How Do Textures End Up in the Right Place?

[David Brasher]

I am having trouble transferring mods from my computer to other peoples' computers. Texture problems. I may be chasing phantoms, but there are just enough bad reports to make me think something is wrong.

 

I have been testing my mods by renaming-to-disable my existing textures on my computer, and then decompressing and installing my mods which I am preparing to upload. They work fine. But then some other people download them and don't have textures. (Or so they say. There is a dearth of feedback, and operator error is common.)

 

I have Vista so my directory structure is:

 

C:Games\Oblivion\Data\Textures\***\***

 

Many other people would have a directory structure like:

 

C:Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\Textures\***\***

 

In NifSkope, some of the directory structures are really generic like:

Textures\***\***

 

The ones I assign to models I reskin are like the first example I gave. I have not figured out how to make NifSkope assign the more generic directory structure.

 

Does the computer ignore everything in the file path before Textures?

 

When manually packaging a mod for upload, is there any special directory structure I must use? (Lower down than the standard Oblivion\Data\Textures.)

 

I'm sorry to ask so many similar questions. Thanks for the help.

[Nexus Set]

...

In NifSkope, some of the directory structures are really generic like:

Textures\***\***

...

To make it work for other folk's game, that's the way to do it.

 

Nifskope and Textures Tutorial. Hope that helps.

[Pronam]

My structure is C:\Alternate Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\Textures\***\***

And so could everyone have a different one. If you simply use \textures you evade that problem completely.

 

The Auto-Detect Gamepaths-feature will ensure it'll happen automatically when you select files. It detects the game paths and therefore knows that \textures belongs to oblivion when you're pointing into the folder that contains the game path.

So be sure to put that on....To give an answer, no it doesn't ignore it..it's just possible. If it would ignore everything before it, it would be working at people with other paths as well. (It's at Render->Settings.)

 

Most people either use start outside the data folder(therefore include it), others start from within the data folder and use/pack the textures/meshes + the esp directly. I prefer that method, but their may be other reason why people use it that other way (omods?). It's a matter of opinion if you do it though. Extracting files is actually easier when you could just let people extract the data folder in the oblivion directory, but because it's different for each modder don't forget it to say where to extract it as people are almost always confused when opening an archive.

[David Brasher]

Problem solved! (I think.) Thanks for the help Nexus Set and Pronam! The linked tutorial had exactly the information I needed to know:

 

" * Once you've picked your texture, you may need to fix the path a bit, especially if you haven't set your NifSkope texture folders properly. To do this, double click on the texture path itself; the words to the right of the purple flower. An edit box will appear, allowing you to change the texture path however you like. Press the Enter key when finished.

 

Some words on the texture path. The general rule is, if you have your texture folders set properly so you can see the textures in the 3D view, and have extracted your textures to a similar folder structure as is used by your game and have stored your new texture there, the flower icon will magically know the proper path to use. However, it does not have knowledge about your game, so if you did anything differently you will have to find out what kind of path your game uses to make sure you're doing it right. The easiest way to do this is to look at the path your changing and copy and paste it somewhere or write it down. If the original path starts with textures\, then your new path needs to start with textures\ too. Similarly, if the original path just contains the name of the texture file and no folder names, that's what your new path needs to do.

 

Never release a NIF file that has paths starting with the drive letter ( C:\, D:\, etc.). These will only work on your machine or others who have installed the game exactly the same way. Always make sure your paths follow the example of the original paths. "

That explains why the mods worked on some computers and not on others. Some of the computers were configured like mine. Now I can avoid this mistake in the future. You have rescued two defective mods from the dust bin. Thanks a lot!