Invisible/missing grass?

[Connectamabob]

Hi all. I'm new. I just got the Deluxe version of Oblivion off Steam (from the sale when Skyrim came out), the one with Shivering Isles and all the other official expansions bundled in. I've noticed a weird problem: all the grass models in the game are invisible. I can see a kind of translucent silhouette of the grass when there's water behind it (like a low angle from a lake shore hillside), but otherwise it's like they aren't there at all. No grasses visible, anywhere.

 

It's not a mod issue, as I've had the problem from day one even with vanilla. I've since installed the Q3 Redimized texture replacement pack, the Better Landscapes compilation pack, and the Unofficial Oblivion Patch. All made large noticeable differences in a lot of ways, but none fixed the grass.

 

I redownloaded, reinstalled, and defragged the game, but no joy. Checked the INI file to make sure grass was turned on, and it was.

 

It doesn't break the game, but it is a little annoying. I searched Google and Youtube and the forums here, but could only find one reference to someone else having the same problem, and no solutions. Any help troubleshooting would be welcome, as I'm a total Oblivion noob.

 

Specs:

 

Oblivion version 1.2.0416 ("Game of the Year Edition Deluxe" on Steam)

 

OS- Vista Home Premium 64-bit

 

Processor- Pentium E2180 @ 2.00GHz

 

GPU- GeForce 7950 GT, 512MB

 

RAM- 8GB duel-channel DDR2

 

Thanks!

[David Brasher]

You said that the problem occurred even without mods, but are you counting .espless texture and mesh replacers as mods? With problems of this nature, reinstalling the game means deleting or removing all your texture packs and reinstalling the ones you want at intervals with play-testing in between.

 

If you did have custom textures installed from the beginning. Remove them and test again. I think you will see that your grass is back. You can then try to reinstall the texture pack again properly or scrap it and not use it.

 

If this is not the case then you might try using BSA Commander to unpack your grass textures and thereby alter the archive invalidation dynamic. Archive invalidation issues are like magic, not like science. They are a bug with the base game that no one can understand or deal with well.

 

Another alternative might be to find a mod that replaces the grass meshes with something else. People make mods like this to reduce lag, or make the grass prettier. In your case they would serve to just replace the vanilla grass meshes with anything else and get the game to pound it through its thick skull that rendering grass is one of its duties.

Edited December 2, 2011 by David Brasher

[Connectamabob]

Thanks.

 

Yes, I'm counting third party texture replacer packs as mods (seems odd to me that anyone wouldn't). When I say I had the problem with vanilla Oblivion, I mean the 100% unaltered, out-of-box version of the game.

 

I'll give BSA Commander (and/or a mesh replacer) a try. Thanks!

[Connectamabob]

Hokay, the mesh replacers didn't work.

 

I looked at BSA Commander, but there's a lot of info missing. Every tutorial I found was geared towards mod creators. I only found one mention of extracting BSA's as an archive invalidation method here: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Oblivion_Mods_FAQ#Archive_Invalidation , which only mentions it to make a point of how they're not going to talk about it. They also mention it has major downsides for players, but what those downsides are fall under the "not gonna talk about it" thing.

 

Am I supposed to unpack and then repack the file, or am I supposed to save the unpacked files somewhere so Oblivion will use them instead of the BSA-compressed files? If the latter, what would the file path be? What are the "downsides"? Will I risk breaking my game by doing this, or is it something I can fix/work around?

 

Thanks again.

[David Brasher]

When you download mods, they often add new meshes and textures and sounds and things. You may have seen this with some of the mods you have used. So what you would do with the unpacked grass meshes and textures is put them in the same place that the mods put things. So it would be like:

 

*Installation Location*\Oblivion\Data\Meshes\*More Directories*

and

*Installation Location*\Oblivion\Data\Textures\*More Directories*

 

This changes the archive invalidation dynamic by making the game refer to your unpacked textures rather than referring to the ones locked up in your BSA. It sounds like you already tried installing a mod that changes the grass meshes, and it did not work. Unpacking the BSA takes a very similar approach, so if the grass mod did not work, this might not work either, but it is worth a shot.

 

You will not be packing up new BSAs. BSAs sort of stink and are not pleasant to work with. It is better, especially if you are a mod builder and mod player to just have your meshes and textures out where you can see them and manipulate them. This is 100% reversible. If you mess up your meshes and textures and want the game to refer to the originals again, just delete the unpacked meshes and textures, or else rename or move their folder so that the game can't find them and can't use them. Then the game refers back to the originals.

 

There is the possibility that Oblivion got corrupted when downloading it from Steam. Is there a way to re-download a game that you have already purchased?

 

Do you ever have strange problems with your graphics card in other games or applications?

Edited December 4, 2011 by David Brasher

[Connectamabob]

Hmm, that sounds like I could even unpack to a dummy data folder, then redo the unpacked files as an OMOD. That would make testing and uninstalling if need be even easier. I've already done that a couple times with mods that came packaged as EXE installers, with happy results.

 

Yes, I can redownload a new copy. The way Steam works is once you buy a game, it's in your online account forever to download as many times as you need. I already tried that once though, if you'll see my original post.

 

I am starting to suspect it's maybe a graphics card compatibility issue of some kind. I've never had a problem with this card before, but Oblivion predates that card generation by enough that the launcher can't recognize it, so I'm guessing it may be possible there's something in this particular GPU model's architecture that conflicts with Oblivion's. That's just a guess though.

 

The grass is the only real issue though. I take a bit of a frame rate hit from high density scenes like forests, and the game stutters a little when blocks of LOD stuff get switched out for full meshes, but think that's just my hardware being underpowered. Don't know how Oblivion divides up its workload though, so I'm not even sure if the critical choke point with that stuff is in the GPU or the CPU.

 

Thanks!

 

*edit* Actually I have noticed a few other minor oddities. Like the marketplace district in the Imperial City having all it's HUD/map labels in German, while the rest of the game is in English. Doesn't effect the shop sign textures or the dialog subtitles, just the map and HUD place labels. Happens with both vanilla and Darnified modded UI's.

Edited December 4, 2011 by Connectamabob

[LFact]

Then post your mod list and loading order, please.

[ponyboy10]

Hmm, that's a strange one - including the German language stuff. I'm sure you've done this, but just to be safe - make sure the grass distance slider in the video options menu is at least 25% if not all the way to the right. If everything else is ok, I would probably recommend trying a mod that alters and replaces the grass textures. I think Natural Environments or this one (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41118) will.

[CaelenTigris]

It isn't a texture issue. I've got the same bug going on, and I haven't found a way to fix it. Texture issues (missing texture) renders objects with bright pink or purple color. The mesh is obviously still there, since the invisible grass sways in the wind and blocks reflections off water and windows, but it's just invisible. It makes no sense @_@

[David Brasher]

It sounds like an archive invalidation issue. These are notorious hard to deal with. They are basically randomly occurring bugs built into Oblivion. They are totally illogical, because everything is set up properly when they occur. It is theoretically impossible for an archive invalidation bug to happen. But it happens anyway. By now most of us realize that computers do not always behave logically.

 

So the game is set up to use the grass textures on the grass meshes. The game displays the grass meshes, but the gremlins in the system magically prevent the grass textures from displaying. (You are cursed.) You have done everything right and it still won't work.

 

You might read up on how to deal with archive invalidation problems. I believe the basis approach is to change the nonfunctional files so that the computer is looking at other files with the same function, or to tell the computer to look at the files twice. (It has standing orders telling it to look at the files, and it should know how to do its job, but you nag it and tell it to do what it already knows it is supposed to be doing.)

 

Or you could just turn your grass distance down to 0 so that you no longer have chameleoned or purple grass. That would also help your frame rate.

 

Perhaps you have a different computer you could play Oblivion on?

 

I wish you luck.