Some TESC Troubleshooting

[Drakeero]

Alright, I have gone searching for troubleshooting guides, pre-existing forum topics with the search feature, and even the TESCS wiki. I've been at this for awhile and I haven't found anything that helps me. Maybe I just haven't found some completely obvious trouble-shooting guide, or maybe my problems are more obscure. I'm not sure which. Either way....

 

I'm having that problem where changes I made using the editor do not show up in game when the .esp is loaded. The four changes I've made are a new spell, a new enchantment, a new ring, and small changes to the starting cell to add the new ring.

 

The spell and ring saved properly and will show up if I close and open the Construction Set again, however their FormID's are rather... unique and don't follow the pattern of any form ID i've seen so far. Obviously, trying to player.addspell or player.additem either of them does not work at all.

 

The changes I make to the map will simply not save to the .esp. Closing and opening the construction set will completely reset the cell.

 

I haven't seen a very detailed response to this problem, but with the various sketchy answers here and there people say this is a version problem. My Oblivion is up to date with Knights and SI [however it is the GOTY retail version] and I downloaded the latest version of the TESCS straight off of the Elder Scrolls website. I am running Win7 but have already reinstalled my Oblivion outside of the UAC zone. [reminds me of that corporation from Doom....]

 

Oh, and I almost forgot. I'm quite stumped by the .nif and .dds files to give the ring images. When I try to find one it simply takes me to the /meshes and /Data folder respectively. The only files that come close to those types look like modelling files for the PC and NPCs. When looking at other rings they have more complete paths to their files like Clothes\Ring\Ringsunfire.dds. According to the Explorer search feature, "ringsunfire" does not exist anywhere on my computer. The \Clothes folder is nowhere to be found either.

[slygothmog]

The only files that come close to those types look like modelling files for the PC and NPCs. When looking at other rings they have more complete paths to their files like Clothes\Ring\Ringsunfire.dds. According to the Explorer search feature, "ringsunfire" does not exist anywhere on my computer. The \Clothes folder is nowhere to be found either.

 

This is because they are locked away in the .bsa file.

If you open the OBMM and click on Utilities, then BSA browser, you can select the Oblivion meshes or textures in the new window that opens for you....you can then extract any to folders of your choice.

[Drakeero]

The only files that come close to those types look like modelling files for the PC and NPCs. When looking at other rings they have more complete paths to their files like Clothes\Ring\Ringsunfire.dds. According to the Explorer search feature, "ringsunfire" does not exist anywhere on my computer. The \Clothes folder is nowhere to be found either.

 

This is because they are locked away in the .bsa file.

If you open the OBMM and click on Utilities, then BSA browser, you can select the Oblivion meshes or textures in the new window that opens for you....you can then extract any to folders of your choice.

 

 

Where should I put the extracted files for Oblivion and the TESCS to find them? Do I need to put them back into a .bsa file for the game to use them or can I simply unpack all the .bsa files into their original folders and leave them like that? [is that even recommended/safe from a performance standpoint?]

[The_Vyper]

The problem with using Player.additem commands via console to add custom items is that you need the correct FormID, but the first two digits actually depend on load order. If you load your mod in the CS, the FormIDs of your custom items will begin with 01. If your plugin is the first to load after Oblivion.esm, then that is correct. If your mod loads second after Oblivion.esm, the first two digits of all FormIDs unique to your mod will be 02. One of the easiest ways to determine the correct digits is to load all of your mods in TES4Edit and look at the numbers in front of the mod name (as shown here).

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "changes to the map". Could you provide more details, like: What changes are you making? Are you using your mod to try and change a cell added by another mod? Interior or exterior cell? That sort of stuff.

 

Where should I put the extracted files for Oblivion and the TESCS to find them? Do I need to put them back into a .bsa file for the game to use them or can I simply unpack all the .bsa files into their original folders and leave them like that? [is that even recommended/safe from a performance standpoint?]

You can unpack them into your Oblivion\Data folder. Depending on your system, it may or may not have an effect on performance. When I did it, my load times increased drastically and my game lagged every time I went into a city. Other players have reported no such problems. I currently have my BSAs unpacked to a custom directory and only move the specific files I need to my Oblivion\Data directory. If you go that route, make sure you maintain the file structure (i.e. for a glass dagger, the structure would be Meshes\Weapons\Glass, with the dagger.nif naturally placed in the Glass folder.)

[slygothmog]

I do the same as The_Vyper and extract the mesh and texture/textures for an item into a custom folder first, and then place them in my Oblivion/Data folder after making the changes i wanted to them.

You do not need to re-pack them as a .bsa file, that I would only recommend doing if you have close to or over 1 gig of meshes and textures to place.....I extracted all the carpet, tapestry and painting texture files from Oblivion and SI .bsa files, re-textured them and placed them in their correct folders in my Oblivion/Data directory....over 500Meg and just fine without the need to re-pack as a .bsa file.

[Drakeero]

Thanks for the help so far. Things are coming together now. I did learn that a bit of my problems seem to be coming from not invalidating my archives with OBmm. Once I did that my new stuff showed up. As for the level changes they were simply. I was trying to add the new ring I was making to the cave portion of the very first section of the Imperial Prison you start in. Since that was beating me so thoroughly I just altered a closely related ring that existed already and player.additemed it in.

 

Now my problem is bright purple rain but that isn't a TESCS problem, I think that's because of Wrye Bash going crazy. I might have to go start a different thread for that.