Oblivion Character Overhaul V2 Not Taking Effect

[GamerGuySince95]

I decided to try my first modded playthrough of oblivion (recently finished my first vanilla playthrough) and started downloading and installing the mods I wanted via OBMM. I've got all to work, except OCO. I did read the description for the mod, and I know it says to install via NMM, but I had extensive issues with many of the mods I'm currently using in NMM. That being said, I did download blockhead as well, so I know that's not the issue. When I start the game, the vanilla faces still appear. What did I miss?

 

EDIT: The mod did work perfectly when I installed it via NMM, so I know it's got to be an installation error.

Also, on the topic of OCO, is there any mod/method to remove the neck seams?

 

Disclaimer: I'm fairly novice when it comes to modding. Please keep that in mind when responding (mind you, I'll gladly take any opportunity to learn something new)

 

Thanks!

Edited February 16, 2015 by GamerGuySince95

[IkeCoast]

Hey, GamerGuy!

 

"Install using NMM" is just a recommendation made by Nuska. You could have installed OCO v2 manually, or using OBMM (provided that you know how to create an omod installer from a downloaded package).

 

Now, to your issue: did you run Archive Invalidation?

 

Also, I assume when you say "did download Blockhead as well", you mean "I did download OBSE and Blockhead as well".

 

Cheers!

[LFact]

If it is installed well with NMM, you can go on. Otherwise, it is recommended to use Oblivion Mod Manager and/or Wrye Bash to install and manage your mods.

 

- OCO v2 requires OBSE plugin called 'Blockhead' to assign different head meshes to each gender(of same race), for Oblivion engine allows only one head mesh per race.

-> That means you have to install OBSE and Blockhead. Since both are not a mod at all, they should not be installed via any of mod managers. You must manually install them at right place.

-> OBSE executable and dll files should go to the directory which you installed the game. All OBSE plugins should go under \(Your Oblivion installed)\Data\OBSE\Plugins.

- Make sure OBSE works after 'install' it. If your game is installed from DVD, you have to run the game via obse_loader.exe. If you downloaded the game from Steam, there's guide for launching the game with OBSE. If the game is not a DVD copy, nor from Steam, forget about OBSE and mods require it.

 

- For the annoying neck seam, there's no way to eliminate it unless someone makes better EGT file. OFF is worth to check if you want such.

Edited February 16, 2015 by LFact

[GamerGuySince95]

 

 

 

 

Now, to your issue: did you run Archive Invalidation?

 

Also, I assume when you say "did download Blockhead as well", you mean "I did download OBSE and Blockhead as well".

 

Cheers!

 

No, I haven't even the faintest idea what an archive invalidation is. However, your second guess is correct and I have downloaded both OBSE and Blockhead.

Although...

 

-> That means you have to install OBSE and Blockhead. Since both are not a mod at all, they should not be installed via any of mod managers. You must manually install them at right place.

-> OBSE executable and dll files should go to the directory which you installed the game. All OBSE plugins should go under \(Your Oblivion installed)\Data\OBSE\Plugins.

This was not something I was aware of (with blockhead at least, I knew that OBSE was its own thing). I'll make this change and see if that fixes the issue, thank you.

 

Also...

 

 

You could have installed OCO v2 manually, or using OBMM (provided that you know how to create an omod installer from a downloaded package).

I'm not sure I understand what this means, and I feel like I'm missing something fairly important within that sentence. Can you explain?

[Striker879]

Archive Invalidation:

The vanilla game comes with almost all of it's assets (meshes, textures etc.) inside compressed archives and decompresses and uses them as needed. By default if it needs something to display on the screen it will grab the asset from the BSA files (e.g. the texture for the female fur cuirass is inside Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa). So when a mod wants to change the colour of that female fur cuirass to pale almost white it has to use an ESP to direct the game to make that simple change. Archive Invalidation was developed to give a method to get the game to use replacement assets without an ESP (the default game is limited to 255 ESPs) if the change is a simple replacement like the female fur cuirass example.

 

There have been a few different methods tried over the years. The most recent, problem free and successful is BSA Redirection.

 

Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM):

Not the most recent manager, and certainly not as up to date as some others (Wrye Bash is Oblivion's premier manager/swiss army knife). One of the functions it has to offer (as well as Wrye Bash) is archive invalidation. Something that OBMM can take care of that WB can't is resetting the dates on the vanilla game BSA archives (Steam in all of their infinite wisdom changed the dates on all of the vanilla game BSA files, thus breaking archive invalidation for all of the users).

 

OBMM works reasonably well as an Oblivion mod installer ... not as sophisticated as WB, but certainly better than Nexus Mod Manager (NMM) for Oblivion. Most mods that don't come packaged specifically for WB can be installed with OBMM, in fact many if not most older mods come packaged in an OBMM friendly format, often with a folder named "omod conversion data" that contains files that help OBMM install the mod. Some mods come in a compressed format that is unique and specific for OBMM ... files with the OMOD file extension are designed to be installed with OBMM and often include scripts that walk you through selecting the various options provided in the mod.

 

Pretty well any mod that isn't specifically designed for WB installation can be converted to an OMOD and installed using OBMM. The best way to learn how is using OBMM Help menu, and then asking here about anything that is unclear.

[IkeCoast]

Striker explained what Archive Invalidation is, but I can't find in his TL;DR explanation how to do it, so here we go:

 

Using OBMM, locate in the right buttons panel the one labeled "Utilities", click it and from the options that appear, select "Archive Invalidation".

 

A new window will popup, Here, just make sure the "BSA Redirection" is selected. If so, do not change anything else. If you're under Steam, locate and click the "Reset BSA Timestamps". Nothing will happen. Now in the lower right corner locate and click the button labeled "Update Now". A message telling you "Updated!" appears. Close it and close the Archive Invalidation window. Done.

 

Theoretically, you only need to do it once and forget about that, but sometimes re-running Archive Invalidation can fix some issues after insatlling any mod.

 

Cheers!

[Striker879]

Changed my ninja hat for my "share the wealth" hat I guess.

 

Realized last night it wasn't my typical post on the subject, but I guess all was well (I did wake up once again this morning ... at least I think I'm awake, but in any case if not I'm living my usual dream).

[GamerGuySince95]

So to this point, I still haven't been able to get OCO to work. I've done all of the aforementioned things: Ran archive invalidation, install blockhead manually to my plugins folder. OBSE is installed properly, all that good stuff. I'm not sure what I'm missing here.

 

EDIT: I finally figured out the issue, for some reason OBMM wasn't recognizing and installing the ESP that comes with OCO. However, now My characters have "Install blockhead" plastered all over their faces, which while it gave me a big lol, means I've installed blockhead incorrectly. I manually installed it into the plugins folder, so I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing wrong there.

Edited February 19, 2015 by GamerGuySince95

[IkeCoast]

Hey, GamerGuy!

 

First, what I meant with "you could have installed OCO with OBMM provided that you knew how to create an omod installer from a downloaded package" was exactly that: you can take OCO's package, and use the Create Omod utility from OBMM to turn this package into an omod installer file.

 

However, let's try again to fix your issue.

 

OBSE requires DirectX 9.0c to function. Newer versions of DirectX will render OBSE unusable.

 

Secondly, the installation instructions provided in the Description Page are outdated. You need to put on your Oblivion installation folder the same files as for the disc version, including the omitted obse_loader.exe, and enable the Steam Overlay in game. Start Oblivion normally using the Steam launcher as usual, do not use the obse_loader.exe nor the obse_steam_loader.dll.

 

If this fails, then you are affected by a bug in Steam that forces some users to use the newest version of OBSE with an older version of the obse_loader.exe. I will provide you the link for the "outdated" version, but first check what I suggest in this post.

 

Cheers!

[GamerGuySince95]

I'm not sure if you saw that last edit I did before you responded, so I'll reply again. I know my OBSE is working fine however, as when I originally installed OCO via NMM it ran seamlessly.