MarkInMKUK

Most of us put it in C:\Games\Oblivion

Do you have any minor souls already trapped in the big gems? They DO have to be empty, of course. OK, it's obvious, but it IS possible you'd forgotten to check.

I managed a playthrough on Zealots of the Nine ok - maybe I was lucky. And there's a vastly improved version of OMG around - V7.3 last time I looked, released June this year. Takes some hunting down - if you have no luck pm me and I'll find the link.

Patience!

Retexturing - (1) do a Google image search for "Movellan" - they were a race or androids in British SF series Doctor Who, basically fairly expressionless humans with distinctive metallic wigs. (2) Base something on Data from Star trek: The Next Generation. Modelling - How about the "Robots of Death", again from Doctor Who? Lovely Art Deco look to the faces, in a range of colours for ranks, each one with a clear serial number on a badge. Maybe a race of originally helpful robots which has gone wild - red glowing eyes showing when they are in a killing mood

I'd go with #1 - the texture match between body and face is a little closer. I'd suggest looking at REAL faces a little more though, and VERY carefully altering the actual face area a little to make it look less like she's slapped a thick layer of concealer over everything - it's TOO uniform. Grab one or two of the Facegen versions of actors' and celebrities' faces, and look at the texture maps on those to see what REAL faces have in the way of variation. Flaws give a face character.

I second the wish for an alternative texture - being owned by two cats I get up-close-and-personal with the sharp end of a paw many times each week, and the dark ones look "wrong" to me. At one point I also suggested that some of the female "vanilla" footware could have nail (claw?) art equivalents for Khajiit and Argonians - maybe that would also be an interesting re-texture project - imagine Green velvet being replaved by Green varnish and gold detailing. The more alternatives we can DO, the more "complete" the mod can become.

Once the theory works, and you can merge and unmerge meshes, I think people would be happy to split up armour to suit. You might need a tag in the armour file someplace to say which bit it actually was, and which bits it contained already (you wouldn't want to equip extra pauldrons by mistake, or a glove on a shoulder), but IF it could be made to work it'd be awesome. At this rate, by the time Skyrim arrives, you lot will have finished repairing the ommissions they made in Oblivion when compared with Morrowind...

fg109 has pretty much summed up what has to be done. Weapons were never designed to be light sources, or vice versa - torches are pretty tough to turn into weapons. Apparently, scripting a light to follow the weapon is the only way to do it as far as anyone has worked out.

Firestly, move Oblivion out of the default steam installation folder - there's a link someplace in THIS page which explains how. Move it to C:\Games\Steam\Oblivion. Vista (and Windows 7) have a thing called User account Control which is the kiss of death to trying to mod any file it thinks it should be protecting, such as anything under C:\Program Files. Secondly, check whether any of the mods require Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) to be installed, and make sure you follow the Steam Version install instructions. You may need to reinstall the mods after moving your installation, as the mods may not have installed properly. Those simple steps may well fix everything.

Tears of the Fiend: Redemption The Lost Spires Bartholm The Fight for Castle Ravenpride Blood & Mud: Dirt Deluxe Anglais Daggerfall Memories: The Liberation of Cybiades Kvatch Aftermath Knights of the White Stallion The Sentient Weapon Ruined Tail's Tale Myths and Legends: Weapons Feral Instinct: Dangersense Mighty Umbra Mysteries of the Dulan Cult The Naked Nord Zealots of the Nine Artefacts of the Ancestors The City of Bjornheim Artifacts of Tamriel 300 Integration: The Stranded Light Origin of the Mage's Guild (Adult stuff) Claudia's Little Secret That little lot should keep you happy for a few hours :)

Could those become "Named" slots - i.e, Right Pauldron, Left Pauldron, Right Glove, Left Glove, etc? I'm sure you see where I'm going with this line of thought - and many ex-Morrowind players would offer Daedric sacrifices in your name if you could pull it off...

On the activation order thing, that's why I'm slowly and reluctantly learning to use BAIN installers - they make the whole "what replaces what" thing far easier to control. Meanwhile, unless there is some specific reason why not, activate them in BOSSes load order - tht seems to make the most sense to me.

Remember you DID post it midweek, and most people who are occasional visitors are more likely to have a look at the weekend. Give it a week or two before writing it off.

At least the research has given you a clearer starting point ... and proved it works. How about trying it with a Bosmer character? Just to see how bad it is

So, all you need now is for other similar-sized swords to be made to work the way that mod does. Time to find a modder, then :)

The Grey Fox's cowl does that kinda thing for somem people - take a look at it in the cosntruction set to see if that gives you any clues

How about - if you upset the Priest enough, you are excommunicated and that boosts your infamy AND makes you anathema in the eyes of the faction

Mods to look for include Origin of the Mage's Guild and other stuff by the same guy. Utilities you will need - OBMM, BOSS, Wrye Bash. Useful additions - OBSE and OBGE. Once you have OBSE- Fast Exit 2 and Windom Earle's Oblivion Crash Prevention System are great stability enhancers.

Lighting - OBGE includes a good selection of new shaders which help with lighting. I also use Real Lights for realistically lit interiors, but that will make it a tad dark for some. Textures - Qarl's Texture Pack 3 (QTP3) is the biggest and bestest for most things. Add Animated Window Lighting System to get those lovely glowing windows at night. Better levelling - no ideas. I vaguely remember Elys uncapper being mentioned. Armour - depends on any body mod(s) you have installed - check whether the armour you fancy suits the body you close. Also download a stock replacer for the body mod. Race Mods - I personally liked the Race Rebalancing Project, but others seem to prefer all sorts of alternatives. The main problem with some of them is "googly eyes" - Wrye bash can SOMETIMES be used to sort that out, but it's a pain. Other mods I like to enhance the game world or play: Better cities Unique Landscapes (and whatever patches you need to work with other mods) Lost Spires (big quest mod) Integration: The stranded Light (big quest mod) Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul Duke Patrick's Archery Mod. If you like to have a companion, one of the best is Companion Vilja - parts of the dialogue were created with the aid of a certain Mr Terry Pratchett. I personally loathe the over-the-top nature of things like Uneccessary Violence or Deadly Reflex, and from the postings I see DR v6 seems to be pretty tough to get working.

IZarc is also a possibility

One point - if you are on Vista or Win7, use THIS page (there's a link on it someplace specifically about shifting the Steam version) to shift the game out of your Program Files directory - saves endless tears and frustration when moddding. User Account Control (UAC) is a pain...

OK - You're going to need to add a little to that setup - mostly utilities before you can start trying to add all those mods. Assuming you are now at Oblivion (Shivering Icles) v1.2.0416... (-2) If you have either the Impulse or D2D version of Oblivion, go through all mods requirements and ditch any asking for OBSE or OBGE - they won't work with D2D or Impulse versions, period. (-1) If you are on Windows Vista or Windows 7, move Oblivion out of the c:\program files\ drectory to someplace like c:\Games - guide is here. (0) Download and install mTES4 Manager. Use it to clone your current game setup so that if (when) it all ends in tears you can swicth back to a working version. (1) Add any of the official DLC modules you intend to play. (2) Install Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) and Better Oblivion sorting Software (BOSS). (3) Add the Unofficial Oblivion Patch (UOP), the Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch (UOSP), if you added any DLCs (Including Knights of the Nine)add the Unofficial Official Mods Patch (UOMP), and the Unofficial Patch Supplementals. Most of these can be obtained in OMOD or OMOD-ready format, and this is a good time to learn how to use OBMM to install things using them. (4) Test the game still runs ok. (5) Use mTES4 Manager to take another clone (it's only disk space!). Once done, you should be able to delete the first clone you did. (6) Install OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) and OBGE (Oblivion Graphics Extender). (7) Install Fast Exit 2 and Windom Earle's Oblivion Crash Prevention System (weOCPS). (8) Test it works, clone it, you know the drill by now. (9) Download and install Wrye Bash v292 - this will involve installing a thing called Python, just follow ALL of the instructions carefully and persevere until you get it to work. You WILL need this before the end of your modding spree, and it's better to get it working BEFORE you're going scatty with mods failing. You may not use it at first, but it will come into its own later on :) (10) Defrag the drive with Oblivion on - I suggest Defraggler not the Windows own defrag. (11) Make sure your antivirus is NOT set to scan every file on open - Oblivion opens hundreds and you'll end up slowed to a crawl. Congratulations - you now have something close to a recommended setup for Oblivion. Now, install the mods one at a time, and clone after EACH one is proven to work. You'll swear at me at first, but after the tenth or eleventh big mod goes in, and suddently stuff all goes funny, you'll bless my nickname :) You only need to keep two clones - the one at atage (8) and the latest "just before I installed the latest mod" one.

Just be careful when you get to mods which require Wrye Bash - it's used (amongst other things) to help mods that conflict to work together. But it's a lot more complex than OBMM, especially at first.

As a first stage, look in the Mod talk section of this forum. At the top of the forum is a sticky topic about how to install mods. That will probably cover 99% of what you need to know. Next, start small - download a mod which does one simple thing - add a house or an item maybe. Get that working, and then you'll have learned a lot of what you will need for a more complex mod. THEN start having fun with the masses of content here :)