Mod Limit

[ryanmihalic]

This really isn't a "show stopper" issue, but has anyone reached the maximum number of mods that can be run at one time?

 

I'm currently running about 350+ mods &, after installing a few more last night, Oblivion crashed on me almost as soon as the Bethesda intro movie finished. At first, I thought it was the menu movie loop replacement that I installed but, after restoring the vanilla menu movie loop, the crash continued to happen. So, I unchecked the dozen or so new mods, tried Oblivion again, & it worked. Then, in a troubleshooting fashion, I re-checked all my newest mods one by one & tried Oblivion until it crashed. It turned out that I could uncheck one mod & check another, & Oblivion would crash...but I could uncheck that mod & Oblivion would work. It didn't matter which mod I activated, so it seems like there is a threshold (at least on my machine) for the number of mods that can be run at once. I've gotten around it by just swapping out older unused mods for new ones that I want to try, but does anyone know if there is a limit on the amount of mods that can be run? (I hope this makes sense.)

 

Specs:

Obl. version 1.2.416 (or whatever the latest version is).

SI installed

OBSE v0012

~350+ mods active

OBMM installed & in use

Q6600 Intel Quad-core @ 2.4GHz

BFG 8800 ultra

8 Gb RAM @ 800MHz

Windows XP Pro 64-bit (thus the 8 gigs of RAM. :) )

Dual 750 Gb Sata 3/0s hard drives in RAID 0

(not sure what else would make much of an impact other than mobo specs)

 

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this...

[WoogieMonster]

This has come up a few times before. If I remember correctly, you can install quite a few mods, more than anyone at the time of the last topic was willing to test. However, you can only activate about 253 of them at once, counting towards the software limit of 255. Those remaining two slots are used by something in the game itself. I'm sure one of the Nexus gurus could explain it in detail, assuming they are not all tired of addressing this issue. If you search, you may be able to locate the other threads if they have not died of old age.

[ryanmihalic]

Awesome, thanks! The 350+ number that I said must be quite wrong then, so I'll go back & count, but it's no surprise that the limit just happens to be 255 (hello string char size). If anyone knows a way around this, please let me know (doubtful).

[xenxander]

If you have issues, just combine mods (not for public release, just for your OWN personal use). <~~ again, I stress: own PERSONAL use.

 

this won't work if they have individual ESM files, but I suppose if you were savvy with the CS you could still combine those mods into one.

A bit iffy and risky though if you don't know what you're doing.

[ryanmihalic]

Yeah, I had thought about using the CS to combine esp files (for my own use, of course), but I'm JUST starting to cut my teeth in the CS, so it might be a while before I start combining mods. If I was to start doing this, would it make sense to only combine mods that have almost nothing in common, or combine mods that are similar? My initial thought is to only combine the ones that aren't related so as to avoid conflicts, but like I said, me = CS n00b.

 

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions!

[iaai03]

I use TES4Gecko to combine mods. I take like mods and combine them. In CS details you can see how complicated a mod is. I combine a lot of clothing mods as a clothing mod, armor mods as an armor mod and companion mods as a companion mod.

[nosisab]

WoogieMonster is right, what happens is that one byte is used as index to the ESMs and ESPs. so since oblivion is 00 and FF and I think FE too are reserved for engine instances of items, the range of possible mods falls to 253. Merging mods is something that can be done with care, even when seems to work well at first you can end with a broken game which no savegame will help.

I know are all wonderful mods, but really there is need of so many ones? is really the highly increased load time, the possible bloating... excess scripts and so many others issue I'm wondering here worth this?

Aren't you stacking mods for the sake of having the max or above it?

Since I myself have above 150 mods installed I'm seriously inclined going downhill here... There so many things I don't use anymore and that are contributing just to slow and turns my game unstable.