Looking for Help or a Tutorial for OBMM

[JCSpencer]

I've search all over, but either I'm missing something completely obvious, or there aren't any OBMM tutorials. I'm actually quite shocked that Timeslip doesn't have a single tutorial or any documentation concerning OBMM on the official website - just a download page. And the accompanying help file isn't all that detailed. I searched for other help, but I can't find anything like what I am trying to find.

 

Okay, first of all, I just recently returned to playing Oblivion and downloaded quite a few mods. During that time, I learned some of the stuff that I've missed out on, so I did what I could so far. First, I installed OBSE. Second, I installed BOSS and the updated masterlist, ran it, and my mods were re-ordered. There were 20 files listed as unknown so it didn't touch them (well, it moved them to the end of the list). So next I installed and ran Oblivion Mod Manager, which it recommends. When I click on Utilities, it gives me a choice between Old Conflict Detector and New Conflict Detector. There is a little extra help in the help files for the old conflict detector, but almost nothing for the new one.

 

When I run the conflict detector, it gives me a list that looks at least half red, and a bunch of green. There is virtually no description of what the colors mean that I can find, or suggestions on what to do about it, or descriptions of what all the abbreviations and codes in the report stand for. I decided to run the Old conflict detector instead, and I got an even bigger list of red items (this was set to detect only major conflicts, not minor or very minor ones). To give you an idea of how big it is, I copy-n-pasted it into Word, and it filled 209 pages! WTF. I thought the purpose of BOSS was to eliminate as many conflicts as possible? Maybe I just don't understand it well enough. I've been extremely careful in downloading mods, watching for requirements and posted conflicts, yet it still looks like a CTD playground (of course, I really don't have any clue what I'm actually looking at, which is part of the problem).

 

Anyway, my first inclination is to say screw it and give up on Oblivion again because this is an awful lot of work to play a game (Morrowind wasn't this much of a pain). My frustration is increased when I have no clue what most of the entries in the conflict report mean because there doesn't seem to be any documentation anywhere to explain it. I've done everything according to what most websites recommend before coming here to ask for help.

 

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this, and for any help or suggestions you may be able to offer.

[Jenrai]

Okay, first of all, I just recently returned to playing Oblivion and downloaded quite a few mods.

All at the same time and without playtesting? Thats generally a bad idea. Install a couple at a time, tops. And then play for a couple of hours. I have one pretty much maxxed out charector I use for testing everything and looking for obvious problems everytime I install more than 1 or 2 mods.

During that time, I learned some of the stuff that I've missed out on, so I did what I could so far. First, I installed OBSE. Second, I installed BOSS and the updated masterlist, ran it, and my mods were re-ordered. There were 20 files listed as unknown so it didn't touch them (well, it moved them to the end of the list). So next I installed and ran Oblivion Mod Manager, which it recommends. When I click on Utilities, it gives me a choice between Old Conflict Detector and New Conflict Detector.

Good call on all three. Decent utilities. Excepting OBMM's conflict detector - it flags anything that changes anything in a cell that another mod already changes as a conflict. 209 pages? :D I bet my conflict report for the IC Market district alone is double that. Put it this way - if a mod drops a potion at one end of a large exterior cell, and another mod drops a knife at the opposite end, OBMM will show them as conflicting mods. Usually as 'red' conflicts. Took me a while to realise this wasn't actually anything serious too.

When I run the conflict detector, it gives me a list that looks at least half red, and a bunch of green. There is virtually no description of what the colors mean that I can find

See previous comment. The worst thing about OBMM is that conflict detector. It flags anything and everything.

WTF. I thought the purpose of BOSS was to eliminate as many conflicts as possible?

Boss reorganises your load order. It can avoid problems (and lots of them, many of them major ones) by doing that, but it doesn't change any of the mods. At all. If OBMM's dodgy conflict detector flagged em as conflicting before you ran boss, they'll still conflict after it. The reason is simply that they are altering the same cells/folders whatever as one and other. (I don't mean to give OBMM such a bad press, and indeed the conflict detector can have its uses if you know one of a pair of conflicting mods it makes it a sinch to find the other, for example - but its executed badly... all those scary red letters on the report make people panic)

 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is thus; Go for tried and tested (and preferably small) mods first until you get used to installing them. Play test them a little. See if you get a marked increase in glitches/CTDs... (hey, its Oblivion. You are going to have CTDs. And glitches. Mods or no mods) ignore OBMM's coinflict detector until you think you have a problem. Then it can be of use to find that problem. But don't expect to have problems just because OBMM's conflict detector says you will.

Experience is the name of the game with modding Oblivion. The more you do it, the better you'll get at it.

 

Jenrai

[ptbptb]

Add Windom Earle's Oblivion Crash Prevention System to your utility list. It will save you from a few CTDs a day - especially if you do rash things like loading games after you die instead of ending Oblivion and restarting. (Seriously, loading saved games is one of the major causes of crashes in Oblivion. :blink: )

[bben46]

There used to be a lengthily tutorial, but it seems to have vanished. I believe it was incorporated into the help on the OBMM itself.

Try this one

OBMM Help http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...livion_Mods_FAQ

[JCSpencer]

Thank you very much for your replies. I wasn't sure what to expect, and I am grateful I received sincere help and not flames about how retarded I am.

 

OBMM's conflict detector - it flags anything that changes anything in a cell that another mod already changes as a conflict. 209 pages? :D I bet my conflict report for the IC Market district alone is double that. Put it this way - if a mod drops a potion at one end of a large exterior cell, and another mod drops a knife at the opposite end, OBMM will show them as conflicting mods. Usually as 'red' conflicts. Took me a while to realise this wasn't actually anything serious too. The worst thing about OBMM is that conflict detector. It flags anything and everything.

 

Okay, I didn't realize any of that from the research I did on it, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me. I found only one small tidbit of help in OBMM's readme, which said something to the effect that red files "were usually very small yet serious enough to break your game." Even without any other help (which was frustrating), that was enough to get me all worked up.

 

Boss reorganises your load order. It can avoid problems (and lots of them, many of them major ones) by doing that, but it doesn't change any of the mods. At all. If OBMM's dodgy conflict detector flagged em as conflicting before you ran boss, they'll still conflict after it. The reason is simply that they are altering the same cells/folders whatever as one and other.

 

I guess if I had followed that logic sooner, I would have omitted that statement. It makes sense.

 

(I don't mean to give OBMM such a bad press, but its executed badly... all those scary red letters on the report make people panic)

 

Which is exactly what happened to me. I'm not dissatisfied with OBMM on the whole myself, and really like the ability to set the load order and some of the other utilities and the omod feature, but the lack of a good tutorial or FAQ is a bit frustrating. There is surprisingly very little to no help at the creator's website. Whatever help the end user gets is whatever is in the included help file, but it's not all that thorough.

 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is thus; Go for tried and tested (and preferably small) mods first until you get used to installing them. Play test them a little. See if you get a marked increase in glitches/CTDs... (hey, its Oblivion. You are going to have CTDs. And glitches. Mods or no mods) ignore OBMM's coinflict detector until you think you have a problem. Then it can be of use to find that problem. But don't expect to have problems just because OBMM's conflict detector says you will.

 

That's what I tried to do. I used to mod (and still do occasionally) Morrowind, but I never did it with Oblivion. So I figured I am pretty experienced with mod installations, understanding the folder structures and typical install paths, and knowing potential conflicts before they arise based on the nature of the mods I am installing. Normally, if I had been playing this game all along, I would have been installing a few at a time, but I have been away for a couple of years and I find a lot of great stuff out there now. Still, I was very picky.

 

There are almost 18,000 files on TES Nexus for Oblivion (according to the file count), and I went through most of them, reading the mini-descriptions to see if I was interested. If I was, then I read the descriptions in detail. If I was still interested, I then read the comments (assuming they weren't disabled, *sigh*) to see what the users thought. If there were even small, recent problems with the mod, I became wary; if it also seemed the author was no longer supporting it (no replies to posts or updates for the past several months), no matter how cool the mod seemed, I skipped it. If there was virtually no description of the mod, no screen pics, very few downloads despite the age of the mod, or other details like that that made me wary, I skipped it. I skipped some really cool stuff just because there was some uncertainty about conflicts or bugs, no matter how small. Almost everything I downloaded had been out for a long while, had thousands of downloads, good ratings, good reports from the users, a good description on what the mod did so I could compare it to other mods I was downloading, and a good installation guide, especially important to me for large mods or mods that alter gameplay significantly.

 

I was very picky. Of the several thousands of mods I reviewed, I only downloaded a little over 100 of them. Stuff like Natural Weather & Water, ImpeREAL Districts, some texture replacers, More Immersive Sound, all the Unofficial patches, Companion Share & Recruit, Robert's Male & Female bodies, Illuminated Windows, Tamriel Travelers, and Oblivion XP. I didn't even go with the big obvious ones like OOO, Fran's, or MMM for now. I considered those to be more complicated installs for a later time after I get used to this. As you can see, or at least, as far as I know, the mods I downloaded aren't that overboard. Almost everything else I added were new armors, clothing, a couple of villages, and population increasing mods like Crowded Cities and the Extended series. I also have all the offical plugins, KotN and SI. I made sure that each item I downloaded was the only mod that affected a certain area of the game, even if it claimed it wouldn't conflict with others of the same type. You'll see I have just one weather mod, only one major mod that affects the Imperial City, and another that adds some people to it, one sound mod, one companion mod, one body replacer (per sex), etc. Without knowing the actual details of the mods, I think Oblivion XP probably introduces the most drastic changes to the game overall, and is the only one I was particularly nervous about. I skipped a lot of content that looked really interesting, especially quest mods, new building or faction mods, and other atmospheric mods, as most were encroaching on territory affected by another mod I had already downloaded.

 

 

Add Windom Earle's Oblivion Crash Prevention System to your utility list. It will save you from a few CTDs a day - especially if you do rash things like loading games after you die instead of ending Oblivion and restarting. (Seriously, loading saved games is one of the major causes of crashes in Oblivion. :blink: )

 

Yeah I read about that (the crashes from loading saves, not the utility). Not sure how I missed that one. The only thing I can think of is that when I saw it, I didn't remember having a problem with that many CTDs so didn't think I needed it. In fact, I still don't know if I will have any CTDs yet, as I haven't loaded up the game. I've never liked the "try it until it breaks" method of testing. I like to know before I load up my game that I can reasonably expect to have a minimum of conflicts or errors (from mods at least). Anyway, thanks for the recommendation and the link.

 

There used to be a lengthily tutorial, but it seems to have vanished. I believe it was incorporated into the help on the OBMM itself.

Try this one

OBMM Help http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...livion_Mods_FAQ

 

Yeah, that's the problem I was having. I couldn't track down any tutorials at all. There doesn't seem to be one in OBMM either, just the included help documentation (the obmm.chm file). That page you linked was actually one of the first ones I read, as it was one of the very few hits Google gave me (the rest were mostly for websites recommending OBMM, or discussing it in very general terms), but unfortunately it only describes OBMM in passing and is primarily just a general mod guide. I was hoping to find something that gave me more detailed instructions and descriptions of OBMM and its functions, including and particularly a focus on conflicts and addressing them, but as Jenrai points out, that most likely wouldn't help me anyway.

 

Thanks again for your replies. I really appreciate the time all of you took to offer your assistance.

[theuseless]

Check out my collection of tutorials (Tutorials Abound!). There are some great tutorials to be found there, I would reccomend Ben's Oblivion Support if you are new to modding. Please leave feedback if the site is useful or needs something improved upon.

 

Good luck with your endeavors,

theuseless

 

-edit-

 

If you are brave, follow the tes4edit guides there, there is a manual for the program as well. This is far superior to obmm in conflict detection/resolution