MO, OBSE and Oblivion

[LordDratik]

I have looked up countless guides, have seen a lot of videos and I still cannot get mod organizer, OBSE and Oblivion to play together (I am using the Steam version).

 

I found this extremely helpful and new video series, but I have done everything in the video and I still cannot get it to work:

 

 

Basically, I have done the workaround for MO, changed the OBSE_Loader and I am still having issues. If I run Oblivion from Steam, mods that I installed via MO are not in game (these don't have to be OBSE mods, any mod doesn't show up).

 

If I use MO and I use OBSE tester, the test fails and it says that OBSE is not working yet my mods that I have installed showed up (I have been testing it with alternate start). If I just run it from steam (I manually installed OBSE tester) then OBSE tester passes with flying colors). I seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle here and I just cannot figure it out. In the above video series that user makes it so easy, but what he is doing just isn't working for me.

 

Can someone please help?!

[Surilindur]

Uhh.... interesting. Good to see someone actually made a video for the thing. I think it had all the relevant parts right. Some points here, though. Tthe followind needs not to be copied from the OBSE download to your game folder (you can copy them, but they do not need to be copied and will not be used for anything): "src" folder (contains the OBSE source code), OBSE command documentation html (only useful if you make mods that use OBSE), all text files (unless you want them to be there for you to read).

 

Also, not all mods might be able to install that easily, be prepared to do manual labour to restructure mods if you want to use Mod Organizer to install them (this is why people recommend using OBMM and Wrye Bash for Oblivion). And for an alternate start, there is also Alternative Beginnings mod by Arthmoor in case you are interested.

 

For the OBSE test part: you can also test the OBSE working part this way (in case you want to avoid installing some additional tester mod): With Alternative Beginnings, choose to start as a houseowner in Chorrol. Go out of the house and find a Chorrol Guard. Open the console, select the guard and type "IsEssential" then press enter, it should return "IsEssential >> 0.00" or something. Type in "SetRefEssential 1" and press enter, if it throws and error, OBSE is not working. If it prints no errors, type in "IsEssential" again, it should not return "IsEssential >> 1.00" or something, which means OBSE is definitely working. Then exit the game without saving.

 

But then again, the tester might be more handy. And remember to check the esp files on the right hand side panel in MO. Also try clicking the "Back-date BSAs" button in the workarounds menu of MO, that should make all your replacer mods (UI, textures, meshes, etc.) work, as the Steam version bsa archives have too recent file dates and are therefore sort of overwriting your replacers. You can also try checking the "Automatic Archive Invalidation" box in your profiles list window of MO and maybe the "Let MO manage archives" in your archives tab.

 

That thing with replacing the OBSE stuff seems odd. Did you try with the normal ones? The ones you can download from http://obse.silverlock.org/ - the "Download" and "Latest loader" things? Did you try them before replacing the files you did?

 

Edit: Oops. Sorry. I hope that does not sound too obvious or too "for dummies version". My communication skills just evidently are not that great. For example since you said you did what there was in the video, I assumed you also copied the readmes and source code of OBSE. :blush:

Edited February 26, 2016 by Contrathetix

[LordDratik]

Well the reason you need to replace the OBSE loader is because that is the workaround to get OBSE to work with Steam- this is the only workaround. I have heard people say it is much easier to mod the physical version of Oblivion as opposed the the Steam version, but the Steam version is all that I have.

 

The main issue that I am having is that MO does not recognize OBSE which means it will not load it- I need to figure out how it will recognize OBSE and as of right now I have not figured it out. I am not going to be modding Oblivion to the extent that I modded Skyrim (probably use about half of the amount of mods) and most of the mods I will be using will be texture replacers. Wrye Bash is a very powerful and complicated tool, but I am probably going to be running less then 80 mods and Wrye Bash really should only be used if you are going to be doing some serious modding i.e. 200+ mods which I think is pretty crazy.

 

Also, the other issue that I am having is that according to this guide, if I do the MO workaround, if I run Oblivion from Steam then MO will inject the mods into my game and this is not happening. If I can figure out how to solve these two problems then I can mod happy. If I can't then I might have to use something besides MO even though MO is one of the best modding tools around.

[Surilindur]

Okay. Well I myself have MO working with Steam version of the game just now, and I never replaced any files as was done in the tutorial. So that is why I said it was a bit odd. I just used the files in the main download of OBSE 0021 from their home page, and also replaced the obse_loader.exe with the new one available for download just below the main package. And it works. I mean the two downloads here (not the Nexus page, I have no idea what there is on the Nexus page): http://obse.silverlock.org/

 

When you set your load mechanism to Script Extender, does MO successfully copy its hook dll to your ...steamapps\common\Oblivion\Data\OBSE\Plugins folder along with a text file (mo_path.txt)? If that part works, the problem is elsewhere. So you need to have the hook.dll and mo_path.txt in your OBSE plugins folder. That should do it. Check the mo_path.txt to make sure it actually points to the right place, just to be sure.

 

If that part is right, and MO still refuses to work when you launch Oblivion from Steam, try overwriting all the OBSE files with the ones you got from the 0021 download from the official page (plus the updated loader exe from the same page just to make sure). Then try again. Maybe it works. Did you even check if it worked with the latest files before trying that wonky workaround via replacing some files? Just curious.

 

And as for Wrye Bash, that one will definitely be a necessity. Even if you only ran two mods - for example the minimal scenario: Unofficial Oblivion Patch + Oblivion Character Overhaul 2. This means you need Wrye Bash, for the Bashed Patch feature, or you can only have either NPC bugfixes or pretty faces, not both. But if you use Wrye Bash to make the Bashed Patch, you can have both. And much more. If you add in all the other unofficial patches (SI + small DLC) and just a few other mods, chances are you will desperately need a Bashed Patch (I mean your game does). The most common scenario is a mesh replacer with an .esp file overwriting bugfixes from the unofficial patches because the last plugin to modify a record wins. But as the unofficial patches have the proper Bash Tags set on them, the bugfixes will be combined with the visual changes by Wrye Bash and the outcome stored in your Bashed Patch, this happens when you rebuild the patch. :smile:

 

Even if you never used Wrye Bash for installing mods, you will probably use it for one of the following: fixing the a-bomb bug (animations getting slo-mo after playing for about 100 hours i think), cleaning savegame bloat (to some extent), load order management (WB colour-codes the plugins so you know when a master is either missing or misplaced) and the Bashed Patch. If you use MO, remember to right-click on the column titles in the mods tab and make sure "lock load order" is unticked. You did use Bashed Patch with Skyrim, too, right? To merge leveled list changes? Or did you use Requiem and its Reqtificator instead (like me, I just love Requiem)? If you used Reqtificator or something else SkyProc-based, the Bashed Patch is a ton easier to rebuild, just takes a few clicks and such. No need to install Java RE, either. :dance:

 

OBMM is probably something you will not need unless you want to play around with OMOD files (like FOMOD files people seem to be using with Skyrim mods). I think MO might have support for OMODs, too, so chances are you will never ever need OBMM for anything if you use Mod Organizer.

 

And yes, MO definitely is the best tool around. Just my purely subjective opinion, people can have different tastes. I use MO for both Oblivion and Skyrim. But it does not have all the features, as you have probably noticed. At least Wrye Bash, TES4LODGen, TES4Edit and such are still needed. Modding Oblivion is not exactly like modding Skyrim. There are some differences. But the best part is that the tools, such as the Bashed Patch, are much more comprehensive than with Skyrim. :happy:

 

Edit: Not hood dll... hook dll. Either the buttons keep moving or I just cannot type. Probably the latter. :facepalm:

Edited February 26, 2016 by Contrathetix

[LordDratik]

So I downloaded OBSE from the Silverlock link and I even used the latest loader and it is still not working for me in MO, but do I run the game from MO or do I run the game from Steam? If I run the game from Steam MO is not injecting the mods and the hook.dll and the mo_path.text files are in the path that you listed. If I run the game from MO, OBSE does not work. I will worry about the Wrye Bash stuff later because if I can't get this to work there isn't much of a point to continue on.

 

Also I know bashed patches are important, but I run Skyrim with about 130 mods and I have never used a bashed patch because all of the mods work without needing one. (My game runs incredibly stable and I rarely have crashes) If you use MO with LOOT and ENboost you are usually good to go. From my understanding and please correct me if I am wrong, but the main reason why people use Wrye Bash is to make two mods that are not usually compatible with each other compatible. In my mod setups I usually try not to mess with stuff like that I and I try to "enhance" my game by keeping it as close to Vanilla as possible. People run into a lot of problems when trying to mix big overhauls together and for me I just don't think I use enough overhauls to justify using Wrye Bash, but I could be wrong :cool:

 

Anyways yeah it is weird why it is not working and I feel stumped :sad:

[Surilindur]

Do any mods show up in the game? At all? Like the alternate start mod you are using? This is indeed odd. And since it works for me, it is pretty difficult to try and think of things that could case it not to work. You do use the 1.3.11 version of MO, right? I have not yet tested the 2.0.4 Alpha myself (the one at GitHub), so if you use that one, try using the one at Skyrim Nexus instead.

 

Also, which OS do you have? I use Windows 7 myself, and I have not yet tested if everything works all right with Win 10 (I have Win 10 in a separate partition and I have not yet installed anything on it, it is there just so I can have the OS for free in case I one day need to change over to it). It did seem to work with Win 10 on the video, though. Odd.

 

Just some additional thoughts here (straigth from S.T.E.P. wiki http://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Mod_Organizer):

• could your antivirus interfere with MO's files?
• you do have .NET Framework 4 installed (latest one is 4.6.1 at the moment)?
• are you sure your mods have the right folder structure?
• are you sure you activated the mods, both on the left and right panels?

And the thing with Bashed Patch and Skyrim is that not using one will not cause crashes. The Skyrim version of it mostly seems to handle leveled lists and such, so you can definitely have a stable game without using one, but if multiple mods edit the same leveled lists, there might be some issues with not all new content appearing in the game via leveled lists, for example. Using ENBoost should usually be pretty automatic for anyone who plays the game on PC. I sort my mods manually so I do not use LOOT, but from what I hear, it is definitely handy. But then again, I always try to keep my esm/esp count somewhere around 120 so sorting them manually works.

 

This is just odd. If there is one thing one can count on, it is the fact that technology never fails to... well... fail. :wacko:

 

Edit: Okay. So the 2.0.4 Alpha does not work as straighforward as it could, at least not with Oblivion. Having tested it a bit, I cannot seem to get it working. So if you use that one, try the 1.3.11 version from Skyrim Nexus instead. The Alpha is indeed a pre-release version, mostly intended so people can test it and report bugs, but since I do not have the time for that, I will stick with 1.3.11 for now. Maybe you should, too. Unless you already do, that is.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Contrathetix

[LordDratik]

Yeah everything looks good. I think there is an issue with Oblivion itself, the first time I installed it and ran it, it tried to test my hardware. I have uninstalled it and installed it several times after and it has never tested my hardware again. I must not be fully removing it when I uninstall it and I think that could be where the issues are. The only thing I know to do is to completely uninstall it and install everything else again. For some reason I do not think Steam is doing a good job of uninstalling it, but that could be just me.

[LordDratik]

Yeah I just cannot get it to work, I have everything that I need and my anti-virus definitely isn't blocking anything. It just does not work so I have no idea how to do it. Again if I run it from Steam, Mod organizer is not injecting the mods into my game. I used the workaround and those two files are there, but still nothing is happening. I am running Windows 10 and I am using MO version 1.3.... I have no idea.

[Surilindur]

The thing with Oblivion nos testing your hardware might be related to you already having an ini file in your ...Users\Username\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion folder (or somewhere around there). If you delete the ini, the launcher will copy it there again and also modify it a bit according to your choices in the options menu of the launcher. Do note that the ini in that specific place does not affect your MO installation. Your MO profile's ini is located in your Mod Organizer folder in the ...profiles\ProfileName folder. When MO injects its stuff to the game, the ini of your MO profile is used instead of the one in your My Documents folder. The one in your My Documents folder is only checked by the launcher. MO does its trick when you launch the actual game. That is why no mod files will ever be visible in the launcher.

 

Does, for example, TES4Edit work when launched from within MO? If TES4Edit shows all the mods you have installed using MO, when you launch TES4Edit from inside MO, you have installed the mods correctly. That might be handy to check? Maybe... ? Unless, of course, it makes no sense and the issue really is MO not being launched when you launch the game.

 

I need to check if I could remember something that could be of help. There are some university assignments I need to finish, so I will probably have the time only later today. And it is definitely starting to close the point of me having no idea, either. Unless, of course, you have Oblivion installed inside your Program Files directory and User Account Control - or whatever Win 10 might have that does the same thing - is preventing MO from doing its thing.

Edited February 28, 2016 by Contrathetix

[RaidenX9901]

run the game through mo by selecting <edit> in the drop down . exe menu in mo,and add in the obse_loader.exe to the list by clicking the + new .exe in the ui window that pops up, under the binary field hit browse and select the loader from your game directory, it must have already been copied to your game directory prior to doing so, title it OBSE in the .exe edit new section where you'll see all your other .exe files in that are already in your game directory, once you do all that click ok then hit the drop down menu select OBSE and hit run, your game will be running through mo and obse a the same time.