Hi - I'm new and I'm just feeling my way around!

[Borderboy]

Hi Striker879,

 

I'm getting there albeit slowly (but surely)!

 

I sorted out that superfluous pathway and have now deleted it. The game still loads so everything seems OK.

 

Following your instructions very closely, I must firstly tell you that where you instruct me to replace the words OblivionLauncher.exe with obse_loader.exe and then tell me to include the quote marks - there are no quote marks either at the start of the path or the end - so I haven't added any.

 

I've done it any way and the game still starts but - and this is the next bit - I don't get the Oblivion launcher window that heads with Play and also includes Data Files and the other options. So I cannot access the Data Files window to activate the Toggleable Quantity Prompt.

 

Need a bit more help here!

 

Latest news, I have managed to procure a gaming mouse! I went to a local gaming store which strangely doesn't stock PC accessories, they only seem to stock console accessories). Fortunately one of the guys is a PC gamer and he advised me to look at an Anker gaming mouse. They have them on Amazon for about £26. I managed to get a hardly used one off Ebay for just over £10 with the P&P! So I'm looking forward to that arriving and facing the next challenge of setting it up!

[Striker879]

Good that we got the leftovers tidied up.

 

Yes that is correct ... when starting the game using your edited desktop shortcut you won't get the old vanilla game launcher. What you will use to get the old launcher is the shortcut found on your Windows Start button menu. On my good old WinXP machine it's click the Start button then All Programs -> Bethesda Softworks - > Oblivion -> Oblivion. It will likely be a bit different on Win 7 (can't give a Vista version because my laptop would stand no chance of ever running the game, thus no Oblivion installed there).

 

I find that for the few times I need to have access to the vanilla game launcher it's not worth the hassle of having two different Oblivion shortcuts on my desktop, one for vanilla Oblivion and one for OBSE + Oblivion. If you prefer the two desktop icons method then copy your current edited icon and edit the copy back to point to OblivionLauncher.exe (be sure to name them differently so you know which is which).

 

I think it may be a Win 7 reason for the no quote marks at the start and end of your desktop icon Target path ... again that was WinXP old school advice. At least you got it working.

 

I agree with Bben that a gaming mouse isn't necessarily required for Oblivion. If you have side buttons on a regular mouse you can assign things to that (e.g. I have cast set to the "Back" button on my mouse as well as the "C" key on my keyboard ... having the mouse button makes it easier to backpedal out of danger while laying down a few fireballs to discourage the pursuer). My Logitech isn't a gaming mouse ... more of a general purpose mouse.

[Borderboy]

Hi Striker879 and bbne46,

 

I have followed all of your instructions and I seem to be up and running OK, although I haven't fully tried out yet. I am still ploughing through the readme file on TQP!

 

I really appreciate all of your help with this, I certainly couldn't have done it without you. I did as most player probably do at the outset and tried to find out what to do by watching countless videos on You Tube but it got extremely confusing as some where obviously made by younger guys who must have thought they were telling players who are of a similar skill how to do things or there were several different tools, (OBMM, OBSE, NMM etc.) it got so confusing I ended up getting literally bogged down with information overload!

 

Some of the better videos which actually contained commentary were helpful to a certain point but way too quick, others had blaring, deafening rock music with screen prompts which could not be followed easily.

 

You ought to make a definitive video for You Tube - you certainly know how to put the subject over in a simple manner that even I could understand without too much trouble!

 

So - now I have my first ever mod in place. If I see something else I need or fancy, or indeed if I come up against any game glitches or bugs and in particular the Abomb, do I follow a similar method. Is it the same for all extra add ons and mods? I am way off needing anymore content to the game, I have enough to do with the Shivering Isles, Knights of The Nine and the actual game itself but I am interested marginally at the moment.

 

I note from the Prima Game Guide, (another bone of contention with Bethesda in the past) that there are things called "Plug-ins" - for instance "Mehrunes Razor" with reference to Sundercliffe Keep, (location No.77 on page 515 (World Maps). How would I approach this?

 

The bone of contention I refer to is the fact that Prima published the game guide without the World Maps which takes up some 48-50 pages at the back of the book. Sometime later these were then included. I started off unbeknownst with the short version, getting totally confused and then after many forum hours discovered that there was actually an updated version, which I managed to get hold of. Both copies were bought second-hand as there are very few new ones on the market and they cost the earth! Bethesda/Prima actually came up good and sent me a link to a pdf file which contains the World Maps. If anyone is interested, and needs these but hasn't currently got access, I can probably provide the link.

 

Anyway guys - thank you again!

[Striker879]

Outstanding Borderboy. There's a whole list of the additional DLCs that Bethesda had available for download at one time in the distant past. The only way to get them today is either through one of the special edition disks (if you can find one of those) or through Steam.

 

I find video tutorials useless myself, but I'm the type who needs to read things. Others learn better by watching or being told (with me you can see the words trickling out my other ear, unimpeded by their passage through that gray lump between my ears). I guess there must be some who can't learn without blaring music and unintelligible commentary. Trick is to find out what type of learner you are and look for that type of resource.

 

There is no one "right" way to install mods, nor one way that works with all mods (though a tool called Wrye Bash (WB) has an install utility named BAIN that comes very close). Thing is, even with WB and BAIN you will eventually run into a mod that requires some choosing between optional elements. If all you've ever learned is "Click the green download with manager button" (my pet name for the Nexus Mod Manager crowd) you'll be reduced to asking the most popular question on the Oblivion Nexus in the past couple of years .... "Why can't this be installed with NMM".

 

If you first learn how to install mods manually (like what you did with TQP) you'll gain enough understanding of the game's requirements to install those more complicated mods or even repackage them so that tools like NMM can install them. All it takes is determination and time.

 

One tool I do find indispensable is Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) ... not for installing mods in my case, but for unpacking OMODs (a compressed file format specific to OBMM) and for something called archive invalidation. The vanilla game is set up to load all of the assets it needs (meshes, animations and textures etc.) from the compressed BSA archives that came with the game. If a mod wants to replace those vanilla assets with it's own it needs a method of telling the game to use those replacements instead of the ones in the BSAs. That method is archive invalidation.

 

Those are bridges you can cross when you get to them ... not needed today. Today you need to get over to Vilverin and bonk a bandit or two on the head so you can start getting rich and powerful. Don't be a stranger ... even in summer (my busy season) I check in when I can.

[Borderboy]

I have been playing this afternoon! I only meant to go on for half an hour and I spent about 3! My missus will be going spare!

 

The TQP mod works great. Just what I want - I can feel my RSI subsiding already!

 

The next mod I want is one for making the Speechcraft wheel easier and quicker to work. On a PS3 game pad it was easy - just keep turning the left stick around and around, up and down, left and right and keep pressing then X button.

 

Its a bit more involved (again) with the mouse buttons. If you hear of one let me know.

 

I'll have a gander at the list and see if there's anything else I fancy.

[Striker879]

Don't ya just hate it when real world stuff starts interfering with important stuff, like saving Cyrodiil??

 

I don't spend much time buffing Speechcraft myself ... just enough to get better prices when selling loot, and even that I don't sweat it much. By the time my character is level 12 or 15 I generally have gold out the whazoo and not much left to spend it on. If I wasn't such a packrat I'd probably leave most of the loot behind, but a packrat I am therefore strength is pretty high on my levelup priority list.

 

The Top lists is a pretty good starting spot for looking for suitable mods. Get into the habit of reading through both the mod description and mod comments when researching. If you have trouble understanding something or see problems reported in the mod comments don't hesitate to ask for second opinions.

 

Don't forget about the saving habits I mentioned in my first post (especially concerning quicksaves). I find that saving and exiting the game to the desktop every few hours is a good thing too (Oblivion has some PC memory managing issues). By exiting to the desktop and restarting you get a clean slate in memory with just the game, your mods and save file contents loaded.

[meathead013]

 

after what ive suffered through while modding oblivion i would strongly recommend preparing your pc for a complete OS reinstall. that means backing up all your data and settings and knowing exactly where your OS/restore disks are

 

my experience appears to be rare but it was real: oblivion modding can fubar your pc to unrecoverable status. dont say i didnt warn you

 

I don't intend doing that much "modding".

 

As I have said, all I really want to do is try and get my game to run smoother, i.e. be able to iron out the glitches and create a method to sell items individually (as a starter).

 

To what extent have you modded which has caused your system to need such drastic reparation?

 

 

i was exactly the same, i just wanted some very simple mods to fix some of the basic problems (like single selling items) that i considered essential

 

i read for many hours before doing anything with any of the mods just to try to make sure i knew what i was doing

 

yet when i went and installed a couple simple mods the game started crashing. and once it crashed there was nothing i could do to get it to not crash. complete game reinstall, complete steam reinstall, complete directory backups/overwrites, and using windows restore points - NOTHING stopped the game from crashing until i reinstalled the OS

 

so basically i wanted the same things as you, tried to add simple mods, and thus opened the door to many hours of hell swapping CDs and waiting waiting waiting

[Borderboy]

Hi Striker879,

 

Things are now going along swimmingly!

 

I even managed to use the console to resurrect Alawen so I could get a bit more training in Marksmanship. The first tima around in the PS3 version she apparently got killed and as we know with the PS3 version there's no coming back from the dead!

 

She managed to get herself killed in the PC version but it is so easy to bring 'em back!

 

I've got another one here - perhaps you would like to comment and confirm how I should install it. It's a mod that allows you to pick up books off shelves where there are hundreds of them. I was clearing out the Blackwood Company's library to sell the books on but my hand started to ache after about 20!

 

I knew there were no skill books there having done it the first time around so I started looking for a mod solution. A guy on Wiki UESP suggested this one:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/27563/?

 

What do you think?

[Striker879]

The mod comments don't raise any red flags, and it looks like the mod author upgraded the mod with ideas from some of the early adopters. The mod requires OBSE but I believe we got you up and running with that for TQP.

 

I don't tend to pick up many books beyond skill books as I've found that with a bit of patience my guy is invariably swimming in gold with nothing left to spend it on by level 15 or 20. Earlier in the game, when money is tight, I tend to look for the biggest bucks with the lowest weight. Before I even buy a house I save up for one of Emma's excellent Packdonkeys and once I can afford two they are always with me.

 

You'll need to pick one version of Pick Up Books Faster ... from what I can see the version 3 is the only one with an INI file allowing you to select options without needing to switch versions. As far as installation goes it's pretty simple ... extract the downloaded ZIP to the same folder you downloaded to, copy/paste PPPickUpBook.esp (and PPPickUpBook.ini if you decide on version 3) from the extracted download to your game's Data folder.

 

Remember to use the non-OBSE shortcut (or the Start button shortcut if you went that way) to bring up the vanilla game launcher to activate PPPickUpBooks.esp in Data Files, but don't launch the game ... just click Exit after clicking OK in the Data Files dialogue then launch the game with your OBSE shortcut.

Edited May 27, 2014 by Striker879

[Borderboy]

Hi Striker879,

 

Its been a long time since I've been to this forum. I guess its because of all the sound advice that you and the other guys gave me initially when I moved over from PS3 to PC. I have now been playing the game on PC since April and have got over 600 game days (according to my stats) under my belt. Very few problems have occurred in the ensuing period apart from having to revive a couple of key characters. I have had only a couple of save crashes resulting in corrupt files where I have had to go back a save. I did lose several hours of play time that could not be repeated fully, so I have sort of learned my lesson to commit to regular saving! One instance was where I actually found one of the remaining skill books in loot and lost it again through the crash. When I revisited the chest where it was found first time around, it wasn't there and what's more, I haven't seen a single skill book in loot ever since!

 

I have forgotten most of what was said regarding the supposed A-Bomb glitch and I feel it may be time to revisit it.

 

Having completed over 600 game hours, I am now experiencing the same symptoms, although not so intense, as I did on PS3. Lighting effects after spell casting and chapel altar visits are hanging in the air for longer than they did at the beginning of playing the game. Big old wooden doors are slow to open and everything seems a little frenetic and jumpy.

 

I have completed many of the quests involving the guilds apart from the last part of the Thieves Guild (The Ultimate Heist), purely because I wanted to hang on to those Springheel Jak Boots! I only have two quests left in the Daedric section, Peryite and the final one. I have been using Peryite to up my blade, blunt and hand to hand skills!

 

I still have the vampire quests to do but I have completed the Knights of The Nine and the main storyline quest up to Miscarcand. I have still to have a go at the Shivering Isles and haven't even thought about the plug-ins and extra DLC, which is another thing!

 

Can you help me out in your easy to explain way like you did before?

 

I would like to complete this game as far as possible (to satisfy my OCD tendencies more than anything), but I don't want all of these glitches to spoil the pleasure.

 

What exactly do I have to do at this stage?

 

Hope you can help.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Borderboy