors of Cyrodiil for Dummies" which has Town Guard style armor. Unfortunately that excellent resource does not include Town Guard armors. I want...no..need an armor dummy with town guard style cuirass that has arms in the down at the sides position like Meos armor stands. If anyone can point me in the right direction...even if it isn't strictly speaking a resource item...I would be eternally grateful. Don't worry I'll handle the getting permissions end of it. Thanks in advance to anyone who knows where to look. M Hahn

On question 1, do you have antialiasing turned on? If so it is a known cause for printscreen not functioning. Simply turn it off when you want to take screen shots. Or use an external program like FRAPS for doing screenshots if you cant part with AA for even a moment. Unable to help with question 2, never heard of an issue like that before.

Well....glad you got things working. Honestly never heard of those other utilities you mentioned, but have to admit I haven't looked at utilities for a very long time either. The only programs I've ever used are OBMM (not extended, didn't know there was an extended), Wrye Bash, and BOSS for sorting (last updated version is 2.30 before it was changed to LOOT). These were and still are the top 3 Mod Managing utilities for Oblivion. And they all work perfectly together. Never had any problems at all other than newer, unrecognized mods which can be submitted for addition to the BOSS masterlist directly from BOSS.

What mod manager are you using? Is it OBMM (Oblivion Mod Manager)? And are you using LOOT instead of BOSS. I have never ever had a problem with BOSS sorting load order. But yours is all wonky and isn't even close to correct. I have seen a lot of comments about LOOT messing up load orders, although I have never tried LOOT myself. From what I can see on your load order list you have master files out of place with files that depend on them and the text is telling you that. Look at the areas in your load order where the text says "Delinquent Master". Example: 02 Children Shivering Isles.esm -----> Delinquent Master: Children.esm 03 Children.esm So you have the master file installed, it just needs to be loaded above the file which depends on it as a resource. If your sorting tool isn't doing this properly then manually move "Children.esm" to a position just above "Children Shivering Isles.esm". Then go through and do the same thing with the rest of your Delinquent Master warnings. That will mostly fix things...although I see other load positions that just don't look right compared to my load order.

The newest version of Better Cities has custom walls for Bruma..and a few other cities. I would have to take a look in the files later today...but it would appear there are no _far nifs for TES4LODGen to create LOD from. Seems odd those would have been left out...but I admittedly only recently upgraded myself and can't be sure this is even really the case.

Save games contain info from whatever mods you may have been using at the time the save was made. When you remove a mod and then use a save game that had that mod installed, you usually see a pop up warning saying that "this save contains data from a missing file" or some such thing. Depending on what info is missing all sorts of strange things can happen now when you use this save game. The problem, I'm going to guess, is that the saves you are attempting to use contain info from that bash patch you deleted. Bash patches merge all sorts of critical data from plugins and master files alike. So deleting that and then using a save which had it active could potentially do what you are describing.

Multiple Oblivion Manager (aka MOM) by Hanaisse...nifty utility that will do all the dirty work for you and has detailed instructions with the download. Found at Tes Alliance. Link: http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/997-multiple-oblivion-manager-mom/

Wrye Bash is a great tool but no it's not the same thing as merging files with Gecko. Gecko creates a permanent single mod plugin out of 2 or more mod files. To add things to leveled lists so that NPCs use them you would need to do this via the Construction Set. It may be doable to some limited extent with Wrye Bash but I am not familiar with the process if it is possible. Give me a day to throw together a step by step for Gecko and I'll pm it over to you. I can point you in the right direction for working with levelled lists...a good tutorial that I followed.

Ok I got you. So as I said putting together a compilation is fairly easy, it's the getting permissions which is more time consuming. You may want to consider putting it together yourself. Download and install Tes4Gecko, which can quickly and easily merge mod plugins for you. Things like armor mods...assuming there are no quests or scripts involved...are very simple to merge and I can outline the process for you. You will get exactly what you want much faster and you won't have to rely on someone else to do it. Or have to worry about getting permissions...as long as it's for personal use only.

Armors aren't my specialty but I am curious what exactly you mean by "Immersive Armor". What specifically would you like to see that would make an armor immersive? And keep in mind that making a compilation of multiple armor mods would require gaining permissions from each individual mod author whose work was borrowed. Takes almost as much time as putting the mod together in some cases.

Read the mod description and/or read-me files, one or both should tell you how the mod is packaged and help answer that question. Sorry can't help with Nexus Mod Manager questions....never used it for downloading or installing. I understand it doesn't work well or at all with many highly popular mods...because most of them are packaged to be installed via OBMM or Bain (Wrye Bash). Any mod out there can be installed manually although some will require a bit of modding knowledge before attempting that approach. Similarly any mod can be repackaged to be installed with OBMM or Bain (Wrye Bash). Both require a bit of reading to understand the methods for packaging. I don't personally use texture mods atm, but there are a number out there. QTP 3 is one very popular texture pack. If you are looking for large landscape mods look no further than Unique Landscapes series. There are 30+ which can change literally every corner of your game. Be forewarned though...with such extensive landscape altering comes the increased possibility for mod conflicts. Fortunately the modding community has already created patch files for almost every popular mod which conflicts with Unique Landscapes. Edit: Looks like bben beat me to the punch.