New Worldspace Mod - LOD cares about load order?

[ArmlessWunder]

I have spent 8 hours bashing my head into the wall trying to make lod work for my mod. I used all the neat tools published including tes4ll and tesqlod and I could not figure out for the life of me why my worldspace with lod meshes and textures would not render the distant land...

 

After some thought I decided to move my mod to the top of my load order and viola, it renders the land... My concern is that if others download my mod they would have to move the mod to first on their load order in order to see the lod...

 

Is there any way around this requirement? Did I do something wrong or is Oblivion not as cool as I thought it would be when it comes to lod for new worldspaces?

 

PS: I can post pics if needed to understand what the issue is

[LenaWolfBravil]

The file names of your LOD meshes and textures files contain the form ID of your new worldspace including the mod index - the index your mod had when it was loaded in the CS. This is not going to work in game because most people will want it some place else than right at the top.

To solve this problem, you can use EngineBugFixes OBSE plugin with option TerrainLODLoadPatch enabled. Then, when you generate your LOD with MPGUI (which calls TES4LL), you need to tick the box on the last tab entitled "Use naming convention from EngineBugFixes" (or some such). Then you can put your mod anywhere in your load order and the LOD will show.

[AndalayBay]

That's what the Move Worldspaces function in TES4Gecko is for. Just grab Gecko and select Move Worldspaces and it will fix it for you. Then generate your LOD. It will fix your mod so it will work no matter where it is in your load order, or more importantly, your users load orders. (Actually it injects the worldspace ID into Oblivion, but the mechanics don't matter here).

EngineBugFixes does fix the issue, but then your users will have to use it as well. If you're not releasing your mod for general use, then it doesn't matter.

If you scroll down a bit in the comments, you'll find my instructions on getting Gecko working on a 64 bit OS. I was hoping a moderator could pin the comment for me...

Edited December 18, 2023 by AndalayBay

[LenaWolfBravil]

8 minutes ago, AndalayBay said:

(Actually it injects the worldspace ID into Oblivion, but the mechanics don't matter here).

So, what happens if you have two mods in your load order that used this? Are those worldspace IDs going to be the same? Because that's a major problem. This is what stopped me from using this method.

[AndalayBay]

Did you find that it actually didn't work? This has been the fix since Oblivion came out and I'm pretty sure there have been a lot of people using Elsweyr and other province mods like Silgrad Tower. It's actually sandor from Silgrad Tower that first explained the function to me.

Don't forget that it isn't just the index - it's the form ID of the worldspace. While you can supply the LOD with your mod, your users usually have to regenerate it anyway to reflect the other mods in their load order.

[LenaWolfBravil]

Elsweyr is positioned in worldspace Tamriel, so it doesn't have this problem. Neither do any of the other province mods for the same reason. But you're right - I didn't actually try it. However, being a programmer, I could see a potential problem there. It is not helped by the fact that there is no documentation on TES4Gecko what so ever, and I don't like to use software that does mysterious things in mysterious ways. My experience with using Gecko blindly had been rather unsuccessful, most likely because I didn't use it right.

With that said, I am happy to completely change my mind on this if you can point me to some documentation.

[AndalayBay]

It was largely left to the community to document what they could. Here's InsanitySorrow's guide on Gecko.

We will have better documentation with the new version.

[ArmlessWunder]

Thanks for the replies! I tried using engineBugFixes just now and it solves the problem for me. I like this solution as it seems to be a universally desirable plugin. Its interesting to hear about the other tools as well. Feels like oblivion has a truly incredible mod community for being able to not only discern so many of these issues, but to make a variety of fixes as well.

[Oblivionaddicted]

20 hours ago, AndalayBay said:

That's what the Move Worldspaces function in TES4Gecko is for. Just grab Gecko and select Move Worldspaces and it will fix it for you. Then generate your LOD. It will fix your mod so it will work no matter where it is in your load order, or more importantly, your users load orders. (Actually it injects the worldspace ID into Oblivion, but the mechanics don't matter here).

I agree, I have notably used TES4Gecko on SoVvM and Dibella's Watch and now I can use both mods without the floor disappears when I travel between their worldspaces and Tamriel.

[OpalEyedFan]

On 12/18/2023 at 11:19 AM, AndalayBay said:

It was largely left to the community to document what they could. Here's InsanitySorrow's guide on Gecko.

We will have better documentation with the new version.

Are you saying a new version of Tes4Gecko is coming? I'm currently using windows 8.1 and would I then have to invest in windows 10/11 for the new version? (yep I'm a dinosaur)

Also I wonder, (and I did my best to try to understand  everything in InsanitySorrows guide that you linked to,) if I have a mod with new landmass but it has no LOD for the new landmass for whatever reason, would I still benefit from using the move landmass function in Gecko?

What if I distribute the mod as an ESM istead of an ESP, would I still have to "move landmass" in Gecko to ensure that anyone can enjoy it "straight out of the box" or  is ESM different in that aspect?

 

I'm a huge fan of Tes4Gecko but this confuses me