is there a way to make a mod patch for oblivion

[bandw2]

i believe in Fallout New Vegas, or maybe some other Bethesda game, you can make a mod patch that makes a .esp for the end of your load order taking in all the other mods conflicts allowing you to pick which one is a priority. generally this leads to much greater stability and i am faced with stability issues, so i want to know if it's possible to do the same for oblivion.

[Oromish]

Read up on Wrye bash and the bashed patch.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Oromish

[mhahn123]

As Oromish said read up on Wrye and creating a bashed patch. But don't overlook the importance of cleaning your mods first with Tes4Edit. Mod dirt is probably the single biggest cause of instability and even a bashed patch won't fix some of it.

[QuanYin]

Wrye Bash is horribly complicated and very poorly documented. Technical support/help for it is nonexistent. Every time I've seen anyone ask for help with it they get referred to the same badly written difficult to understand "tutorials". I've yet to run across anything BOSS can't handle. If BOSS can't handle it, I won't use it. Unless and until documentation for Wrye BASH is updated, corrected, and made actually usable (watch me not hold my breath) I won't touch it with a ten foot pole.

 

I use OBMM (Oblivion Mod Manager) to install and activate. Even mods that aren't "OMOD" ready are easy to install this way and it's REALLY easy to make them OMOD ready if you want to - only takes one txt file with a little easily determined information to do so. Or just let OBMM do it for you.

 

I use BOSS (I have no idea what that stands for) to determine load order and look for dirty files

 

I use TES4Edit to clean any files BOSS found to be dirty. Remember to do them one at a time starting with the first in the load order and to load any dependent ESPs along with the ESP you are cleaning into TES4Edit, and nothing else.

[Oromish]

It is neither. Does it have a steeper learning curve than OBMM? Well yeah, but just to use a bashed patch it is quite simple. This is helpful if you don't wish to read the actual readme. More often than not you don't need to change anything and just click "rebuild" patch. There is plenty of help for it, but you have to use the official thread on the bethsoft forum. Honestly, you have no idea what you're talking about, because without wrye bash you will NOT be able to have any sort of advanced load order. Period.

 

That is something you'll find out eventually. Have fun with that.

 

Also, boss does not "find" dirty mods, it only shows you those that have been reported as dirty. You should clean ALL mods unless they specifically tell you not to clean them.

Edited June 22, 2013 by Oromish

[QuanYin]

I beg to differ. It remains both poorly documented and horribly difficult to use. The "steep learning curve" is a direct consequence of both of these.

 

I have no need for "advanced load order". Period.

 

As for "finding that out eventually", I've played through several times since the game came out. If you avoid indiscriminately slapping in every mod you come across, you shouldn't normally have any need for "advanced load ordering". There are probably mods out there that would benefit from such a thing, but I simply have no need of them.

 

As for the link you provided, I have that file. Again, poorly written and not terribly useful for those unwilling to spend days or weeks trying to figure it out.

 

BTW, the tone of your reply is just exactly what I expected. Apparently BASH-afficiandos take the name "BASH" perhaps a bit too literally. Turn out some actually understandable tutorials and people might have a different view on the matter of usability. Instead requests for help with it get sneering replies telling people to read the readme file, LOL!

Edited June 22, 2013 by QuanYin

[Oromish]

I did not mean any offense. But what you are saying is misleading. Yes. Wrye bash is a more complicated mod manager than OBMM, but for good reasons. OBMM cannot do barely anything that wrye bash can do. Even if you do install all of your mods manually, you'll need the bashed patch to resolve conflicts that might otherwise lead to a very unstable game.

 

I cannot speak for your mods obviously, as I don't know what you're using or how few, but none of my games would ever get past the first loading screen without it. As for that pictorial guide, I doubt it would be possible to make it any easier to understand than that. Just follow the instructions it gives you for building a bashed patch and you're done. Here is even more useful information.

 

OP was specifically asking for information about a patch that resolves conflicts, which I would assume he would not ask unless he was planning to add mods that DO conflict in a major way, so I do not consider telling him to only use OBMM and boss to be helpful.

[mhahn123]

To answer your earlier comment, BOSS stands for Better Oblivion Sorting Software and works perfectly at doing exactly that...sorting into proper load order. Which when used with OBMM as I do, will sort out a lot of issues. While I do prefer OBMM for installing mods because it is super simple, BOSS and OBMM will not force semi conflicting mods to play nicely together. No matter what order they are in. That's what Wrye Bash and the bashed patch does. BOSS and OBMM will not clean dirty mods either or eliminate the problems caused by dirty edits, that's what Tes4Edit does. Hence the reason for my earlier response.

 

I whole heartedly agree that Wrye is difficult to master, and the tutorials for it are not easy to grasp. But there are many mods out there that require at least understanding how to create a bashed patch. And learning at least that much will open the door for successfully using a great many mods that you may not have been able to before. Two years ago I knew almost nothing about modding and was not the most pc literate guy in the world.

 

I searched through a bunch of documentation like you did, pestered a bunch of people here, cried a lot when my trial and error methods failed. Eventually I figured out what I wanted to know and learned how to make a patch. Since then I have gradually learned a good deal more. So don't give up just yet, bash is an amazing tool that has many uses. Like esp mastering so you can create mod patches for one. It's worth taking time to figure out. There are people here who will offer helpful advice. You just have to do a lot of posting sometimes, and rephrasing of questions to get at what you want.

[Nephenee13]

I beg to differ. It remains both poorly documented and horribly difficult to use. The "steep learning curve" is a direct consequence of both of these.

 

I have no need for "advanced load order". Period.

 

BS

 

Wrye Bash is dirt simple to use if you bother to actually sit down and try. Plus it and BOSS together will do what you originally asked for, and in a far simpler and faster fashion.

 

If you don't want to use it, thats fine, but don't go and whine about how mods don't interact properly when Wrye Bash was developed SPECIFICALLY to fix this issue.

 

So sit down and learn the goddamn program.

 

(and yes Wrye Bash is actively supported, see here and here)

Edited June 23, 2013 by Nephenee13