Stability Issues and Playability Issues with Overhaul Mods

[whatwhales]

[Edit: It appears I have placed this in the wrong section, this should go in "Mod Troubleshooting", sorry.]

 

Hi there, I'm a bit new to this neck of the woods, and I have some issues I'd like to have resolved.

 

I got Fallout 3 before Oblivion, and inevitably, I found Mart's Mutant Mod and fell in love.

I played Fallout for a few months and got tired.

 

I had played Oblivion a little bit, and decided it was worth getting.

Snooping around the mod community, I had discovered that there was an MMM for Oblivion, and even more overhaul mods.

 

Remembering how much this improved my gameplay in Fallout, I quickly downloaded MMM for Oblivion.

 

As I installed and booted, I noticed nothing odd.

Starting a new game, I noticed that I was being attacked by invisible rats.

 

Thinking it was a one-time thing, I moved on, and as soon as the next cell loaded, my game crashed.

 

I opened OBMM to check if ArchiveInvalidation was turned off, and sure enough, it was.

 

I restarted this frustrating cycle about ten times before deciding, "I'm just going to try another overhaul mod."

 

Looking around TESNexus, I found Fransesco's mod.

 

I downloaded and installed that.

 

New game, no invisible rats, but no new textures or enemy scaling.

I play through until the first Oblivion gate when: All the Clannfears are invisible. The game quickly crashes.

 

Frustrated, I took one last shot and installed OOO.

This just amounted to more invisible enemies and more crashing.

 

I want to have the functionality of these overhaul mods, but I don't know what is wrong.

I'll post my load order here to see if anyone can spot some problems.

 

Thanks in advance for the help,

Whales

 

Oblivion.esm
Mart's Monster Mod.esm
Better Cities Resources.esm
Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
UOP Vampire Aging & Face Fix.esp
KDCirclets.esp
MidasSpells.esp
Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp
Streamline 3.0.esp
KT_CustomRaceFix.esp
Mystic_DarkElf.esp
StockClothingArmor-forExnems.esp
SpellSinger.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Hunting & Crafting.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Durability & Damage.esp
_Ren_BeautyPack_full.esp
Enhanced Water v2.0 HD.esp
Ren + Exnem.esp
Nightshade_Armor.esp
Lera's PirateSet.esp
SchwarzeKatzeArmor.esp
DM-Butterfly Widow.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Spawn Rates - Increased.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Durzog Addon.esp
DemonRace.esp
ClocksOfCyrodiil_BC_OBC_OC_OCLR_Vanilla.esp
Better Cities .esp
Better Cities - Full City Defences.esp
Better Cities Full.esp
Better Imperial City.esp
Mayu's Animation Overhaul.esp

[dezdimona]

try this load order

 

General Load-Order Guidelines

Here are the guidelines that I adhere to, personally.

 

~ Unofficial Oblivon Patch should always be first on the list. The fixes are great, but most aren't essential, so if a mod overwrites them its not a big deal, and the fixes have the potential for screwing up other mods if loaded later.

 

~ Offical Content (DLC's) should be loaded last, until you complete all quests associated with them (that includes buying all furniture for the houses and whatnot). Once they're complete, they can be safely moved up in the list. This is especially important for Knights of the Nine, which will have some fairly major problems unless loaded last (unless you get the UOP for KotN)

 

~ Major overhaul mods (OOO, Frans, MMM) should be loaded near the end. That gives you the most complete experience with any of those particular mods. It also lets you carefully choose which other mods to load afterwards... only move mods that you know will conflict and that you want the changes from. For example, I have Improved Soul Gems below OOO because I know that OOO changes the icons of some of the SG's, and ISG needs to be below to show through.

 

Some people will recommend putting larger mods first, but personally I disagree. There are a number of mods out there that make minor tweaks, and loading after a large mod will end up completely overwriting a chunk from one of the bigger mods because of the way conflicts work in Oblivion (even one minor change will take precedence over the entire record... for example, simply tweaking the speed of a weapon can cause every stat of that weapon to be retained to vanilla levels if loaded later).

 

So basically, it stacks up like this...

 

Oblivion.esm

Unofficial Oblivion Patch

<Minor Mods / DLC's (Post-Completion)>

<Major Overhaul Mod/Mods>

<Mods that specifically conflict with overhauls and need to take precedence>

<DLC's (Pre-Completion)>

 

 

 

Expanded Load-Order Guidelines

by dev_akm

 

I would extend this to include:

 

Oblivion.esm

Unofficial Oblivion Patch

<Weather/Environment/Sound Mods>

<Minor Mods/New Items/Houses/DLC's (Post-Completion)>

<Major Overhaul Mods>

<Mods that specifically conflict with overhauls and need to take precedence>

<DLC's (Pre-Completion)>

<Quests>

<Compatibility Patches/UOMP/Merged Leveled Lists>

 

And a special-case warning for Knights.esp (Knights of the Nine) -- you may not be able to move it earlier than some other mods (some people have had problems after moving it before OOO, for example).

 

That's basically the structure I use and I have 140+ mods working well together.

 

Another way of describing this (posted by DMan77):

....

Oblivion

unoffical patch

Deeper realism mods that add sights and sounds

added content like weapons/items

gameplay changes, like 'must eat and sleep'

The OOO type

the 'new begining' type mod..

................................................................................

.................

[whatwhales]

Well, I got back to my normal computer and tried what you said, but I'm having no luck.

I will keep the boot order info in mind though.

 

I still get invisible enemies, many missing meshes and general instability.

 

I've tried re-downloading the mods with missing meshes, to no avail, and have seen no complaints.

 

Maybe I'm just not suited to use overhauls.

 

I would like to make this situation a little less cryptic though, is there a crashlog.txt or the like for Oblivion?

[bben46]

It looks like you have both missing meshes and textures.

 

This is my response for missing mesh, but both are caused by the same thing.

 

This is probably the most common problem in mods. It is caused when the game cannot find the mesh called for by a mod. It uses the yellow block with an exclamation point as a placeholder to keep from crashing.

 

All except the simplest mods have new textures and usually Meshes. If you look at the zipped files (expand them to see what is there before installing) you will usually see several types of files. The filename.esp is the actual mod, it goes into the Oblivion\Data folder.

 

A filname.txt or Readme.txt file - this is the read me file that you should read to see if there are any special instructions for this file, such as it may need another mod to work or need OBSE, or need the Shivering Isles expansion, or Need the latest patch.

 

Textures folder. this contains the texture files (.dds) for the mod. this should be copied to the Oblivion\data\textures folder

Meshes folder. This contains the meshes for the mod, it should be copied to the Oblivion\data\meshes folder

Sounds folder. This contains any new sounds needed by the mod. it should be copied into the Oblivion\data\sounds folder

 

.bsa files these are compressed files that may contain all of the different files. Any .bsa file should be copied without change into the Oblivion\data folder

 

There may be other files or folders included, but those are the most common.

 

If you look in the Oblivion/data folder and see a bunch of .dds files, .nif files, .mp3 files they are in the wrong place. You need to MOVE them to the proper folders.

.dds to the textures folder

.nif to the meshes folder

.mp3 to the sounds folder

.wav to the sounds folder

 

In a mod with meshes and textures, they are usually in their own folder - look in the zipped file, extract the meshes folder to the Oblivion\data\meshes folder and the textures folder to the Oblivion\data\textures folder. Do the same with any other folder in the zipped file. Usually only the esp file and if present .bsa files go into the \Data folder

One of the most common things I have seen is a folder inside of the data folder with the name of the mod. It may have the texture and mesh files you need. Example Oblivion\Data\mod_xyz.

Then inside the \mod_xyz You may find \Mod_xyz\textures and mod_xyz\meshes folder

 

These folders Meshes and textures inside of the \data\mod_xyz folder need to be moved into the \data\textures and \data\meshes folders.

The easiest way to do this is to right click and hold the folder you want to move, then drag it into the \data folder.

You will probably get a message that you will overwrite files. Actually it will not overwrite, but append to the original folder.

[whatwhales]

I'd imagine your desktop is littered with these speeches ready to copy-and-paste. ;)

 

Well, I didn't see any of the aforementioned issues, so I'll go ahead and give up on this.

Thanks for the help.

 

These mods aren't exactly "vital", so I can do without.