Strange texture problem, please help

[Murielkai]

Hello, I am wondering if anyone might have any insight into a problem I am having lately with textures in Oblivion. I have been modding the game for years now and never seen this happen. It appears as though textures aren't always loading properly, in one instance (the first I noticed) was in the starting dungeon with the dagon cultists and Roberts Male Body Replacer, when I removed there robes there bodies were black. I saved the game and exited then reloaded and everything was fine. The second occurrence was with the water outside around the imperial city, when I fast traveled to Red Rose Manor it seemed as though the water didn't load so again I saved and exited the game then reloaded and everything was fine. The third occurrence was with head textures on the NPC's at Sky Haven Temple during the quest where you deliver Martin there for the first time. The head textures started flickering strangely. Reloaded the game, everything was fine.

 

I was wondering if it could be the bashed patch or something? I have 125'ish esp's currently, below is my load order if that helps. I use the archive invalidated installer, of course. To be honest I didn't notice this, if I recall correctly, before installing Marts Mutant Mod 3.8 but I could be mistaken.

 

I was thinking about not merging esp's in my bashed patch (leave everything checked), would that have any effect on stuff not loading correctly?

 

Oblivion.esm
All Natural Base.esm
Cobl Main.esm
Mart's Monster Mod.esm
Better Cities Resources.esm
CM Partners.esm
Fix_OghmaInfiniumCrash.esp
Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp
Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp
DLCShiveringIsles.esp
Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp
Better Cities .esp
Natural_Habitat_by_Max_Tael.esp
All Natural.esp
All Natural - SI.esp
Natural_Water_by_Max_Tael.esp
All Natural - Real Lights.esp
WindowLightingSystem.esp
Book Jackets Oblivion.esp
ClocksOfCyrodiil_BC_OBC_OC_OCLR_Vanilla.esp
ImprovedSigns.esp
Luchaire's Neck Seam Concealer.esp
RAEVWD New Sheoth.esp
ShowHideAmulet.esp
Xia_Nhary_TwilightAssassin.HGEC1.1Normal.esp
kuerteeCleanUp.esp
Oblivion Graphics Extender Support.esp
Spell Delete And Item Remove.esp
Streamline 3.1.esp
DLCHorseArmor.esp
DLCHorseArmor - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCOrrery.esp
DLCOrrery - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCVileLair.esp
DLCVileLair - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCSpellTomes.esp
EVE_StockEquipmentReplacer.esp
1SB_RavenousEleganceOutfit.esp
AoC Armoury of Conan.esp
Captain_Molly_HGEC.esp
Chapel Shop.esp
Dynasty Recolor.esp
GhostArmor.esp
HentaiSchoolGirlCollection.esp
IvyArmor_Full.esp
KDCirclets.esp
KDClothCirclets.esp
New Frostmourne Sword by Jojjo v1_0.esp
Shdw_Armor Set_Sotonhorian.esp
ShaiyaOutfit.esp
Thunderbird Armor.esp
Underworld Armor.esp
R18PN - Lingeries.esp
DLCThievesDen.esp
DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch - SSSB.esp
Cobl Glue.esp
Cobl Si.esp
Mart's Monster Mod.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Hunting & Crafting.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Zombies for Body Meshes.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Farm Animals.esp
Mart's Monster Mod - Diverse WaterLife.esp
EM_RedRoseManor.esp
EMRedRoseAddonCOBL.esp
EM_FarmAnimals1.esp
GlenvarCastle.esp
Theryon.esp
Tona's_ModsStore.esp
VaultsofCyrodiil.esp
Apachii_Goddess_Store.esp
Apachii_Heroes_Store.esp
Apachii_Wigs_MaleFemale.esp
Zira's Clydesdale Horses.esp
DLCBattlehornCastle.esp
DLCBattlehornCastle - Unofficial Patch.esp
DLCfrostcrag.esp
FrostcragRebornCobl.esp
Knights.esp
Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp
EVE_KnightsoftheNine.esp
EVE_ShiveringIslesEasterEggs.esp
Enhanced Vegetation [110%].esp
SetEssentialActors.esp
MidasSpells.esp
_Ren_BeautyPack_onlyhairs.esp
idkrrr_sarameyesNhairs4originalrace.esp
CM Partners.esp
Moonshadow Elves - NoSc.esp
CuteElf11.esp
CM Partners NPC.esp
CM Partners Extra NPCs.esp
1em_Vilja.esp
ViljainRedRoseManor.esp
ViljaOCO.esp
DAValeriaCuteElf.esp
Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp
Better Cities Full.esp
Better Cities - VWD of the IC.esp
Better Cities - IC Imperial Isle.esp
Better Imperial City.esp
Better Imperial City FPS Patch.esp
Better Cities - No LEYAWIIN Flooding.esp
Bashed Patch, 0.esp

 

 

 

 

[Striker879]

That would negate one of the benefits of your bashed patch ... taking all those conflicting things from your mods, resolving the conflicts, and then put the resulting conflict resolved result at the end of your load order.

 

Have you tried defragging?

 

- Edit - Similar problem to what you reported on Creature Diversity ... did a save/reload work for that issue as well?

Edited January 5, 2015 by Striker879

[Murielkai]

I removed Creature Diversity before it occurred to me to save/reload but its possible. There were other people. however, who reported the same creatures not having correct textures in Creature Diversity's post section. I could reinstall Creature Diversity (I think it works with MMM with a bashed patch) and see but come to think about it, I did go to the same dungeon several times... and the Ogres and Goblins were the same everytime so I don't think it was the same bug. Also, in Creature Diversity it seemed as though the "extra" monsters had texture issues and not the normal spawns even though they were named the same. With this bug EVERY cultist had darkened textures until a reload. However, in two seperate games it was ONLY the cultists bodies that were dark and always the head of the monk (main guy who you give the amulet of kings to) and martin that flickered.

 

If it persists I may remove MMM and see if it stops. MMM had a ridiculous amount of esp's but I managed to get it down to about 6 (from 12+).

 

As far as the bashed patch goes, the only mod listed as being required to merge is COBL. All of the other ones (including MMM etc) are listed under "mergeable" but it says they are only "suggested" and the only reason for merging is to reduce the number of esp's. That is why I asked if those mods could be left unmerged since I am nowhere near the max esp limit. To clarify, I am talking only about the first part of the bashed patch that pops up and asks which mods to deactivate and not the second part where you actually import stuff and merge the mods.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Murielkai

[Striker879]

I'm far from being a Wrye Bash expert ... anything I know about it has come from studying the two readmes. I follow it's suggestions for merging and opt out of merging when it indicates could be merged but not tagged to merge (I'm like you, no where near my mod limit).

 

Quite a while back I ran into a sort of similar situation with Alluring Potion Bottles. The menu icons would sometimes revert to vanilla and then later would switch back to the ones from the mod's BSA. I solved it by extracting the problematic menu DDSs from the BSA and putting them in their proper folder paths in my game's Data folder. Never had a problem with them after that. They went missing because of a bad read from the BSA (which was why I asked about defragging ... didn't help in my example but that's the first step for working that sort of problem where the files are there in the BSA but not being read ... or maybe in the Textures folder but not being read correctly).

 

If you know exactly what textures are missing (and it could be a normal map if I remember the error colour codes correctly) you can extract them if they're in a BSA. If it's loose files in the Textures subfolders it's a defrag and I don't know what else could work situation. Use NifSkope to figure out what texture files are the problem.

[Murielkai]

I am unfamiliar with defragging, what exactly does that entail? Are you saying it may help to dump the files out of the BSA for mods like creature diversity where textures or meshes are showing up black? If so how does one do that? I did notice a BSA extraction tool on nexus at one point, not sure what it was called though.

[Striker879]

I used OBMM for the extracting myself. If I recall correctly it's Uitlities -> BSA Browser -> open the BSA and find your problematic texture, highlight it and Extract to Folder (if memory serves). I found it best to create the folder you are going to extract to ahead of time, as OBMM's menus didn't do a good job of letting me create the target folder at extraction time. Can't remember if it preserves the folder structure or not, so take note of the file's exact folder structure in the BSA Browser before you close that out. I don't have any experience with BSA Commander (I think that's it's name).

 

Defragging is something that should be done periodically on all machines with hard drives ... machines equipped with SSDs (solid state drives) should not be defragged. Over time with adding and deleting files from your hard drive things start getting spread all over and large files like BSAs aren't even in one contiguous block (bits of that one file get stored in any available space that Windows decides to use). The defrag utility that comes with Windows does a fairly decent job of getting all the files stored in their own contiguous block.

 

Depending on your Windows version it will be found somewhere like System Tools or Computer Management (in WinXP it's found in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Deframenter but I'm sure Microsoft would have found better ways to hide it in Win7/8/8.1). You'll probably need to be logged in using an administrator account (on XP you do) and you may find that it's set to automatically defrag on a schedule. Doesn't hurt to give a good old manual defrag sometime you're not going to be using your machine for a while (and I do mean a while ... depending on how large the hard drive, how full it is and how badly fragmented it can take hours). I often do my 1TB Data disk overnight.

[Murielkai]

Oh, defragging the hard drive. I thought for some reason you were using the term in a way that pertained to modding, lol. Yea I defragged right before installing Oblivion actually but perhaps I should do it afterward since the game is over 30 gigs. I have noticed in the past that defragging can cause an ever-so-slight amount of stuttering or loss in framerate at times. I also was wondering if perhaps it was me using the console (opening it). With Better Cities when I open the console it sometimes causes the doors in Bruma to offset so I pondered that it may cause other issues as well. I am playtesting now without opening the console.

 

I have installed Oblivion many many times over the years but usually kept a very similar list of mods, sticking mainly to the top 100 or so along with a few extras. Just recently I decided to add the monster mods like MMM and Creature Diversity and started noticing this issue, but it just doesn't "feel" like the mods have anything to do with the textures. My intuition is saying its a loading issue or something. I have a raid 0 setup on my hard drive and wonder if that could cause the textures to not get read correct at times, like you mentioned before.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Murielkai

[Striker879]

Oh no ... another RAID0 person. I had to re-install after one drive in my Games drive RAID0 went south. Fortunately I had some fast WD Raptors "in stock" but decided to forgo RAID0 this time (second RAID0 failure I've had, but that's spread out over quite a few years).

 

Use NifSkope to find out what textures go missing and then try the extract from BSA trick.

 

- Edit - Another alternative is just extract all the files and then install the extracted BSA as though it were a mod (minus the ESP of course, as it's already installed).

Edited January 6, 2015 by Striker879

[Murielkai]

When I ordered my laptop I wanted a 2 TB hard drive and I had no idea it would come raid 0. They had no other 2 TB option available. Frankly raid 0 is a terrible idea, IMO. If I had it to do over I would go with a 1 TB drive.

 

I extracted the whole bsa but it came up to be about 450 mb where the original mod was 750 mb. o.O

 

Perhaps some of the files were hidden? Or the bsa format drastically changes file size? But this is referring to Creature Diversity. As far as that goes I am talking with the modder now and tried installing a small patch with the textures extracted for the goblins/ogres/ghouls. It didn't seem to change anything so I assume it is the file pathing. I am just not ready atm to dive into nifscope and troubleshoot that deeply. It very well may be the way the modder intended it to look for all I know, he hasn't gotten back with me yet.

 

As for the other missing textures that fix themselves with saving/loading... I really have no clue. Each time I change the mod setup in my game I completely reinstall it since I keep the base game/dlc/essential mods (obse, obmm, boss, etc) in a zipped file backed up, its actually pretty fast. That way I know absolutely that problems are not from uninstalling/installing mods to many times. MMM had a rediculous amount of esp's and I have reduced that number by half and I'm going to run through again, not using the console, and see how it turns out.

[Striker879]

I've never had any issues that I could attribute to using console commands (well beyond the situations I'd get into when using a bunch of moveto player on a bunch of various bandits, marauders and other assorted bad guys that don't like each other to create little "wars" ... we do have little on the side mini-games). One of the people who were active helping out when I got started was adamant that console commands could screw up your game though.

 

NifSkope isn't anything like Blender for being tough to figure out, wasn't particularly difficult to install, and is an invaluable troubleshooting tool. Get it on your To Do list and move it near the top.

 

Not sure why the extracted BSA would be smaller ... BSA is a Bethsoft compressed file format similar to 7z or ZIP so it should be larger after extraction. Are you sure you Extracted All before clicking on anything in the list (wondering if you somehow excluded part of the BSA).