KingMudkip Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 Here's the background to my question: I have the Oblivion GOTY pack from Steam. Today I tried to load DraketheDragon's Anthro-Dragon WIP mod. It only worked half-way; while the textures and some of the altered geometry loaded correctly, the wings, tails, and some other added bits are suffering from "stretch-to-infinity" errors. This is nothing new to me; I've also had errors of this kind with the tail on the Argonian Vilja mod and with a feline custom race mod. (don't remember which one) I have posted a question to Drake asking for help, but while I was looking back through the comments thread for his mod, I noticed that another user that was using a copy of Oblivion bought on Steam had a very similar problem and was never able to fix it. He believed that the reason he couldn't get the altered skeleton.nif and skeletonbeast.nif files the mod uses to work was because Steam was blocking them somehow. Here was Drake's reply: Masterchief358, ...Yes, Steam Oblivion could easily prevent external files, like my skeletons, from being used, no matter what Archive Invalidation or anything else you use. If the critical dates of the BSA archives coming from Steam aren't dated back to somewhere around when Oblivion was released (they're now at a date far more recent than any mod's resource files), their contents will always take precedence over any and all external resources, basically rendering replacer-type mods non-functional. It'd be best to read up about this topic in the usual places for discussions and information about using mods with Oblivion from Steam, as I myself have little-to-no experience with this and can't be of much help with the details. So, is Steam to blame for this? And if so, how do I hit it on the head and get it to behave? If Drake was on the right track, can someone please tell me how to do what he's talking about? Any advice or links to adivce elsewhere would be greatly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 If that's true (and it very well may be) what if you opened Anthro-Dragon in the CS, make it active and then save (not changing anything). Should give it today's date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeyYou Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 If you are running Vista, or Win7, might also be a UAC issue...... Solution to that is to either reset permissions on the steam folder, (making sure it also applies to all subfolders.) or, uninstalling the lot, and then reinstalling someplace OTHER THAN the Program Files folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 If moving the Steam folder is the option you choose, here's a link on how to do it without re-installing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KingMudkip Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 Striker879: OK, I'll try that. HeyYou: Yeah, I'm running Win7, but I don't think it's a UAC issue. I've managed to keep those to a dull roar with other Steam games before. (Mass Effect, for example.) I'll try resetting the rights if Striker's suggestion fails, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 You shouldn't need to wrestle UAC to the ground once you get your Steam folder and games out of Program Files. That's the only folder that UAC defends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KingMudkip Posted April 26, 2011 Author Share Posted April 26, 2011 (edited) Okay, I ran the CS as an admin and opened/saved the .esp for the mod. Didn't help. I also reset the permissions, and that didn't work either. I might try moving Steam later today and see if that helps, but I'm not sure I want to do that. Edited April 26, 2011 by KingMudkip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkInMKUK Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 Once you get the game files moved, there are plenty of date-setting utilities which can be used on a file-by-file basis if it's a date adjustment problem, or use BOSS to set up mod loading order which should set all dates for recognised modules to a date before Drake's mod. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KingMudkip Posted April 26, 2011 Author Share Posted April 26, 2011 (edited) I'm already using BOSS, although Drake's mod isn't in the masterlist, but I'll see if I can find a date-setting utility and try that. EDIT: I can't seem to find a date-setting utility other than Wrye Bash, which I don't have or know how to use. Am I missing one? Edited April 26, 2011 by KingMudkip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Telyn Posted April 26, 2011 Share Posted April 26, 2011 You can timestamp in OBMM's archive invalidation tool, but you would want to move files out that you don't want to be affected. Btw, I am a Steam user, and I have used both a custom skeleton and a custom head with no infinities happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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