Strange Graphical Bugs

[Alixen]

Hey all

 

Ever since I installed on my new system the game has been unplayable due to weird glitches.

 

All setting are turned to high since the computer can handle max by a few times. Thing is... every building and character are unshaded. They stand out like bright cartoon characters no matter the distance and no matter the time. They have no shadows on them AT ALL.

 

Weirder still is the cobbled road texture seems to be... missing? Cities have grass where there should be road; and paths between cities are dirt/grass trails. Out of the ground around Anvil Lighthouse and even in the city are crude 'hills' of untextured landmass that reach up to about a characters waist. They have no collision detection and can be easily passed through.

 

Still, all in all it ruins any chance of actually playing. Ick.

 

I have very few mods; none of them change the landscape except for Middle-Earth Roleplayign which sin't even enabled.

 

Fallout 3 runs fien on full settings with tons of mods. I don't get why my lightly modded Oblivion is so bugged.

 

Any advice on what it could be?

[Alixen]

Hmm, reinstalled and it seems to have fixed it. Very odd indeed. Now I don't know which of my fifteen or so mods caused the problem. :(

[nosisab]

Hmm, reinstalled and it seems to have fixed it. Very odd indeed. Now I don't know which of my fifteen or so mods caused the problem. :(

Avoid installing many mods at a time, mainly those mods that changes textures and/or the landscape. It may be annoying installing a mod, start the game and roam a bit, preferably going to a few places, but in the and it pays for the trouble with easer troubleshooting eventual issues.

 

The load order is important but you should not forget the install order sometimes is more. For instance the Unofficial Patches should be installed sooner, just after the official ones. actually every patch should be nearest possible the files it affects and installed immediately after the correspondent mods.

 

That install order should be observed from the start, although changing order of installed mods is not always a problem, sometimes it may hide serious issues that sprung only later in the game when it's difficult to trace back it's origin. Sometimes it is lucky when the issue is immediately observed, like savegames refusing to load.

[Jenrai]

Nosisab is right about install order being significant matey. Doubly so with patches and updates. If a patch to something is installed before whatever the patch is actually for, installing the original over it will then effectively delete the patch.

 

Anyways. Reason I'm posting. You mentioned one of your mods being deactivated so it can't be affecting your game. This is only correct if the deactivated mod was installed via Bash or OBMM and the Bain Package or OMOD itself has been deactivated. Anything inside your data folder has the potential to still affect your game, wether the esp is active or not.

Additionally, with any mods that alter a cell directly, the changes can remain even after the mod is gone, courtesy of your saves. Whenever you remove a mod, always make a clean save (head somewhere you know the mod didn't affect - preferably an interior location but NOT in a city) and resave your game. The testinghall is probably the best place to head for making clean saves.

 

I know you've solved this issue, but this little lot might help you later.

Jenrai

[bben46]

My guess is when you reinstalled, you deleted the original Oblivion.ini which was based on your old hardware. And the game made a new one based on the new hardware. Just deleting the Oblivion.ini instead of reinstalling might have fixed you up. It scans your hardware and creates a new one if it doesn't find an Oblivion.ini at startup.

 

FYI, an .ini file is an Initialization program needed to run the program properly. When the program (Oblivion.exe) starts, it looks for the Oblivion.ini and reads the info in to tell it how to handle the video, audio and other stuff. When you change video settings (or any other game settings) in the game, it adds that change to the ini so you don't have to make the same change again every time you start the game.

[Alixen]

Thanks guys, i'll bear all this in mind, It will be useful for future refrence; though hopefully I won't be re-installing for a few years at this point. =D