Can I do this with two mods? (Simple goal, long explanation)

[miketheratguy]

Please bear with me- I've never tried to make / modify a plugin before, and the faqs go so far beyond what I'm trying to do that it's a little overwhelming. I tried searching for information about this kind of thing but it seems hard to specify. I'm just looking for someone to help me understand my modding errors. And I apologize if there was a specific CS forum- I didn't see one, nor do I know if this is CS related or mod related.

 

 

 

Here goes. I love the Glenvar Castle and Red Rose Manor mods for various companion reasons, and I wanted to combine them for my home (this is for my own personal enjoyment, NOT for reproducing). I've tried several things and had several failures and I'm confused as to what I'm doing wrong. My attempts:

 

1: Created a new entryway in the GC interior wall, to which I connected (not as neatly as I'd like but acceptable for my purposes) a copy of RRM's single-cell interior. I wanted to essentially make it so that in my game, I could walk into GC and stroll through this new opening onto the RRM floor, all in the same GC cell. When I tested it in-game, the GC portion was fine but the RRM portion was missing all of its walls and floors. It was just items and objects floating in space. I tried this several times and it seemed like even though it LOOKED correct in the CS, trying it out in the actual game took away the structure. Walking through GC worked like normal, but walking through the new opening made me drop into space.

 

2: So instead I tried simply editing the outer world. I copied the RRM exterior house and just dropped it wholesale right into GC's courtyard. I adjusted it to a good spot and height, made sure that the exterior doors linked to the interior ones (a check of the linked doors made it look like exactly what I was trying to do: RRM worked as normal; the exterior was just in a different location on the map). But this time when I tested what I did in-game, the manor wasn't where I dropped it in the GC courtyard but the surrounding trees, benches, and clutter that came with the manor WERE. Somehow I transported the surroundings of RRM but not the manor itself.

 

3: I did all this in a separate active file; a new one simply named "Mike". I did this because I thought that when messing with mods it's supposed to be better to create a new active file rather than modify an existing plugin. After these failures I thought that maybe I was wrong. So, making sure I had a backup of both of these mods, I decided to move Red Rose Manor as I did in step 2 and just make it the active file, basically just moving it to its new location and then saving. This time the CS crashed when I was in the middle of dragging the manor, and now when I try to work on the plugin again- even if I delete it from my data directory and install it fresh from my clean, original backup- all the meshes are gone from the manor's original location and I get a hundred construction set warnings about it.

 

I'm really confused. All I want is to continue using Glenvar Castle as my home, and simply be able to access the interior of Red Rose Manor from there (whether by an interior modification or dropping the exterior of RRM into Glenvar's courtyard. At this point I don't care). I just want it to work, and I have no idea what I keep doing wrong. Please help me understand the process a little better, if you have the patience (and politeness not to scream at my stupidity. We all have to start somewhere.) :)

[AlfredTetzlaff]

Hiho,

I think there is a rather simple solution to your Problem. For your .esp to work correctly it has to accept both Glenvar....esp and Rose...esp as a master. To accomplish that it would be easiest to install the CS Extender.

The CS Extender should take care of that automatically and much offers much more goodies :)

 

Hope this helps (being a CS noob myself :))

[Hickory]

First, Glenvar Castle has dirty edits (38 ITM, 712 UDR) and needs cleaning . Once you have a cleaned GlenvarCastle.esp download and install the Construction Set Extender. This will allow proper master records to be set for your mod. Now update and run BOSS, so that your load orders are correct (EM_RedRoseManor.esp before GlenvarCastle.esp). Fire up the CS Extender and in the data files check off Oblivion.esm, EM_RedRoseManor.esp and GlenvarCastle.esp. Do NOT set anything as active. Create your doorway afresh from one to the other and save your newly created mod with master dependencies.

[miketheratguy]

Wow, thanks for the information. Until now I'd never even heard of the CS Extender and now it's getting universal recommendation! I'll be adding this for sure.

 

At the moment (and what has had me near pulling my hair out for hours) I cannot get Red Rose Manor to even load up properly in the CS, so I feel as if I need to start there. As mentioned, I was in the process of just manually dragging the exterior of the abode to the new worldspace that I wanted it in, and before I even set it on the ground the CS crashed. Ever since then, I absolutely cannot get the mod back to normal. Every time I open it in the CS, there are a hundred errors about missing nifs when I go to the wilderness space that's supposed to contain the manor. When I close them all, I'm greeted with a huge pile of missing mesh icons. I've tried deleting and reinstalling the mod, moving all my mods to a new Data folder, and nothing is working. No matter what, even though I completely delete the mod, reinstalling it will NOT return it to its original state.

 

Can any of you tell me how to get around this? I'm happy to look into the CS Extender and start looking into the dirty mods of Glenvar, but I know that sooner or later I'll need to address the issue of the (apparently permanently altered Red Rose Manor that I (or at least the crashing CS) messed up. This happened once before- a year ago, with different mods- and it turned out my problem was that the game was installed in Porgram files. I'm still on Win7, but the game is just in C. Is there some hidden record I need to alter, or a method I can use to completely roll back the changes I made to RRM? This is exactly what made me not want to mess with the CS for an entire year; I seem unable to undo changes to a mod regardless of reinstalling it.

 

Thanks for your patience, and your answers thus far.

[Hickory]

Can any of you tell me how to get around this?

 

Red Rose Manor consists only of EM_RedRoseManor.bsa and EM_RedRoseManor.esp. Did you unpack the bsa into folders? If not, go into your \Oblivion\Data\ folder and make quite sure that EM_RedRoseManor.bsa and EM_RedRoseManor.esp are removed then re-download (don't skip that bit), then re-install.

[AlfredTetzlaff]

Hm, not sure what the Problem could be. Normally reinstalling (with overwriting everything) should revert any changes you've made.

What did you mean by moving your mods to a new DATA folder? Did you maybe mess up your c:\Oblivion\data folder structure with that?

Other then that, Iam pretty much lost.

 

Ah, Hickory is back too :)

Edited September 21, 2011 by AlfredTetzlaff

[miketheratguy]

I'll explain specifically because chances are what seemed normal to me might have been a huge error to someone who's more familiar with the CS and modding (again, I've used mods for years but only once tried to alter one with similar horrendous results).

 

The download I have of Red Rose Manor was from this site and came with the basic readme, a photo, a readme describing flower resources, and an esp and bsa. I simply unrar'd this package into my data folder. This is how I always install my mods, unless they're installed with the OBMM (I have zero experience with Bash).

 

Until I tried altering it, RMM worked exactly as advertised. I finished the quest, explored the house, and was pleased. At that time I had been using Glenvar Castle, which I spent much time completing and was also pleased with. My goal was merely to add the cozy, companion-friendly RMM interior with Glenvar somehow. My attempt at copying and piecing RMM's interior into GC's interior failed (the missing floor and walls), so I deleted that new esp. Then my attempt at copying and pasting the exterior of RMM into the courtyard of GC's exterior also failed (the RMM exterior didn't appear) so I deleted that new esp as well. Lastly, I tried dragging the RMM exterior (rather than copying and pasting) and this is when the CS crashed. Now the RMM exterior is apparently in limbo, which I think is because I had RMM set as the active file. I didn't know it would save upon crashing (as I'm almost certain I didn't save myself, as I hadn't even finished moving the house yet).

 

In reference to my data folder, I should have been more specific. This was just a last-ditch attempt at "erasing" some hidden data somewhere that was keeping my damage to RMM permanent. I renamed my data folder (to "dataold", created a new data folder, and copied only the vanilla Oblivion files plus RMM in an attempt to see if there was some conflict somewhere else. There wasn't- even as the only installed mod, RMM is still messed up.

 

As I wait to hear from you guys again, I'll try just downloading a fresh copy of RMM. Should that actually change anything though? Also, I downloaded and attempted to install the CSE but I'm confused as to how I'm supposed to do so. Run it through the script extender? I have the script extender installed already, but I don't understand what steps it's actually expecting me to take.

 

Lastly, just so I understand- until, at least, the functionality of the CSE- is what I tried to do completely impossible in the first place? Loading up two different mods and taking parts of one, dropping them into the worldspace of another, and saving as a new esp? At this point I don't know if my attempts were doomed from the start.

 

Forgive me if I sound like a complete idiot. I'm just new to what we're discussing and it's hard to find this specific information through searches.

[miketheratguy]

RRGGH. Deleted Red Rose from my data folder, re-downloaded, placed its contents back into the data folder, fired up the construction set, and still got a hundred missing meshes. :(

[Hickory]

In Windows you cannot simply rename a folder and expect things to work as normal, Folders for installed software, including games, are registered, and often monitored for changes, in the Windows' registry. If you have re-downloaded RMM and it (the CS) is still giving you lots of errors, then it sounds like Windows is still pointing to the original (now renamed) data folder... maybe! I just downloaded RMM (it is a 7zip archive, not a RAR, by the way) and installed it. I went in-game and completed the quest to acquire the place. I then noticed that Vilja was having trouble outside, so I checked the path grid which was a mess. To get to the point, I loaded RMM into the CS and made my own path grid fix. No errors, no missing meshes, nothing. So the issue, as I suspected, is not with RMM itself, but with something that you have or have not done.

 

Regarding the CSE, to load it up you make an OBSE shortcut that adds the '-editor' command line option, like so (install folder is mine):

C:\Games\Oblivion\obse_loader.exe -editor

 

Edit: I thought that you simply wanted a doorway from one to the other, so why are you dragging and dropping exteriors between the two?

[evenstargw]

I think this is the cause of your problem:

 

Files inside a BSA archive are not loaded unless an esp with the same name is activated. By moving RRM into the other esp and disabling its original esp, you made the BSA inaccessible. Two solutions I can think of:

-make the connecting cell in a new esp, and set both GC and RMM as masters to the new esp. CSE will do that for you, or you can use a tool like Wrye bash to do it (simplest approach in case either mod gets updated)

-unpacking the BSA archives (you'll have to copy all the forms (statics for the house etc.) that you use into the other mod, or the game will have no clue what these new items you placed are, because they come from a different mod, which you would have deactivated at that point. Lots more work.

 

Edit - also, as Hickory said, renaming the data folder was probably not the best approach. If you wanted to do that, you'd probably have to reinstall oblivion afterwards to get it to work properly again.

Edited September 21, 2011 by evenstargw