Does Anyone Else Think COBL is Designed Wrong?

[David Brasher]

In principal, I really like the idea of COBL. If everyone had something like that and used it, then the game world could be a much richer place. It would be like the way Shivering Isles adds so many new creatures, clothing items, plants, architectural tiles and other things to the game so that modders can use them in mods.

 

But COBL is very complicated, ornate, and frivolous. It scares people away and has not become nearly as popular as it could have been. I think most people shy away from it, because you don't see a lot of mods dependent upon it.

 

In my opinion, COBL should be an .esm and nothing else. It should be a vast pool of resources for other mods to draw on. But it includes a ton of .esps. You get all these on-screen messages about scripts having problems and squabbling with each other. Scripts? There should not be any scripts! Not a single one! And they certainly shouldn't be ruining my immersion and spamming my screen with unintelligible nonsense.

 

The leveled lists are all fouled up, and I would imagine they conflict badly with popular overhaul mods whose function is changing leveled lists. Here is an example: I started a new character, and down in the caves or sewers or someplace, I found one of the most powerful enchanted daedric longswords in vanilla Oblivion. This just totally totally ruined game balance! I don't want a near god-item when I am level 1. You can bet I removed that .esp real fast.

 

And then there is Salmo the Baker. This is a nice idea, because Bethesda left this really undeveloped and the poor guy is not even a merchant. But COBL is supposed to be a resource. Not a plug-in. If you fix up a bakers shop, that is a mod, not a baseline resource that every single gamer will want. What if someone else wants to mod the baker's shop differently?

 

COBL is also too big for some people to easily download. If you are going to make a huge mod that everyone needs, you should make it so they can all get it. It should be broken into smaller chunks so that people who live in small towns or don't have excellent Internet connections can download the pieces one by one and reassemble the file.

 

So I think COBL could have been wildly successful, but I think it has fallen short of that mark.

 

I have hopes that when a similar resource is assembled for Skyrim, it will be done the right way, and will be be so good and so popular that everyone will use it as a matter of course.

[LHammonds]

I don't know the specifics on COBL (I don't use it) but a vast resource pool as a single ESM would be excellent. When I created Lamps of Oblivion, I did so using the ESM / ESP method in case anyone else would want to add the lamps in their own personal plugins or upload mods that pull from it.

 

ESM resources need to be primarily just assets like models, textures, sounds ingame items such as pre-fab caves, dungeons, houses, etc. Scripts could also be thrown into the mix so they could be called upon by plugins...such as companion scripts.

 

As long as the ESM is designed well from the beginning, it could keep growing over time and not render plugins obsolete/incompatible that used earlier versions as new releases are made.

 

Think of it like lego blocks where you continually lay down a foundation and build upon it...and never going back to "modify" an older piece which may break plugins that depended upon that piece.

 

And since you brought this up, why not start a collection of "resources" to be used for Skyrim?

 

LHammonds

[lonewolfkai]

I personally don't use COBL either. Something about some conflictions with some of the mods I run, although I can't remember specifics.

[chaospearl]

Someone will be along shortly to correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, you don't have to use all the esp's that come with COBL in order to use the main esm resource file that most COBL-dependent mods need. COBL does have a whole ton of what I would define as "mods" that come packaged with it -- esp files that change bits of the game -- but they aren't required. You can choose to use them if you want those changes, or ignore them if you just want the resources in the esm because you're running some other mod that requires those resources.

 

Actually I thought the whole reason for the COBL Glue esp was precisely what you've stated -- so that you could use the COBL esm if you wanted its resources but not have it actually changed the game unless you decided to activate the Glue esp. Glue esp is what adds all the stuff from the esm into the game. If you don't use that esp, you can have COBL esm activated but you still won't see anything new or any changes. That's the whole point. Again, if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will point this out, but I don't think I am.

 

Maybe it could be explained a bit better in the description, or maybe the mod could be packaged so that if you only wanted the esm resources, you could download just one file with that. All the esps could be something separate and made clear that they're optional if you think you'd like those particular mods.

 

You definitely don't need to use Salmo in order to have COBL installed. He can be a bit buggy for an unknown reason the mod authors haven't been able to track down, so plenty of people don't install that part at all.

[wetblanket]

37Mb is hardly unmanageable on dial-up. The race resource package is admittedly large but it's only needed for Cobl races.

 

As Chaospearl points out, if you only wish to use Cobl as a resource for other mods then only the esm need be installed. What's wrong with including optional mods? Anyone who wants to use some other Salmo mod, can still use Cobl, just don't install the Cobl version!

 

Perhaps the docs could be better, although I understood them well enough.

[Maigrets]

As Chaospearl and wetblanket point out COBL is modular and you only use the parts you want to use or none at all if it doesn't suit you.

 

From your description I would have thought it was another mod you were talking about. I've been using COBL (but not the races or Salmo options) with FCOM and a ton of other mods for ages and have never had script problems and certainly no message spam.

I only really know it's active when I start finding items it adds, or if I use the console for any reason, ie showracemenu, and it shows the OBSE version and COBL as active. COBL works seamlessly in the background if you only add what you need, so there shouldn't be any issues at all really.

 

Since you found a Deadric sword at level one it sounds like something else you have installed is interfering with leveled lists or you don't have a Bashed Patch.

 

But COBL is very complicated, ornate, and frivolous. It scares people away and has not become nearly as popular as it could have been. I think most people shy away from it, because you don't see a lot of mods dependent upon it.

 

Maybe not, and most of those are house mods anyway, but I'd bet you'd see COBL in a lot of people's load order just for the things it adds to the world itself. Some of it is very subtle and some is more obvious, like ingredients and books, but if you didn't know they seem like they were part of the vanilla game. Then there's The Luggage, but I always forget to use it because I never buy vanilla houses and don't use many others, but the ones I do have are COBL enabled.

[Megatarius]

I just use it for the handy options menu. I have Cobl compatible FCOM, it's nice to adjust things like lock bashing and time scale without remembering console commands.

 

But stuff like the dinner plate is silly.

[NinjaGoddessAyra]

From what I've seen of COBL, I don't like it either. It's really not that great and certainly not what its cracked out to be.

 

I understand the documentation could be a bit better explained but I was able to install it just fine. As far as being a modder's rescourse goes, it is really good, it has all sorts of items I can use and whatnot, but theres a lot of which I don't like either.

 

If I want to use some plugins with it or activate an esp with it, it says I need to merge with the bashed patch, I don't know how to do any of that (and I know I probably didn't even get the term right, someone can correct me I'm sure.) I'm okay with Wrye Bash, I understand how to use the snapshot and duplicate feature, as well as the esmify and espify commands, but as far as merging goes I've never been good with that.

 

I also don't like how the only thing I've seen it actually do was in the Frostcrag Reborn esp, where there was shelves of alchemy potions and ingrediants and you could store them or take them out. I mean, it looks nice, seeing alll the bottles stacked neatly on shelves, but I think its dumb how you can go and active a shelf and it gives you a whole list of options you could do. Store ingrediants, take ingrediants, etc. But everything it allows me to do I could easily do by just storing items in an ordinary chest, so as far as I'm concerned, it just looks neat, but thats really all it does.

 

If I'm wrong or I'm missing something, please correct me, as I've only started using COBL the other day anyhow, so there could be a lot of things I've missed.

[kadath]

Got to admit, I too was a bit scared away from COBL. I have no troubles at messing - a lot - with bashed patches and the like, I'm always close to the 255 active mods limit so you can imagine how many compatibility issues I have to struggle with daily, and after seeing how quite a lot of the house mods I like are COBL compliant I was intrigued at the very least. Once I've seen it, however, it just looked too much, trying to do and offer too many things - while I was mildly interested in just a bunch - to really be worth the effort.

It happens to me with several other very popular mods, though: I never really got in OOO, for instance (let alone FCOM): too many different things for my tastes, I feel much more at ease with the good 'ol Fran's overhaul which - while it adds a lot to the game - it keeps itself inside very definite boundaries.