JCSpencer

Thank you very much for your replies. I wasn't sure what to expect, and I am grateful I received sincere help and not flames about how retarded I am. Okay, I didn't realize any of that from the research I did on it, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me. I found only one small tidbit of help in OBMM's readme, which said something to the effect that red files "were usually very small yet serious enough to break your game." Even without any other help (which was frustrating), that was enough to get me all worked up. I guess if I had followed that logic sooner, I would have omitted that statement. It makes sense. Which is exactly what happened to me. I'm not dissatisfied with OBMM on the whole myself, and really like the ability to set the load order and some of the other utilities and the omod feature, but the lack of a good tutorial or FAQ is a bit frustrating. There is surprisingly very little to no help at the creator's website. Whatever help the end user gets is whatever is in the included help file, but it's not all that thorough. That's what I tried to do. I used to mod (and still do occasionally) Morrowind, but I never did it with Oblivion. So I figured I am pretty experienced with mod installations, understanding the folder structures and typical install paths, and knowing potential conflicts before they arise based on the nature of the mods I am installing. Normally, if I had been playing this game all along, I would have been installing a few at a time, but I have been away for a couple of years and I find a lot of great stuff out there now. Still, I was very picky. There are almost 18,000 files on TES Nexus for Oblivion (according to the file count), and I went through most of them, reading the mini-descriptions to see if I was interested. If I was, then I read the descriptions in detail. If I was still interested, I then read the comments (assuming they weren't disabled, *sigh*) to see what the users thought. If there were even small, recent problems with the mod, I became wary; if it also seemed the author was no longer supporting it (no replies to posts or updates for the past several months), no matter how cool the mod seemed, I skipped it. If there was virtually no description of the mod, no screen pics, very few downloads despite the age of the mod, or other details like that that made me wary, I skipped it. I skipped some really cool stuff just because there was some uncertainty about conflicts or bugs, no matter how small. Almost everything I downloaded had been out for a long while, had thousands of downloads, good ratings, good reports from the users, a good description on what the mod did so I could compare it to other mods I was downloading, and a good installation guide, especially important to me for large mods or mods that alter gameplay significantly. I was very picky. Of the several thousands of mods I reviewed, I only downloaded a little over 100 of them. Stuff like Natural Weather & Water, ImpeREAL Districts, some texture replacers, More Immersive Sound, all the Unofficial patches, Companion Share & Recruit, Robert's Male & Female bodies, Illuminated Windows, Tamriel Travelers, and Oblivion XP. I didn't even go with the big obvious ones like OOO, Fran's, or MMM for now. I considered those to be more complicated installs for a later time after I get used to this. As you can see, or at least, as far as I know, the mods I downloaded aren't that overboard. Almost everything else I added were new armors, clothing, a couple of villages, and population increasing mods like Crowded Cities and the Extended series. I also have all the offical plugins, KotN and SI. I made sure that each item I downloaded was the only mod that affected a certain area of the game, even if it claimed it wouldn't conflict with others of the same type. You'll see I have just one weather mod, only one major mod that affects the Imperial City, and another that adds some people to it, one sound mod, one companion mod, one body replacer (per sex), etc. Without knowing the actual details of the mods, I think Oblivion XP probably introduces the most drastic changes to the game overall, and is the only one I was particularly nervous about. I skipped a lot of content that looked really interesting, especially quest mods, new building or faction mods, and other atmospheric mods, as most were encroaching on territory affected by another mod I had already downloaded. Yeah I read about that (the crashes from loading saves, not the utility). Not sure how I missed that one. The only thing I can think of is that when I saw it, I didn't remember having a problem with that many CTDs so didn't think I needed it. In fact, I still don't know if I will have any CTDs yet, as I haven't loaded up the game. I've never liked the "try it until it breaks" method of testing. I like to know before I load up my game that I can reasonably expect to have a minimum of conflicts or errors (from mods at least). Anyway, thanks for the recommendation and the link. Yeah, that's the problem I was having. I couldn't track down any tutorials at all. There doesn't seem to be one in OBMM either, just the included help documentation (the obmm.chm file). That page you linked was actually one of the first ones I read, as it was one of the very few hits Google gave me (the rest were mostly for websites recommending OBMM, or discussing it in very general terms), but unfortunately it only describes OBMM in passing and is primarily just a general mod guide. I was hoping to find something that gave me more detailed instructions and descriptions of OBMM and its functions, including and particularly a focus on conflicts and addressing them, but as Jenrai points out, that most likely wouldn't help me anyway. Thanks again for your replies. I really appreciate the time all of you took to offer your assistance.

I've search all over, but either I'm missing something completely obvious, or there aren't any OBMM tutorials. I'm actually quite shocked that Timeslip doesn't have a single tutorial or any documentation concerning OBMM on the official website - just a download page. And the accompanying help file isn't all that detailed. I searched for other help, but I can't find anything like what I am trying to find. Okay, first of all, I just recently returned to playing Oblivion and downloaded quite a few mods. During that time, I learned some of the stuff that I've missed out on, so I did what I could so far. First, I installed OBSE. Second, I installed BOSS and the updated masterlist, ran it, and my mods were re-ordered. There were 20 files listed as unknown so it didn't touch them (well, it moved them to the end of the list). So next I installed and ran Oblivion Mod Manager, which it recommends. When I click on Utilities, it gives me a choice between Old Conflict Detector and New Conflict Detector. There is a little extra help in the help files for the old conflict detector, but almost nothing for the new one. When I run the conflict detector, it gives me a list that looks at least half red, and a bunch of green. There is virtually no description of what the colors mean that I can find, or suggestions on what to do about it, or descriptions of what all the abbreviations and codes in the report stand for. I decided to run the Old conflict detector instead, and I got an even bigger list of red items (this was set to detect only major conflicts, not minor or very minor ones). To give you an idea of how big it is, I copy-n-pasted it into Word, and it filled 209 pages! WTF. I thought the purpose of BOSS was to eliminate as many conflicts as possible? Maybe I just don't understand it well enough. I've been extremely careful in downloading mods, watching for requirements and posted conflicts, yet it still looks like a CTD playground (of course, I really don't have any clue what I'm actually looking at, which is part of the problem). Anyway, my first inclination is to say screw it and give up on Oblivion again because this is an awful lot of work to play a game (Morrowind wasn't this much of a pain). My frustration is increased when I have no clue what most of the entries in the conflict report mean because there doesn't seem to be any documentation anywhere to explain it. I've done everything according to what most websites recommend before coming here to ask for help. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this, and for any help or suggestions you may be able to offer.

Really. I'm serious. :P I think the only CG character I've seen that is creepier and more annoying than the Adoring Fan is Milo from the Natal project. I'd like to see the Adoring Fan replaced with Milo. I actually feel kind of sorry for the retarded wood elf now, but I'd feel no qualms about pushing Milo off the IC tower. I'm not sure this is even possible, or how one would go about doing it. LOL. Which is why I'm pathetically asking for someone else to look into it. I've seen some children mods in progress, but even with that I couldn't get anywhere because I absolutely suck at making faces, and I've seen some brilliant face work by other people (which I've downloaded). Plus, ideally it would be cool to see him in new clothes which I can't do, or at least clothes colored similar to what the Milo character has (orange shirt, brown shorts). Anyway, just a thought. If it's not possible, it's cool. I'm still waiting for a Milo assassination flash game on the old assassin site. If you don't know who I'm talking about, you can see the E3 video on YouTube here: . If you think he's creepy too, be sure to watch some of the hilarious spoofs.

Sorry. Was just reading the Oblivion Wiki acronyms page recently (because I've been out of the community for a couple of years and am overwhelmed by all the changes), so I guess I got too much into the acronyms myself. But in my defense, I thought WCIF was pretty commonly known on forums, like RELZ, WIP, RTFM, etc. I also saw the File Requests/Suggestions board and relevant threads, but again, the rules seem to indicate that that thread was only for requests. Since I'm not making a request, and I'm not sure if the mod exists, I made the judgment that neither thread was the appropriate place to ask. Sorry again, I'm just trying to follow the rules explicitly, and so I wasn't sure where it was okay to post. I try to take board rules seriously.

I'm trying to find out if a mod exists, but wasn't sure where to post my query about it. Is there a WCIF thread on this forum? I apologize if I'm missing it. The only thing close to it that I see is the "Oblivion Mod Detectives" thread on the Oblivion > Oblivion Modifications > General Mod Talk board. But that thread states it's only for posting about mods you know exist but can't locate. Since I don't know if it exists, I figured I shouldn't post there.

Like LHammonds suggested, I usually don't copy to notepad, just to the invisible "clipboard" (at least I think that's what it's called for Windows). If the post action fails for whatever reason, I can just paste it back in and try again. Although, as Thor mentioned, it won't work for polls. I only use Notepad if it's an exceptionally large post that I put a lot of time into. That way, even if I experience a major Windows problem, I'd have a backup. Like Pronam, I use Notepad all the time when making scripts. I never put anything on my desktop though, so I don't experience the clutter you mention. I'm OCD about my desktop, and don't get how people can stand having icons all over the place. LOL. My mom uses her desktop for everything and it drives me crazy to look at it. I only have the recycle bin on mine, and I hate when programs add stuff to my desktop without asking. Yeah, I know it's easy to delete shortcuts, and it's also easy to wipe crumbs off the bed sheets, but that doesn't make it okay for your friends to eat cookies in your bed! Hehe.

Awesome, thank you! That makes me happy.

Oh, yes. I only (still) mod Morrowind - too intimidated to try modding Oblivion - but I always completely build my scripts in Notepad first (both for easy editing and backup), and then I also copy them into Notepad before saving and compiling. Same reason - an unexpected crash could wipe out hours of hard work. I'm not only saved the loss of work, but it gives me a backup record of my scripts just in case I make several changes and the new one is completely borked, requiring going back to a previous version. I love scripting, but some of my best anger moments have arisen through it. LOL.

Oh, wow. Okay, I've been out of the game for a while, so let me get this straight - TES Nexus IS TES Source? I had old links, and occasionally find others in older posts/uploads, but the site is dead. I thought maybe we (the community) lost another great site.

I just made this suggestion to Ranokoa because of lost posts due to the server timing out, but what I do is copy my post before submitting it just in case something goes wrong. With Firefox and IE, I've always had the problem of lost form data on almost every forum I visit. As for the google example, as far I know, that's actually part of their application settings (remembering search terms in the search box), not Firefox. I just was doing an application online recently in Firefox, and I lost everything because of a server error, and when I clicked back all the data was gone. So pretty sure it's not a Firefox thing, but an application setting. I could be wrong. Either way, copying your post (and possibly pasting it into Notepad temporarily) is the best way I've discovered for protecting your time and effort spent on it. I've been doing this for years and years now just because I had one too many experiences of losing everything I had typed.

I've been noticing this too. At least I know it's not just me though. I was cursing Verizon because I thought it was some kind of congestion on their end. @ ranokoa: What I would suggest is something I have made a habit of doing for years and years now. I am quite verbose, and my posts frequently take up a considerable amount of my time. I also put a lot of thought and energy into my posts, so you can imagine my anger when losing posts due to bad connections (for whatever reason). Let's just say I've had to replace my mouse more than once, and my keyboard too. Okay, so I also have an anger management issue, but that's neither here nor there. LOL. Anyway, here's what I do now. As soon as I am done typing my post and am about ready to submit it, I first select all of it and copy it before clicking submit. Alternatively, if it's really big or I really really don't want to lose it, I might paste it into Notepad temporarily. That way no matter what, I won't lose my post even if I get a connection error. I can just paste it back in and try again until it goes through. Just my 2 cents. My peripherals endorse this method.

I don't disagree that they have the "right to decide." In fact, I never said they didn't. I am merely pleading with creators to consider the full ramifications of what happens when they do disable the comments (and I had assumed the endorsements were connected to the comments, which seems odd; why aren't they separate?). And I have met the "wrong side of the forum" before, and at first, I was hurt, angry, and I actually quit modding for a while. But I received several e-mails and PMs from people that enjoyed my mod and I realized that I was being selfish. Yeah, some people are asshats. That's the way the world is. But I'm not making mods for them, I'm making them for people that enjoy the game and enjoy using my mods in it. So I learned just to ignore the people who seem to have such pathetic lives they can only feel better by insulting and bringing others down. If I let them get me down, they win! So screw them. You said that trolls will find a way to "do enough damage to let a modder take away all their mods." That's only half true. There's an old saying that says, "Nobody can hurt you unless you let them." The only way trolls do any damage is if the creator pays more attention to negative words than to positive words, and if they then pull their mods, they are letting the trolls win. I'm sick of all the trolls and flamers (not the gay ones, lol), but I'm also sick of seeing AMAZING talent take their marbles and go home just because of these bad apples. I've been a member of the community for about 8 years now, and I've seen some amazing people give up because of trolls and leave, and the community has lost a lot because of it. Why let the trolls win? I guess that's my point. If 100 people told me my mod was retarded, non-lore, or just plain crap, but 1 single person told me how great it was, how much they enjoyed it, and that they recommended it to their friends, well that 1 person is enough to make me happy. One of my first mods for Morrowind was a silly mod that added a UFO and a quest to obtain it. It was barely lore in that I made it a Dwemer design, but many people attacked the hell out of me with some unpleasant remarks, especially the purists. But to this day I still get positive remarks and e-mails about that mod, and it makes me feel good and inspires me to keep going. I also upload videos to YouTube also, and I get plenty of really nasty remarks, but I get a few good ones too, and those are the people I make my movies for and the ones that keep me going. I'm just tired of seeing people run away because of critics. In the world of art, there are always going to be critics. If you want to succeed, you have to just accept them and move on. No musician, actor, painter or author is without critics; even the greatest have critics. But they keep on creating because that's what they love, and they share it with the people that appreciate their work. I can only offer this piece of advice to creators that are harassed by asshats: Think first of the people that love your work. Base your decisions solely on them.

I imagine the biggest reason people turn off comments is because they can't handle criticism or having their feelings hurt. Sorry. I'm a creator, so I feel I have the right to be blunt about it, because I've been through it. The problem is this decision creates a serious problem in my opinion. I have been using the comment threads to evaluate mods based on user feedback. I've encountered several mod offerings that looked great, had numerous endorsements, thousands of downloads ... but there were some pretty serious and unaddressed problems some users were reporting, such as conflicts with newer mods, missing files, or what have you. Basically, the comment system is the best and apparently only place to find out if this mod you are interested in is still compatible, particularly useful if the mod was uploaded three years ago, has never been updated and the author is MIA. Thus, the comment thread is a great tool for finding out if this mod you are interested in still works, if there are restrictions, such as being incompatible with other mods, or if there are serious issues from day one that the author never came back to respond to. If I see people have reported problems, and the author has never replied, I know that's it essentially no longer supported, and I skip it. The reason I am mentioning this is as a plea to fellow creators to consider the limitations you are placing on user feedback when you elect to disable comments. Don't worry about the butt monkeys that are bound to show up; chances are they'll get their comments removed and possibly banned anyway. Honestly, you are causing more difficulties for more users simply to avoid seeing a negative comment from some troll with no life. I imagine there are other reasons to disable comments, but I can't think of any that are good enough to warrant disabling the best feedback system this site has. The feedback isn't just for you, the creator, but for everyone else that might be interested in your mod. I would argue the feedback is actually MORE for other players than the creator; the endorsement feature is the one that's primarily just for the creator's benefit. There are too many mods I have sadly elected to skip because I couldn't see if there were any known compatibility or CTD issues, for example. If a mod makes a single, simple alteration, then you can probably bet safely that it's still fine to use; but if it makes numerous, large scale changes to various areas, with several common files, the chances for problems increases, especially the older the mod gets. Please, please consider this before deciding whether you are going to disable the comments feature. Don't let the few jerks make it difficult for the rest of the community.