Valen Dreth going silent when I attempt to edit default races with the

[Bialge]

The title pretty much says it all. I've recently replaced the meshes and textures of some default races and, after saving the .esp, loading it into the game and creating a character, Valen Dreth just goes silent. Even races I have not edited prompt this behavior.

 

I have some race replacers installed (which I assume is pretty much what I'm trying to do) and they don't cause this issue. Can any one of you, kind souls, give me some tips, or at least point me in the right direction? This modding stuff is fairly new to me and the documentation is overwhelming. I'm reading and going through some amount of trial and error, but some pointers would be nice indeed.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: Can't seem to edit the title and reduce the number of characters to make it viewable. I meant "...with the Construction Set".

[XJDHDR]

Do you have the Unofficial Oblivion Patch installed? That has a fix for Valen going silent. The website in my signature has a link to the Unofficial patches.

[Bialge]

Sadly, yes. I've always used lots of custom races and replacers and for that and other reasons the unofficial patch was always a necessity.

[XJDHDR]

I would hardly call having the unofficial patch installed in your game sad.

 

Anyway, have you tried directly replacing the original meshes and textures of the original races instead of assigning your own name and directory structure to those files then making a plugin to point the game to those new files? This is the cleaner way of creating a mesh or texture replacer.

 

Otherwise, you must have made a dirty edit somewhere.

[Bialge]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. What I was trying to convey was that, unfortunately for me, fixing the problem won't be as easy as installing UOP and be done with it. I particularly love it, and wouldn't play Oblivion without it.

 

Replacing the textures is a good idea, I'll try it next. What I've done to temporarily fix it was to create the race I want to use as a custom race. It's not ideal as I intend to work my edits into a full race replacer eventually and I'm also quite intrigued as to what is hampering my development here. I'm assuming my edits are somehow messing with the RaceID variable that Valen's dialogue calls for, but my inexperience prevents me from discovering what is going on exactly.

[XJDHDR]

I know what you meant by your UOP comment. I was just trying to be funny. Like one comedy I watched where a person asked someone if the coast was clear and he answered, "How should I know? The coast is 50 miles away."

 

Like I said, directly replacing the files created by Bethesda (not overwriting though) is the cleanest way available of creating a texture/ mesh replacer for Oblivion. That means there are no ESP files to install and hence no conlicts with mods that change a race record in another way. However, it is your mod so go with whatever works for you.

 

I don't think the problem would be caused by altering the race records. The worst case scenario would be that you changed the Reference ID for the race in question and then the race conditions in the dialogue Valen would usually say for that race won't match up with the new ID for that race. But then Valen should fall back onto the UOP's "You're going to die, freak" comment that plays for custom races. The only way I can think of for making Valen silent would be to directly modify Valen's dialogue, whether accidently or otherwise. In that case, you would have to clean the plugin of that edit. The website in my signature has some instructions for cleaning your plugins.

[Bialge]

Ah, I see. I was unsure as I'm not a native english speaker and, although I have reasonable command of the language, most subtleties escape me.

 

I'll try modding it from scratch then, I picked up some knowledge now and will probably mess up less. What I really needed to know was if the issue was existent: "lol, noob, just mark the 'xy' flag on neweditmodcharacter.etc and that's it, everyone knows that :P". Thanks for clearing that up.

 

Appreciate the help XJDHDR!

[XJDHDR]

Good luck with the new ESP.

[Javalin]

Isn't there one that makes Valen Dreth speak? The custom races mod or something, I can't remember the name of it :P

If your still having a problem with it, you could download that.

 

The game isn't very stable, it gets a little messy with alot of mods installed, particular race edits and such

[XJDHDR]

@Javalin

The Unofficial Oblivion patch gives Valen something to say when the player chooses to use a custom race (basically asks what the player is, makes some comments about the guards capturing something unique then says "You're going to die, freak"). Using any other custom race fix will most likely cause problems with the UOP installed. And BTW, Bialge has the UOP installed so the problem isn't that.

 

As I mentioned earlier, the only way I can think of which would cause this problem is that Valen's dialogue was modified in some way.