Unusual problem

[Striker879]

Sorry if I sounded condescending ... it was late and that's no excuse. Once I'd gotten to bed I realized what you were asking about merging was correct and you had a grasp of the situation.

 

Please take my advice to heart about never extracting directly into your game folders (even if that's what the mod author suggests). Download to a temporary folder that you create (or permanent in my case ... I have tons of hard drive space). Extract into that same folder and then examine the extracted download, comparing folders and files to what you already have installed. Take note of any file overwrites and decide which version of any particular file you want to keep.

 

The UOP is just a mod. ESP files go in Oblivion\Data, the mesh and texture folders you have figured out now.

[bben46]

:thumbsup:

[alexmeowshall]

It's quite all right Striker! Everything went well, although I think I did mess up at the end of merging.. When I went to merge the UOP mesh/texture/sound folders with the mesh/texture/sound folders under Oblivion\Data, there were conflicting files with the same names and I moved and replaced the original files with the UOP files.. I have a feeling that has some effect on my game right now. Some items, for example foods, clothes/armour and signs in front of shops look potato quality. It's bothering me. Although, I'm pretty sure that was the case from the beginning of the game, with the exception of the Blades armour.

 

Side note, where do BSA files go? They are all next to the corresponding ESPs as I assume that is where they are meant to be. Haven't touched them

[Striker879]

Yes BSA files go in the Data folder, the very same as ESPs.

 

The UOP is meant to replace vanilla assets (meshes, textures, sounds etc) and those are all stored in the vanilla game BSA files (Oblivion - Meshes.bsa, Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa etc). If the first mod you install is the UOP then there won't be any overwrite warnings for files or folders because the vanilla game's files and folders are all hidden away in those BSAs. If you add the UOP after installing some mods then you will get at least a Windows warning about folders ... because there will already be folders in your Data folder named Meshes, Textures etc.

 

Normally those Windows warning can be safely ignored, as all you are doing is merging the contents of Meshes, Textures etc. and no actual file overwrites occur (i.e. Data\Meshes\Armor\fur\f\cuirass.nif will not be overwritten by Data\Meshes\Armor\JoesReallyCoolFurArmor\f\cuirass.nif even though the two file names are identical ... different paths). If you have installed replacer type mods there can be file overwrites though, and for that reason the recommended install order for the UOP is first,vanilla game patched to version 1.2.0416, then the UOP and any UOPs for your installed DLCs and then any other mods. The design intent of the UOP is to fix those things that need fixing, but if you have another fix in mind it will let it take precedence.

 

That's also the reason that the UOPs should be sorted high up your load order, generally not far below Oblivion.esm (or in the case of the DLCs not far below the DLC they patch). That way even the changes made in the ESPs for the UOP will be overridden by ESPs lower in the load list if they both change the same thing.

[alexmeowshall]

Unfortunately for me, that is the way I thought I had installed everything, until I figured out that when I unzipped my mods to my Data folder it created a folder titled after my mod filled with folders of meshes and textures, instead of dumping the mesh/texture folders there and merging them. So it turns out now, after I got everything in place, I ended up installing the mesh/texture/sound files for the UOPs at the end, after all of the other mods. So I have it figured out how to install everything completely correctly, the final question is if I should reinstall everything and have a fresh oblivion game to mod out in the right order? Agh, it won't take as long now because I have all of the zips for mods downloaded, but I'm not sure if that would fix my graphical issues or if it wouldn't be worth my time.

[Striker879]

I'd try re-installing all the other stuff after you get the UOP installed myself.

 

If it's simple replacer type mod conflict, where two replacer mods are trying to change the same thing, install order is King (i.e. the replacer mod that is installed last is the one the game uses and in part the UOP is a replacer type mod). The UOP shouldn't conflict with a regular mod that uses an ESP except in the case where the mod is actually more of a "hybrid" and has replacer type assets as well as new assets that require the ESP.

 

Some armor replacers are like that for instance. All of the armor from the vanilla game that it wants to replace can be done with a simple mesh/texture replacement, but some armor in the game has no female mesh, so the armor "replacer" mod comes with an ESP to create female versions of those armors.

[alexmeowshall]

Should I uninstall all of my mods and then reinstall in the proper order? Or should I start with a clean slate and redo it now that I understand it all? I feel like the latter would be easier and I don't really care about my save files so I'm leaning towards that option. What do you think?

[Striker879]

So you tried just re-installing all the other stuff and it didn't work?

 

The UOP is designed to be overwritten or overridden ... I'm pretty sure you don't need to uninstall and start out fresh, just carry on as though you'd just finished installing the UOP and now were going to install all your other stuff (one at a time and testing in between ... if you add one mod to a properly working game and it stops working troubleshooting is a trivial matter ... add ten or twenty mods all at once and then were do you start looking for the cause of your problems if/when some arise).

[alexmeowshall]

I have not tried re-installing all the other mods yet. My question was whether or not it would be more painful to uninstall and reinstall mods or start out with a clean slate and install mods correctly.. I have the steam version so I can just delete the local files (right?) and install the mods one at a time correctly. I have all of my mods downloaded and put in one file all ready so I feel it isn't too much of a hassle. It's also only a handful of mods other than the UOPs.

[Striker879]

I'm afraid I'm the type who's vote always seems to go with "whatever seems like the most difficult", even though in this case it looks like I'm in the other camp.

 

If you do decide to go the "uninstall the entire game and start out fresh" route keep in mind my advice about installing one thing at a time and test thoroughly in between. Yes it's a bit tedious (I just recently went through the whole process due to a hard drive failure). It also is such a simple matter to troubleshoot problems arising from the mod install process. There are plenty of "Help me" threads on here that stem from adding a whole bunch of mods at once and then the game won't even start (or has some anomaly).

 

If you're not doing the Full Monty uninstall/re-install of the game have a look at Bben46's wiki article Revert to vanilla data as a guide for getting your base game back to square one. Then you can start with your installing mods.