Saves and mods stop being detected

[magicgraduate]

Hello all. I'm running into a bizarre problem with Oblivion and am unsure what could be causing it.

 

Some general info, I have the Oblivion GOTY Edition through Steam and I'm running Windows 10. I started with a fresh install of Oblivion and am using the latest OBSE and Wrye Bash v307.09.

 

I followed the guide here for most of my mod list and added some of the popular mods such as OOO, MOO, Better Cities and so on. I'm also using Alternative Beginnings.

 

All of this was working fine when I started up a new game. After playing a bit, I later decided to install some other mods through Wrye Bash, ran LOOT, updated the bashed patched, loaded up Oblivion and suddenly all my save files are "missing". All the saves are in the save folder where they should be but Oblivion doesn't seem to be recognizing them. Also if I start a New Game, it doesn't act as though I have Alternative Beginnings installed and goes to the default start, yet I can tell it has detected some mods such as the Unofficial Patch and Robert's body mod, but not others such as Hud Status Bars, etc.

 

Now, I have a backup of the Data folder so if I switch out my data folders and load up Oblivion, everything goes back to normal and I can access my saves. This has happened a couple times and always after I try to install a new mod, not even the same new mods but different ones e.g. one time it was SDR, another time it was COBL.

 

I'm not very familiar with Wrye Bash and in the past have only used it through MO to create Bashed Patches for Skyrim, so I am unsure if there's anything that Wrye Bash might be changing through ini files or save profiles or something when I install a new mod that might be causing this. It seems to be something related specifically to the Data folder as changing to the clean Data backup fixes things. I've changed to the backup and reinstalled all the mods and that seemed to work as well but I'd prefer not having to do that every time I want to install a new mod.

 

Has anyone run into anything like this before or have any idea why this might be happening?

[Striker879]

Question ... was the previous working load order also sorted by LOOT (what I'm thinking is saves that had an unsorted load order now won't work on the LOOT sorted load order ... maybe??).

 

In general BOSS is a superior load order tool for Oblivion than LOOT (though I'm certain the "LOOT crowd" will disagree with me).

[magicgraduate]

Yes it was and I have the latest LOOT version. Yea its been awhile since I used BOSS and have heard its still preferred for Oblivion, but have stuck with LOOT so far as my mod list is fairly small right now. I'm not sure if Load Order is a factor though as I've tried disabling all mods in Wrye Bash and I still have the same problem of the saves not being detected.

[Striker879]

Just so I'm sure I'm getting it right ... you're saying that after installing some more mods to an existing load order using WB you can no longer see your previous saves in the game menu. If that's the case do those saves still show in the WB Saves tab?

[olnorton]

Any chance your documents directory is redirected to OneDrive.

[magicgraduate]

Yea its just a weird thing. WB does still shows them under Saves. All my mods are listed under Data Files on the Oblivion Launcher. My games are all saved to their own directory outside Program Files and I have OneDrive disabled. It seems to happen fairly randomly. I've never encountered something like this before with any of my games. I wondered if it had something to do with Wrye Bash since I've never really used it to handle mod installs. I am more familiar with MO and NMM, but both are said to be unreliable for use with Oblivion. It seems like there's something getting changed somewhere that makes Oblivion forget where its supposed to find my saves and mods that's located in only the Data folder, as uninstalling everything or getting a backup Data folder fixes things. I wouldn't think WB or any of the mods I'm using would be able to do that though.

[Striker879]

Mod Organizer can work with Oblivion (and Wrye Bash and OBSE), but it takes some very specific steps in getting it set up correctly. I'm no expert on those steps (I'm primarily an old manual install dinosaur, but I do use WB for certain installs and don't use MO at all). Contrathetix has quite a bit of experience and knowledge on the subject ... perhaps a search for posts made by Contra concerning Mod Organizer plus OBSE would bring up some useful results.

 

You say you have your games installed in custom folders outside of Program Files, but Program Files isn't the only protected folder. What is the exact path to your Oblivion install (e.g. C:\Games\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion)? Also, are your saves in the usual folder structure (e.g. Users\[username]\ Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Saves)?

[olnorton]

If your saves are not in the default path, as Striker879 has shown, then you need to read the bash_default.ini in the Mopy directory.

Edit the paths & rename bash_default.ini to bash.ini

[magicgraduate]

Ah thanks, I will look into that. I do prefer MO but wasn't sure if it would work correctly with OBSE and things like TES4LODGen.

 

Yea I have it installed under C:\Games\Steam\SteamApps\common\Oblivion, and yea saves are in the default location.

 

Hmm okay, I hadn't looked at any of the bash inis, I'll edit those and see how that goes.

 

Thank you both for the assist, suppose I'll keep playing around with things and see if it keeps doing it.

[Surilindur]

MO does work with Oblivion, but there are some things to keep in mind. Also, I use the 1.3.11 version from the Skyrim Nexus page. The MO2 betas from Github had some issues with Oblivion when I tested, and it also does not have the archive management features, so if someone is about to use MO with Oblivion, I would probably suggest 1.3.11 and not the new betas. And another thing: Tannin (the creator of Mod Organizer and the USVFS system for virtual file "installation") has joined the Nexus as the new head of NMM development. They are apparently remaking NMM. More in the news post. I would link it but the main site is down for maintenance apparently.

 

If you already use MO for Oblivion, then it might be that your saves have been redirected to your MO profile folder (in the saves directory). But assuming you have MO set up correctly, then that should happen always and not randomly. The short version of how to make MO work with OBSE and the Steam version of Oblivion:

• manually install OBSE (obviously) with the updated loader from the official site --> http://obse.silverlock.org/
• install the 1.3.11 version of MO from the Skyrim Nexus page somewhere
• open the profile menu of MO, select your current profile, and make sure "automatic archive invalidation" is checked (maybe also "local savegames")
• navigate to the workarounds tab in the MO settings
• in the workarounds tab, click the "Date-Back BSAs" (or such, cannot remember) button to set the Steam version's BSA archives' dates to something older so that replacer mods will work
• in the workarounds tab, set load mechanism to "Script Extender"
• close MO, then maybe restart it, and make sure that, in the actual game folder, in ...\Data\OBSE\Plugins\ folder, there is both "hook.dll" and "mo_path.txt" (needed for OBSE to load MO)
• launch the game from Steam, the Oblivion Launcher will appear (no plugins will be shown in the "data files" yet, do not worry)
• click play, the game and OBSE will get loaded, OBSE will load MO, and MO will build the virtual file system and add it to the game
• mods will work, and your MO profile's local savegames will also be there

It should not really be too tricky. Also to keep in mind that every utility needs to be launched through MO, because the virtual file system needs to be created and (sort of) shown to the process for the "installed" files to be visible to the program. Everything from TES4Edit to TES4LODGen to Oscape (x86 version) to Wrye Bash can be used through MO. However only MO should be used for mod installation. I use Wrye Bash (through MO) for load order management (remember to unselect "lock load order" from Wrye Bash) and the Bashed Patch.

 

Hopefully that makes sense. :tongue:

 

Edit: Also, all OBSE plugins have to be manually installed because of how MO works with a Steam version of Oblivion. I am not sure if it works better with a disc version, it has been a while since I used a disc version of Oblivion.

Edited October 23, 2016 by Contrathetix