The infamous exclamationmark bug and other graphical issues

[Wednesday17]

A couple days ago I removed Quarl's texturepack from my game, because it made my game a bit laggy. Something went wrong and my game started acting up. So I decided to make a reinstall. That's when the real problems began. I think I'll spare you the details between the first and the second re-install.

 

I thought I'd install Oblivion and SI and the latest patch and then start a new game, then add my mods in small groups and keep checking if the savegame is still good. Because my main problem was (or is), that all graphic effects from spells are slowed down, same with all flames, some don't move at all. And gates are affected, too. Gates in caves, forts or in the arena, they are all slower than slow-mo. Can a very clutter-y inventory (+ bag of holding and purse of wonder) cause such kind of lag? Can I tweak something in my oblivion.ini to repair the slow effects?

 

The new game save didn't show any of those problems, but my older saved games are still the same. Can someone explain to me how it is possible that two savegames in the same game are so different? Is a savegame not able to adapt to new configs? Will it always be broken or will it be okay someday? I only use real savegames now because the quicksaves kept crashing. And by crashing I don't mean CTD, I mean killing my whole computer!! Aside from the fact that I am not able to exit the game properly, after the exit button I have to confirm the crash to get out - but by now I'm used to that. Unfortunately I didn't pay attention after which mod it started this time. But I think it wasn't before I started installing replacement textures.

 

Okay, the newest addition to all those joys are the yellow triangles. They are for missing meshes, right? But that can't be the case in untouched buildings (except for forts with vampires), right? But when I go into a shop, those yellow triangles pop up by the dozens. The First Edition is so yellow, I can only find the merchant by feeling my way around, there is no space that's not yellow. Quite unpleasant, really.

 

One of the things I did differently this time was using the ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated mod. I don't really get it. I mean, I know, it is supposed to tell the game to use the new textures instead of the old ones. But when I open the thingy, I see an entry for the first texture I replaced, alternative ayleid ruin textures. But only this one entry but I put more than these textures in. Of course I mean those textures I needed to edit the ArchiveInvalidation file for before.

 

Another thing is, I used the DarkUI before, this time I used the DarNified DarkUI. Plus the Atmospheric Loadingscreens, but I had those before and no problem with it. I use OBMM and OBSE, like before. Installed the Unofficial Oblivion Patch (didn't have that before). I noticed, that NaturalWeather with HDR makes my sky neon pink now, but I guess that's because I have nebula- and moon textures. Those are more important to me than the weather, so I don't use it anymore. So, dunno what further information I should give you. Aside from the fact that I'm no native speaker and I apologise if my description of the problem(s) is a bit chaotic. And please do speak up if you want to help me, so I can understand. ;)

 

My system:

Intel CoreDuo 6600 2,4GHz

2048 GB RAM

GeForce 8800GT 512MB DDR

Foreceware 169.92, DirectX 9.0c

[System Shock]

It sounds like you just have too many mods that modify the same thing many times over. In my experience, mods that add textures/meshes to the game usually don’t create any issues, but if you have 3-4 mods that modify say the sky, or add locations on top of locations, then most likely than not you’ll run into issues.

 

Saved games can get corrupted, especially if you remove and re-install mods. For example, I have had issues with saved games when I have removed plugins that add locations on the map, i.e., saved game, removed plugin that added location on map, loaded saved game = game crashed

[Wednesday17]

The slow-mo thing happened with the freshly installed vanilla game and the old savegame. It didn't occur with the newly started game. Now it doesn't seem to matter WHAT I do, even if I deactivate all of my mods there's no difference.

And yeah, I know of the problem of crashes when you remove everything at once. Oh, and I noticed yet another thing: I had items from Growlfs armour in my inventory, but hadn't reinstalled that mod yet. Still, the items were there, of course without the icon and of course it'd be invisible when equipped. But it's kinda stupid that the save game didn't accept that the item wasn't there. It should've just "forgotten" such items, no? Is that because they were enchanted items?

I heard of some savegame repair thingy, does anyone know about that and where to find it? And if it's advisable to try that...?

 

I am sure that I have exactely one texture for sky nebula and one set for each moon.

 

Whenever I tried out a new mod with similar effects than an already loaded mod, I'd deactivate the first one beforehand.

 

I don't have so very many textures that replace game textures, most of my mods have new textures and .esp or omod files.

[bben46]

A normal reinstall only removes the Oblivion.exe program. Not the saved games. So if your problem was already in a saved game you still have it.

 

The yellow boxes are missing meshes, not overwritten, if they were just overwritten, there should be something there but maybe not what you expected or a weird color. Somewhere in your reinstall some meshes did not get put into the proper folder - the Oblivion\data\meshes folder. some mods even add a sub folder to the meshes where it expects to find its stuff. If you just placed the esp for your mods back into the \data folder when you reinstalled, that would do it. Try reinstalling the complete mod, with all of its miscellaneous accessory files. sometimes, you will find a mod that does not install properly and puts its meshes and texture files in the \data folder and not in the \data\meshes or \data\textures folders. In that case you need to manually move them to the proper folders. Sometimes it is easier to start with the zipped version you originally downloaded and reinstall the mod from scratch.

 

I have seen this happen when oblivion is not installed in its default location C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion. Some files will just automatically try to install there if not told otherwise.

 

 

The slow down sounds like the stuck animation problem we see at around 200 hours. there are several fixes for this, the one I use is called Animation Fixer and can be found here http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5127

 

Sometimes I think we spend more time getting the game to work than we do playing it.

[kungfubellydancer]

Just one question, How do you know how long you've been playing a game? I think I may have experienced some of these 200 hour errors. Is it 200 hours per player or every save combined? There are multiple people who play on this account.

[Wednesday17]

A normal reinstall only removes the Oblivion.exe program. Not the saved games. So if your problem was already in a saved game you still have it.

Yeah, I am aware of that. That's why I even saved my savegames in two different locations. And I said, that the problem is with the old savegame.

 

The slow down sounds like the stuck animation problem we see at around 200 hours. there are several fixes for this,

Can I kiss you?

Or at least hug you?

Whoo, it's so good to learn that at least that one isn't my own fault. In fact, it seems I've been lucky: The savegames are more than 300 hours old! And I intend to play on for a while yet. I'll immediately try that fix you linked. Thanks so very much! :kiss:

 

The yellow boxes are missing meshes, not overwritten,

Right, that's why I wonder why this occours not with mods (not only, anyway), but with shops and houses that came with the game.

 

If you just placed the esp for your mods back into the \data folder when you reinstalled, that would do it. Try reinstalling the complete mod, with all of its miscellaneous accessory files.

Nope. I did it exactely as I described earlier: I installed the game, the expansion, patch and then installed the mods. And by install I mean I deleted every last file in the old Oblivion folder and installed everything anew.

 

I have seen this happen when oblivion is not installed in its default location C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion. Some files will just automatically try to install there if not told otherwise.

Want a good laugh?

I had my first installation in a custom location because next to my program files (or "programme" in my windows version) I have another directory "games" because I like to keep track of my installed stuff.

Then I thought, maybe some of the problems might be because I didn't install in the default location. So this time I did just that. And got more problems. Could it be that that's the reason? Does the game "remember" it's old path? But I thought I cleaned out the registry thoroughly. So there shouldn't be anything left to "remember".

 

Sometimes I think we spend more time getting the game to work than we do playing it.

Oh yes! But I am kinda used to that, I "played" The Sims 2. I guess the ratio of time spent playing and time spent modding (downloading and installing mods and making own stuff) was about 2:8. Kinda stupid, I know, but at least the game was exactely like I wanted it to be - if I ever found the time for play. :D

 

Well, thanks. I hope I'll be able to solve alt least the slow down problem, that would be awesome.

[Abramul]

Did you by any chance install one of the Book Jackets mods? If so, its removal might account for the exclamation marks in standard Oblivion cells, and its re-addition might fix them.

 

Also, Smaller Exclaimations might be worthwhile, if it wasn't Book jackets that caused the problems.

[Wednesday17]

Why, you're right! I indeed forgot to put the bookjackets back in. Took me some time to figure out in which order I needed to put in the textures for bookjackets, bookplacement and UI-files, but I got it now and the hideous exclamationmarks are gone.

 

But thanks for the smaller exclamations link. As we know, there are still some of them in the vanilla game and the little ones are far less annoying.

 

So... with all of your help I was able to fix the worst problems. The savegame fixer worked Like a charm. I hope you can imagine how relieved and grateful I am. At some point I thought I had to abandon my character or even the game itself. Now I don't have to, thanks to you guys. Hugs and kudos! :thanks:

 

But I still wonder about the savegame issues. Specifically the quicksave. I got so used to crashes, that I feel like driving around in a car without a safety belt (feels like I'm naked, in case you wonder *g*), when I can't use F5 frequently. I don't like to repeat things I already did and I don't want to save via esc all the time - immersion killer. And do I really have to use a different savegame every time? Read that somewhere. I already have nearly 2GB of saves and need to delete a lot of them. Is there any way to fix or work around those savegame issues?

 

And the other thing is, I already disabled v-sync, even though I really don't like the torn graphics, but it still gets kinda jerky when I run. I even avoid levelling speed anymore or using any fortify speed enchanted items, because it gets worse the faster I run. Is this due to too many mods? I have quite a few, but many of them are clothing and armour, natural vegetation and water, no overhaul mods. Mh, and some additional questlines. My system specs are in the first post, think that should suffice, no?