Striker879

Don't worry, when I first started I was exactly like everybody else ... I wanted it all even though I hadn't done anything to learn how to get there. I railed and steamed at all the jargon every where I looked for answers. I wanted to say to heck with it about a half dozen times a day. Fortunately I'm a bit like a dog with a bone when it comes to getting over most humps in the road. As I learned more, more of what I read made sense. Can't say how long it took for sure, but once the light went on it got easy enough to be called fun. Before I retired a big part of my job was troubleshooting and problem solving, so I brought a pretty handy toolset along with me. Yup, not much chance of troubleshooting sound on a black screen. That's why way back in your first thread I suggested starting small and doing one thing at a time. Gives you a chance to get your head around stuff a little at a time, and gives us here a solveable problem to use as a training tool.

When you install OCO v2 it replaces the vanilla game face textures with the one that displays the error face ... that way when you are installing you know whether or not Blockhead is working (OCO v2 can't perform it's magic without Blockhead). Because of the way that BSA Redirection works, without removing the actual files that OCO v2 added you will not see the vanilla game face textures (which are safely tucked away in the vanilla game file Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa, so no worries). To uninstall OCO v2 completely simply delete the files that OCO v2 added (so all of the head related files found in each race subfolder in Data\Textures\characters). My question about sound cards was related to how the on-board sound solutions often cause stuttering type problems (they don't actually do any of the sound processing themselves ... they just route all of that to the CPU, tying it up from other uses for the game). Make certain the game is using your dedicated sound card and not the on-board. One way to perform that test is to disable the on-board sound in your system BIOS temporarily, but I'm not sure how comfortable you are with doing things like that. Another possible troubleshooting step for sound related issues is to disable sounds in Oblivion.ini temporarily and see if that resolves the problem (this is to find out if sound issues is at the root of the problem, not a solution). All you need to do is change bSoundEnabled=1 to bSoundEnabled=0 and then test for your stuttering/lag problem.

No experience using OR, but I would turn off all of it's effects (yea sounds counterintuitive), get the game working properly and then turn it's effects on one at a time (picking the ones you'd like to have). Sounds to me like your stutter and lag is more systematic then ... do you have a dedicated sound card or on-board sound (e.g. Realtek or the like)?

Supierce is pretty active supporting mods like OSR and Oblivion Reload ... have you tried posting on the OSR mod comments or dropping Supierce a PM? Is there a particular reason you need OSR anyway? Have you tried running without it?

Others will have the nitty gritty info you need on OSR ... I don't use it as I'm an old WinXP (32 bit) dinosaur using a Core 2 Duo with only 2 GB RAM (i.e not a lot OSR could do for me). A stutter here, bit o' lag there are my way of life.

:ninja: ... hehe

If I recall correctly that was something people ran into with the latest version of OSR. Check the OSR comments ... pretty sure reverting to an older version resolved the problem. - Edit - Scroll down in the OSR mod comments to unwishedjack's post and Supierce's responses. You may want to make a post there to request a copy of Superiece's OSR.ini as it seems unwishedjack found a solution that way.

And Wrye Bash would be my recommendation as well. To check that BSA Redirection is turned on in Wrye Bash go to the Installers tab and from the right click context menu that opens when you right click on the word Package (or anywhere else along that header bar) make sure you have a tick mark beside BSA Redirection (if there isn't on just toggle it on with a left click, but I think it may be on by default). The vanilla game uses assets (meshes, textures, animations etc) that are stored in the BSA files that come with the game (e.g. Oblivion - Meshes.bsa and Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa). To get the game to use assets other than those requires an ESP file to change the instructions the game gets from the Oblivion.esm master file. If you wanted to make the green vanilla glass armor red you would need to create an ESP (e.g. MyRedGlassArmor.esp) using the Construction Set. The game has a limit on how many ESP files it will use, and it was recognized as a limitation to modding early on. Archive invalidation was invented as a method to get the game to use assets that are outside of the vanilla game BSA files, without requiring an ESP. Older methods of archive invalidation required you to create text files and keep them up to date every time you made a change/addition to your non-ESP mod list. BSA Redirection uses a trick that doesn't require any intervention from you once you implement it. If a mod wants to make the green glass armor red it simply places a red coloured texture file named the same as the green one it wants to replace in the exact same file path as the game uses internally in the BSA file Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa and the game will use the newer file and not load the older one from the BSA ... no ESP required. OBSE plugins are all independent from one another (unless they state that they require something in their own install instructions, but I can't recall ever seeing an OBSE plugin that required another OBSE plugin to work). The main thing to keep in mind about OBSE plugins is that they are all manual install ... a simple copy/paste to the correct folder is all that is required.

I'd suggest holding off on the advice Koroush gives in Oblivion Tweak Guide for a bit ... crawl, then walk and then run. Blockhead is an OBSE plugin. Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) opens ways for plugins to alter the way the game works without using any of the previous tools (like using an ESP file to alter the way an ESM master file instructs the game to do things). OBSE plugins must be installed in the correct folder or they will be silently ignored. If you install Blockhead.dll in the Oblivion\Data\OBSE\Plugins folder and if OBSE is working then Blockhead will work. If you have an old failed install attempt Blockhead.dll somewhere else it can be safely deleted or left cluttering things up ... it will make no difference to the game. Note the last bit of that quote from Koroush ... "and typically shows no image quality difference." I have also seen a report by Alenet (the author of Oblivion Reloaded ... very knowledgeable on how the game's executable works) that trying to force shader model 3.0 doesn't work, and the game still uses shader model 2.0 (I myself have no idea of whether or not forcing shader model 3.0 does anything, but I didn't see any difference when I tried doing so). Archive invalidation is a method developed to force the game to use assets from mods that don't use an ESP file to force such a change (what I call "replacer mods"). There have been various methods tried over the years ... the only one that works reliably and without maintenance issues is BSA Redirection. Ignore all advice you see to use any other method of archive invalidation such as BSA Alteration as it is outdated and for older mods at least, may have been made back in the days before BSA Redirection was invented. There are various ways to implement BSA Redirection depending on which of the mod managers you decide to use to implement it ... do you have a preference?

The steps to troubleshoot a Blockhead install issue are: Start the game after installing OBSE and make a save. Check your Saves folder (by default found in the Users\[username]\ Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves folder for Windows operating systems Vista and newer) and see if you now have two save files each time you save (e.g. MySave09.ess and MySave09.obse). If you only see a single save each time you save then OBSE isn't working. The first time Blockhead starts after installing it, it will create the file Blockhead,ini (found in the Oblivion\Data\OBSE\Plugins folder ... should be right there along side Blockhead.dll). The other test for Blockhead working (as you've discovered) is the Oblivion Character Overhaul v 2 error face ... you will only see the error face if Blockhead isn't working for some reason). If OBSE isn't working then there is no chance for Blockhead to work. For the disk version of Oblivion you will need the OBSE files obse_1_2_416.dll, obse_editor_1_2.dll and obse_loader.exe in your Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion folder (same folder as you will find the vanilla game's Oblivion.exe and OblivionLauncher.exe) and the file obse.ini in the Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\OBSE folder. If those files are in any other folder structure they will not work. Additionally, for users of the disk version of the game, for OBSE to work you must change how you start the game. The easiest way is to edit your desktop shortcut. Right click on your current Oblivion desktop shortcut and select Properties. On the Shortcut tab of the Properties dialogue box find the field Target. The entire current path to the game's EXE will be highlighted ... just single left click immediately behind OblivionLoader.exe, which will remove the highlight and place a cursor at that location. Now backspace over OblivionLoader.exe to remove it and then type in obse_loader.exe so that the path shown in your target field now ends with Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\obse_loader.exe" (make certain you still have the trailing quote mark). Click on Apply and now your game will start using obse_loader.exe (as is required for OBSE to work).

Those are from Emma's Children of Cyrodiil ver 1.1.

Unfortunately I think you are looking for something that doesn't exist. No one mod encompasses all the graphics in Oblivion, and even if there was one it wouldn't appeal to all people. Your best bet, in my opinion, is to take the list that Contra gave you and do some research of your own. Read those mod descriptions and see which ones may interest you. Read the mod comments of those that interest you to get an idea of the type of problems people have run into. Pick a single mod that has appeal and you understand it's install instructions and install that single mod. Play for a while and get a feel for both how the mod affects how the game looks and also how it affects the game's performance on your machine (remember, what you consider a "kick-ass machine" others may consider marginal to play a modded game ... your expectation of performance is your's alone so you'll need to do your own tests). If all goes well decide which would be the next thing you'd like to see improved. If you work at this in a sane methodical manner you will get where you want to go. By adding a single mod at a time and testing thoroughly in between you'll have a very good starting point for troubleshooting when/if problems arise. You will also understand what each mod contributes to the game in both benefits and costs. The trick is making testing fun ... to many people my own test sessions would appear as play sessions.

I'm the wrong guy for advice on that. My own experience using TES4Edit is limited to researching potential mod conflicts and sometimes fixing my own caflooies made when editing something in the CS (most often reverting an object's position back to vanilla). My advice is slower is often faster for what you are trying to achieve. By that I mean testing, testing, testing (and when you get tired of testing you do some more testing). Building my own base install took the better part of three weeks, and I'm a retired guy with time on my hands (for testing). I know how each mod in my load order has affected my game in terms of gameplay and performance/stability. The only way to do that is install a single mod and test until you have wrung out all the can be gleaned from how that mod works with your own setup. Then move on to the next mod on your list. If I decided to clean my load list I'd use exactly the same principles ... clean a single mod and test, test, test. When I'd learned all I could learn from those tests, clean another mod and repeat the cycle. Keeping notes while testing is also a good idea (at least for an old guy like me).

Yes Zemoco you just type in the entries if they don't already exist. The iPreloadSizeLimit will go in the section with the header [General], which should be the first section from the top. In mine it's down close to the end of that section (just after iNumBitsForFullySeen), but I can't say for certain whether the exact location is where it was because that's where I put it or whether it was there because that's where it was originally (i.e. I didn't need to add it). My Oblivion.ini has been following various installs for a while ... sometimes the whole thing if there have been no hardware changes on my machine, sometimes a copy/paste affair from the backup. The [HAVOK] section should be down about midway through Oblivion.ini ... my iNumHavokThreads is near the end of that section (just after fQuadrupedPitchMult).

No 30 some-odd percent wouldn't cause any problems ... it was just something that occurred to me when I read your OP. Next question is did you make any changes whatsoever to your load order just before the crashing started (i.e. add/remove any mods from your load order)? A couple of observations from a quick look at your load order. I see you use OCO v2. I also notice that you have both Roberts male v5 and v4 ESPs active. For one thing it is recommended to delete all Roberts male ESPs when using OCO v2 (it's ESP replaces the one from Roberts ... deactivate and make a save before you delete). Also, why are you using both Roberts v4 and v5 at the same time? I tend to recommend using BOSS for sorting Oblivion load orders myself ... LOOT is for newer games (and yes I know the "LOOT crowd" will disagree with me).

Some of Emma's more recent houses include things like spell making/enchanting altars, as well as alchemy stations that equip alchemy equipment that matches your current alchemy skill level. The alchemy stuff I use without second thoughts. I resist over using the spell making/enchanting altars though ... better to be a bit under powered that greatly overpowered. I do tend to use the ones in her houses rather than the altars at Frostcrag. Her houses are located somewhere I tend to travel to ... Frostcrag is a ways out from Bruma, and Bruma isn't on my normal circuit.

According to Koroush Ghazi in his tweak guide for Oblivion the game will automatically revert the uGridstoload number to the closest odd number if you try to set an even number (i.e 4 or 6). As the game would no longer be able to display non-LOD stuff in all grids surrounding the player (which 5 is able to do) I'm guessing it will automatically use 5 if you try to set 3. Have you tried it? - Edit - I think it was Alenet who posted a very good and thorough description of how the grid system works ... possibly way back in the Oblivion Reloaded mod comments.

I see you use Wrye Bash. It has an animation fixer that will give a percentage of how far towards the stuck animation (aka the A-Bomb) your save is. It's found on the Saves tab right click context menu, down towards the bottom of that menu. Unless it reports a very low percentage I'd run the fix and see if it helps. Running it has no ill effects whatsoever, WB even makes backups of the save automatically (though I always make my own backup first anyways).

I don't use any of the mods changing the leveling system. Over the years I have developed my own system for dealing with the vanilla game's leveling, using the tools that were provided with the vanilla game. By creating a custom class, with major and minor skills that match my gameplay style well, I can have a nice reasonable leveling progression without "grinding" to advance my desired skills while avoiding leveling too fast. I've recorded a single change in my notebook that I will make for my next character (I need to keep notes as it will be so long before that next character happens, and memory is known to fail). Don't feel bad about using the console. I use it all the time to resurrect NPCs to add to my "collections". If you took away my console most of Striker's "mini-games" wouldn't exist.

Question ... is this a game with a lot of hours on it? Have you noticed anything weird about certain animations (Legion patrol's torch flames, gates swinging open or closed slowly etc)?

From the section titled "Installation TLDR" in the OCO v2 mod description" "-Install body replacers, OBSE and Blockhead first -Then v2 core-Then v2 body replacer patches" Install order is of paramount importance with replacer type mods, and OCO v2 and Seamless are replacer type mods at their core. Using your numbers above the order should be OBSE, Blockhead, 5, 6, 1, 3, 4 and then 7. - Edit - There is no need for step 2 ... that's what EVE is (plus equipment replacer).

You have 100% chance of succeeding in making your potion ... having a chance to fail sounds like a good idea for a mod maybe. As your skill in alchemy increases your potions get stronger. Also along with that, as you find/buy better alchemy equipment the stronger your potions will be. Different types of dungeons have a chance of having alchemy equipment in the dungeon's containers that is better than the novice stuff you always find sitting out. My own "secret spot" is the alternate exit to Ceyatatar, accessible from outside a short-ish distance to the WSW of the main Ayleid ruin. It's not very easy to find the first time, but I've been there so many times I can find it in pitch dark. Click on the "view map" link in the top right corner and then zoom the map in one click (if you don't want to try finding it on your own that is).

In general, once you have a complete set of alchemy tools you just equip the mortar and pestle to make potions (i.e. bring up the alchemy menu) and the game automatically uses the other equipment it finds in your inventory. Having a complete set doesn't make too much difference to the potions you make when your alchemy skill is low and only one or two of an ingredient's effects are visible in the alchemy menu as you won't often find two ingredients that share more than one effect in common. Once you reach higher alchemy levels you will start to run into cases where the ingredients you want to use also result in a "negative" side-effect ... that's when having a complete set comes in handy as the negative effect is minimized. Sometime you can use that negative effect to your advantage vs the four potions rule (vanilla game you can't drink more than four potions at a time and can't drink another until one of the four has "expired"). If you select the right ingredients and then combine them in the correct order from top to bottom in the alchemy menu list you can make the negative side effect appear at the top of the list (e.g. from top to bottom ... flax, grapes and venison makes a feather potion with damage health 1 point for 1 second as the negative side effect listed above feather in the effects list). Once the damage health has expired you can drink another potion (works up to a certain limit I've found in actual gameplay, but you'll still be more than four feather potions). Now if you didn't have a piece of alchemy equipment in your inventory at the time that situation would change depending on what piece you were missing. I've found in all my experimentation however that it's difficult to find the combination of ingredients that results in an advantage when you're missing a piece of equipment. A tool I've found useful in trying to discover new alchemy tricks is the Alchemy Calculator at the UESP. The Oblivion:Ingredients page at the UESP Wiki comes in handy for looking for overlapping effects, and the individual ingredient pages list the top locations to find each ingredient. The Alchemy Effects page can also come in handy. Finally, the UESP Wiki page Oblivion:Alchemy gives a pretty good description of what each piece of alchemy equipment does (see the Apparatus section). It also gets into the nitty gritty of the alchemy calculations the game uses, but I myself didn't get a lot out of that (I like to experiment). I have found that the type of potions I use has changed over the years and as my mod list has evolved. All of my characters have used alchemy as one part of leveling Intelligence (important for maximizing your Magicka pool) but I don't make potions that my character doesn't use himself (i.e. I seldom sell potions). Back when my characters used the vanilla game start and were constantly grinding through Oblivion gates there was seldom a deer, grape or flax plant left in Tamriel if my guy ran across it (that Daedric stuff is heavy, and each gate is a gold mine full of it). My current character uses an alternate start and the combination of Realistic Fatigue and Basic Physical Activities has placed a premium on managing my guy's fatigue, so now making restore and fortify fatigue potions is more my thing. I think I would need to rethink my "gotta get every last thing" mentality if I ever decide to allow the Main Quest to begin.

Mod Organizer can work with Oblivion (and Wrye Bash and OBSE), but it takes some very specific steps in getting it set up correctly. I'm no expert on those steps (I'm primarily an old manual install dinosaur, but I do use WB for certain installs and don't use MO at all). Contrathetix has quite a bit of experience and knowledge on the subject ... perhaps a search for posts made by Contra concerning Mod Organizer plus OBSE would bring up some useful results. You say you have your games installed in custom folders outside of Program Files, but Program Files isn't the only protected folder. What is the exact path to your Oblivion install (e.g. C:\Games\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion)? Also, are your saves in the usual folder structure (e.g. Users\[username]\ Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves)?

Just so I'm sure I'm getting it right ... you're saying that after installing some more mods to an existing load order using WB you can no longer see your previous saves in the game menu. If that's the case do those saves still show in the WB Saves tab?