Glitched HGEC Body

[BananasFTW]

I know not many people are modding Oblivion these days but I have installed Colourwheels Sexy Oblivion OverHaul HGEC v8_0-36387-8-0 and High Rez Skin Textures for HGEC, the 2048x2048version), yet the faces and bodies do not change. I know I am pretty vague but I am not a very experienced modder, I think deleting the Colourwheels Overhaul might fix but I am quite skeptic of doing any deleting of major mods such as this. Any help is appreciated.

[glowplug]

If you are having problems after installing a mod then how you remove it depends on how you installed it.

If you manually installed them you need to open their archives (the files you download) and cross compare for the files you need to delete.

The problem with this is if they have replaced vanilla files or each other - each other in your case.

 

The best thing you can do is chalk it up to experience and do the following...

* delete the Oblivion folder and install new (Disk, Steam, whatever).

* back that up by Copy/Paste the Oblivion folder and rename as OblivionBackUp.

* install a mod manager such as Nexus Mod Manager.

* learn to use the mod manager as it will cleanly add/remove mods.

* learn about mod load order in regard to the mods you want.

 

...if any of the above goes pear shaped...

 

* Untick/Uninstall/Remove whatever mods using your preferred manager and close it.

* delete the Oblivion folder

* Copy/Paste/Rename OblivionBackUp to Oblivion

* Re-open and use your preferred manager to reinstall your mods.

[bben46]

Very few mods actually replace any vanilla files as that is a very poor modding practice. The way mods work is the vanilla files are overwritten each and every time that mod is started when you have it in your game. If you remove the files installed by the mod, then the vanilla file is still there and no longer being overwritten on every game launch. The problem is finding all of those files if it was installed manually.

 

Using a manager, usually, but not always if you installed the mod using the manager - then you can fully remove that mod using the SAME manager. OBMM was not quite as good at completely removing all of the files as later managers - Wrye bash is very good.

[DrakeTheDragon]

I'm a little bit surprised nobody's thinking of "Archive Invalidation" at this point first. I mean, texture replacements not taken up by the game although (supposedly) correctly installed? What's the 1st thing to check? Archive Invalidation. No matter if retail disc or Steam version, mod files installed manually or with one of the many different managers out there, without Archive Invalidation texture replacements will "never" work.

 

The game is meant to not pick up any loose texture files lying around in its folders unless specifically told so by Archive Invalidation means. A very old and outdated way to do it was to add each replacement file individually into an "Archive Invalidation.txt" file so the game knows which ones those are. But this one quickly became known to not be really reliable with an increasing number of replacements and in general was behaving rather strange at some point every time.

The next approach was mod managers automatically filling all loose files they find into said "Archive Invalidation.txt" file for you, but again this underlies the same known drawbacks the file-based approach itself underlies.

 

Then people came up with "BSA Alteration", the idea to unpack the texture BSA (archive file where every Vanilla texture file is stored and used from inside by the game unless told differently) completely, apply the replacements, and repack everything back into the BSA again, thus replacing the Vanilla files "inside" the BSA. This way the game didn't need to be told which loose files to use over which files inside the BSA anymore, as now all loose files also were "inside" the BSA themselves. But this approach has its share of drawbacks as well, it's unwise to mess with the core game files and easy to mess things up beyond repair, requiring a complete reinstall every time you need to get back some Vanilla files, unless you made backups of the entire BSA first, and last but not least, it's unnecessary to mess up the BSA files themselves only to get a few replacement textures to work.

 

And finally "BSA Redirection" was invented, the up-to-now flat-out superior approach of all of them. It works simply by placing an empty dummy BSA file into your folders and altering your "Oblivion.ini" so it's inside the "sArchiveList" entry at the exact place to make it the "only" BSA ever requiring Invalidation anymore, thus, as it's empty, eliminating the very "need" for Archive Invalidation itself entirely, once and for all. This is a "do once, fire and forget" solution and will only have to be re-applied, if for whatever reason the necessary entry got removed from the "Oblivion.ini" or the dummy BSA was deleted. This is "The" ultimate approach to Archive Invalidation nowadays and honestly the only one I will ever advice anybody else to use.

 

 

I agree, using mod managers is advisable, and it may become necessary to even reinstall the game at one point when things got already messed up too far. But let's not forget, without Archive Invalidation, even after following all the points and steps mentioned above to the tee, we'll still be back at square one, the replacements still won't be taken up by the game.

 

So, first of all, check to make sure you have your Archive Invalidation measures set up and applied correctly.

- Fire up the "Oblivion Mod Manager" (OBMM), go into its "Utilities" for "Archive Invalidation", select "BSA Redirection" and don't touch the other settings (BSA Redirection has no options), and apply it to your game. If you're on Steam, it's advisable to also click "Reset BSA timestamps" first before applying Archive Invalidation at this point, as else the file dates of the BSA files from Steam will be far more recent than any replacement files will ever be, and in Oblivion file date trumps everything, even Archive Invalidation measures!

- Or use "Wrye Bash"'s similar methods found on the "Replacers" tab (minus the BSA timestamps thing I think, might have to find something else for this then, if on Steam).

- Or use the "Nexus Mod Manager"'s (NMM) similar means to apply Archive Invalidation via BSA Redirection (should be default option, if I'm not mistaken).

- Or, last but not least, download and install the famous "mod" "ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!". They all do the same, just in different ways!

 

If "that" doesn't help, "then" it's time to check the installation of the mods you mentioned and if every file is where it should be. Following the above given points about using managers instead of installing manually and/or steps to reinstall the game comes in handy at this point. Especially when you're on Windows Vista/7/8 (10, too, I guess, but I don't know, yet) and have the game installed in its default location, somewhere inside "program files" (or any of the related names by other OS versions), the overly protected system folder not even admins can mess with without the OS permission, or any such similarly secure places on your hard drive.

 

The UAC makes it so no tool, software, app, or even "user"(!) is allowed to put files into folders found inside "program files", thus no matter how you install your mods, the files will all end up "not" inside the game's folders but inside some compatibility folder somewhere inside your "User Files" instead, while your Explorer will still try to convince you they'd be exactly where you put them, inside "program files", but the game or any other software will never find them in there! When using Oblivion from Steam of course this is true just as well, as the Steam folders are found inside the "program files" folder as well every time. This requires "moving" of the game, or Steam(!), out of there to somewhere else not as insanely protected by your OS in order to ever be able to make mods work.

 

 

So, yeah, when replacement files (especially textures) are concerned, always check Archive Invalidation first, especially when new to modding the game and perhaps not even having heard of it until now. Then check the mod's files and installations, via managers or otherwise.