Can I give my data folder to a friend?

[SushiRush]

If I just make a copy of my data folder and give it to my friend, to put into his oblivion directory and overwrite, will he get all of my mods and stuff? He's not very tech savvy and I have all of the best mods cleanly installed and compatible.

He has OBMM installed, and I can make a text file of my load order so he can replicate it. (I'm sure the data folder doesn't keep my load order, right?) He can also toggle archive invalidated with OBMM.

[Genzel]

It is perfectly fine if all you are giving him are mods, and assuming he already has the game, you wouldn't even need to move over the vanilla .bsa's and such. It will be like if he just downloaded them himself, all he needs to do is activate the .esp's.

[LHammonds]

Yes, it can work.

 

1. Copy everything in the Data folder except the files that shipped with the game...specifically, don't include these gigantic files / folders (which he already has):

 

Data\Music\*.*

Data\Shader\*.*

Data\Video\*.*

Data\Oblivion - Meshes.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Misc.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Sounds.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Voices1.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Voices2.bsa

Data\Oblivion.esm

 

2. Export your OBMM load order to a file.

 

3. I assume you are copying it onto a USB stick or external hard drive...we certainly don't allow public distribution of compilations like that here at the Nexus.

 

4. Once he copies the contents to his Data folder, he then needs to activate the plugins either in Oblivion's Launcher or OBMM.

 

5. He then needs to import your load order via OBMM.

 

Done.

 

The only possible "gotcha" I can think of is if he does not a patched version of Oblivion (basically 1.0) which many mods won't even act like the plugin is activated unless you have version 1.1 or higher.

[Luminiari]

You may also need to copy the Oblivion.ini file over from your My Documents/My Games/Oblivion folder, if you're using something like DarkUI DarN.

[lonewolfkai]

Yes, it can work.

 

1. Copy everything in the Data folder except the files that shipped with the game...specifically, don't include these gigantic files / folders (which he already has):

 

Data\Music\*.*

Data\Shader\*.*

Data\Video\*.*

Data\Oblivion - Meshes.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Misc.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Sounds.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Voices1.bsa

Data\Oblivion - Voices2.bsa

Data\Oblivion.esm

 

2. Export your OBMM load order to a file.

 

3. I assume you are copying it onto a USB stick or external hard drive...we certainly don't allow public distribution of compilations like that here at the Nexus.

 

4. Once he copies the contents to his Data folder, he then needs to activate the plugins either in Oblivion's Launcher or OBMM.

 

5. He then needs to import your load order via OBMM.

 

Done.

 

The only possible "gotcha" I can think of is if he does not a patched version of Oblivion (basically 1.0) which many mods won't even act like the plugin is activated unless you have version 1.1 or higher.

whoa, wait a minute. There are some mods that add things in those top three folders. Don't you think it might be a good idea to copy those too?

[bben46]

DO NOT copy over the Oblivion.ini. This has nothing to do with copyright. The ini has information about the hardware of the computer that is running the game - If his computer is not EXACTLY the same as yours it will usually just crash. However, there is a small possibility of doing some actual damage to some part of the computer.