Striker879

Here's a link to Bben46's wiki article Oblivion reinstall procedure. Don't miss the link near the top of the page about moving your Steam install location, and also don't skip the part about registry cleaning ... it's important.

What version of the game (disk version or Steam)? You'll need the correct installation for the version you use (check the install instructions after you've unzipped the download).

What type of save are you running through OAF (I.e. quicksave, autosave, manual save or named save)? Though I don't need to do it myself, I've also seen reports of needing to change the name of the corresponding OBSE save to match the renamed OAF save. So if you ran the named save MySave01.ess through OAF you would rename the file MySave01.obse to OAF_MySave01.obse to match the fixed OAF file OAF_MySave01.ess (or whatever it is that OAF changes the name of the fixed file to ... not at my gaming computer to check).

Something to consider in your mod is what dependencies it will have. Requiring the user to have UOP 3.04 installed will bring a bunch of support headaches for you trying to figure out problems that users are having using your mod if they don't have the UOP installed. At the very least you will need to outline those dependencies clearly in the mod description (preferably with links to things like the UOP). Using an item from the vanilla game (and not something new you've added that the user needs to acquire) will also be a hard thing to 'work around' in terms of story. Let's say the user has completed the Mages Guild questline but has gotten rid of the Colossal Black Soul Gem as you suggested they could. If they don't have it they break your quest ... if you give them a clone of it without the user needing to do something to find it you break immersion. A possible solution would be for your script to check the user's inventory for the Collosal Black Soul Gem (as well as Mages Guild quest stage) and if they don't have the soul gem trigger a side quest for them to acquire a new one. I'm not much for having practical experience with quests and dialogue, but I do know that there are certain pitfalls to avoid with each. Perhaps a more experienced modder will recognize the problem.

For Vista and Windows 7 you'll find Oblivion.ini in 'Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion' and for Windows XP it's in 'Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion'.

Another thing to consider is the 'A-Bomb' stuck animation problem with save games that have lots of hours. I use Animation Fixer periodically, whenever I notice the flames on the Legion patrol or courier riders get 'funny' looking.

Hmm ... it's been quite a while since I've done that quest but doesn't it get removed from your inventory at the end? What about making your own clone of it with a unique refID? - Edit - A quote from the Bugs section of the UESP Wiki for Confront the King: If you do try using a clone of the Colossal Black Soul Gem take the Mages Guild script off it.

Are you waiting three days for the cell to respawn (and are you waiting in a cell well away from the IC)?

I'm no scripter, but isn't the Colossal Black Soul Gem (refID 00007E9C) a quest item needed for the final Mages Guild quest? Wouldn't you need to clear it's quest item status before removing it from the player (and wouldn't you need to do so in a fashion that doesn't break the Mages Guild questline)?

Like I said, in Emma's situation the 1 health solution wasn't 100% effective. The only further 'complication' I can think to add would be to put the NPC's 'killer' in the room. You could either leave the killer (burglar perhaps) for the player to take care of or script the killer to be disabled once the NPC is dead. I know it's an awfully complicated solution to what seems a simple problem. When I was poking around the problem in Emma's mod I thought it was because her dead NPC was in a dungeon. Now it seems more likely that it's a system wide situation, either with that tutorial or dead NPCs in general (although the vanilla game uses several of them). If I was at my gaming computer I might be able to offer more help, but that won't happen until summer's end.

Your set health to zero makes your situation more like the one I mentioned about Emma's Maple Cottage. What about if you place them in your desired location with normal health and then kill them via a script that triggers when the player gets to that lower chamber? In Emma's case there were bandits nearby to do the dirty work (although that solution has proved to be less than 100% reliable in a very small number of cases). I think you need the reliability of a scripted death. If you give them any AI packages just make it a default wander editor location with a small radius.

What about placing them initially in another cell and then giving them a travel package to a marker you place in the cell that's giving you trouble. Make sure you give them a 'wander current location' as a default 'whenever another package isn't processing' so they don't decide to wander off after reaching the marker. If you look at how Bethesda set up most of their NPCs with a default package you'll get the idea (but note the difference between a 'wander current location' and a 'wander editor location' package).

Are you changing the default timescale either by mod or console by any chance?

What happens if you 'F-drop' them and then raise them back up a bit (so that when they're rendered in-game they drop a bit to the floor)? The only similar situation that comes to mind is a problem that Emma had with a dead NPC in her Maple Cottage mod. In that case her dead NPC was dropping well below the cavern floor (I find floors in caves kind of unreliable for collision in-game ... dropped items will sometimes find a crack in the collision and disappear). I tried a few things in the CS while troubleshooting, finally the solution turned out to give the NPC a tiny bit of health and let the bandits kill him. The only similarity to your case is possible 'leaks' in the collision. I'm theorizing that if you have the NPCs a bit 'below grade' in your intended quarters maybe they're falling through to the room below (though that shouldn't be possible as I understand it ... those two rooms are different cells I believe). You don't have modded versions of those two rooms do you (maybe making the two of them a single cell)? - Edit - The vanilla pathgrid in the cell should be sufficient.

Is the area you drop the NPC into pathgridded (they may be transported to the nearest pathgrid node, which may not be nearby)?

For the people who are always fighting to stay below the number of mods limit consider offering a single esp that includes all of for example the different dog companions, as well as offering each dog as a separate esp for those who only want one or two.

Have a look through fore's wiki article Avoiding Blender animation pitfalls and see if anything there helps.

After level 4 you can buy them from vendors, and they do make the best weapons for enchanting (weight to wack ratio wise).

Make sure your texture size is set to large.

Make sure you are following the instructions for installing the Steam version of OBSE ... it's different than the disk version.

I could be wrong, but I think mods that automatically start without the player doing something to trigger the start would still rely on some sort of trigger. I know when I exited the sewer on my second character I was inundated with quest messages (my first character had a vanilla install so the sewer exit was far less 'busy'). I suppose if you found the correct stage for the CM Partners script or maybe script name you could console start the quest. I'd go for the easy way myself ... one last tutorial dungeon crawl. Then all you'll need to do is get your personality high enough or play the persuasion mini-game to get them liking you enough to join you.

Absolute paths are when the mod author (or modeller who made the item) give a 'complete' path to what textures are applied to which part of the mesh. An absolute path would be something like C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\Textures\armor\JoesCoolArmor\JoesCoolCuirass.dds. Anyone who has their game installed in C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion will have no problem with the mesh. Everyone who installed the game in any other folder (e.g. C:\Games\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion) would not be able to use the mesh as it stands. The correct path to give to the textures to apply to different parts of the mesh begin with simply 'textures' (as in Textures\armor\JoesCoolArmor\JoesCoolCuirass.dds). Then they will show up properly in-game no matter where you install Oblivion. Here's a wiki article on how to fix the situation: How to fix hard-coded texture paths in NIF files.

Do yourself a favour. Go through the tutorial dungeon and right at the end before the menus come up to finalize or change your character (when you see the sewer exit in the disatnce) make a named save using the console. Next time you want to start a new character load that save and make your changes to race, birthsign etc. and exit the sewer.

Go to the 'Files' tab on the Universal Skeleton Nif page and under the heading 'Main Files' either click on the words 'UniversalSkeletonNIF181' or 'download manually'. You'll get a screen saying the file is being prepared for download ... be patient and then a Windows dialogue will open. In that dialogue take note of where it is currently defaulting to download to, or preferably scroll down until you can see the word 'Computer' in the left hand pane. Single left click the little triangle to the left of the word Computer and a list will open. Single left click on the words 'Local Disk (C:)' and you'll notice that at the top of the dialogue it now says 'Computer > Local Disk (C:)'. Just below that click on the words 'New Folder' and then type in UniversalSkeletonNIF' and hit Enter. Click on 'Save (lower right) and once it's done saving close the remaining window on the Nexus download page (on my computer at least the 'File being prepared' window stays open in the background during the download process). Open Windows Explorer (Start > All Programs scroll down to Accessories and then select Windows Explorer) and navigate to the UniversalSkeletonNIF folder you created in the root of C drive (same way as when you created it ... expand Computer > Local Disk (C:) in the left pane and then single left click on UniversalSkeletonNIF). In the right pane you'll see the file UniversalSkeletonNIF181-37596.7z. Providing you have installed the utility 7-Zip you can just double click on UniversalSkeletonNIF181-37596.7z in the right hand pane (if you haven't installed 7-Zip see those instructions below). By default 7-Zip will extract the archive to the same folder you saved the download to ... that's the best place. When it's done close the 7-Zip window. Now in Windows Explorer you'll see three new folders, ControlableSkeleton, ForModders and TotalControlableSkeleton. In the left pane expand the ControlableSkeleton folder until you can see it expanded fully. In the left pane single left click on the folder ControlableSkeleton\Data\meshes\characters\_1stperson and you'll see the file skeleton.nif in the right hand pane. Right click skeleton.nif and select copy from the right click menu. Now open a new Windows Explorer window (same way Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows Explorer). Navigate to where you installed Oblivion the same way you navigated to your UniversalSkeletonNIF folder. In the left pane expand your game install folders to show Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters\_1stperson and find the existing file named 'skeleton.nif'. Right click on that skeleton.nif and select 'Rename' from the right click menu. The file name will be highlighted. Single left click in the highlight and move your cursor to the start of the name. Type in DR6 and hit Enter. The file name should now be 'DR6skeleton.nif'. Next right click on the folder '_1stperson' in the left hand pane (still in your game install Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters folder path) and select 'Paste' from the right click menu. You will now find the file 'skeleton.nif' you copied from your extracted download located in your game install's Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters\_1stperson folder. See if the new first person skeleton corrects your issue. If not it's just a matter of deleting the skeleton.nif you copied to Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters\_1stperson and renaming DR6skeleton.nif back to skeleton.nif. If you haven't already installed 7-Zip you can download it from here and install it before you attack my wall of text (it's hard to write a step by step guide any other way ... at least for me).

Backup the file skeleton.nif found in Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters\_1stperson and then install the skeleton.nif you find in the folder Oblivion\Data\meshes\characters\_1stperson after you extract Universal Skeleton Nif to a temporary folder. You may find some or all of DR6's special moves won't work afterward.