Wish: One Stop Starter Package

[faifh]

So I just bought Oblivion very late. I played Morrowind long time ago, and just played Skyrim. I skipped Oblivion when it was released and came back since I wanted to see what I missed. I get it, there are tons of great mods that make this game much up to par than vanilla (which regard leveling/sclaing is also plainly broken). I spent a whole day getting a lot of mods, and only recently got to realize that .omod means, and I quite messed up my installation. But it works, and it looks a ton better than vanilla, and with OOO and realistic leveling plays better too!

 

What I think would be great, would be one file to download with an installer that makes it all for newbies, requiring only vanilla latest official patch level. I am a computer geek, and it took me some headache, every mod comes with a different installer. zip, 7z and rar archives. Some ask you to just copy over, some require you to build one or several .omod yourself. An alive modding community for whose this is the bread and butter to do, is great, but as newbie, it would be great if a single wizard might do it all to get you from zero to 2012.

 

By large the mod selection should be unobstrusive and keep the game mostly oblivion (so you can say, you played "oblivion"), to keep newcomers to experience the game (mostly) as it is. Therefore for example rather no alternative starts. It should concentrate on graphical/sound/UI revamping and may assume a relative recent but maybe lowclass computer nowadays (e.g. icore3) I'd say, anything that can play Skyrim. I'm not sure how large this file should be, there is this one mod thats 2GB... I wouldn't mind, but a case might be done to not make it too large and use plain realistic nature instead. It should rather vote for the more popular mods in case of conflicts.

 

Aside from optical revamping, "the Leveling Problem" should be addressed at least somehow. In my opinion anything is better than vanilla. Anyway it should be a package that makes a one stop to get a nice playing experience without having to dive into the mod community right away, and where the mods are checked to be compliant to each other.

 

Mods I'd suggest for a start that should be entailed are for example:

Oblivion Module Manager

Oblivion Script Extender

The Unofficial Oblivion Patch

Natural Environments

Darnified UI

Darnified Addon (to keep settings)

Natural Faces

Realistic Horse Eyes

Atmospheric Oblivion

Improved Trees and Flora

Harvest Flora

Better Cities

Alive Waters

Alluring Potion Bottles Version Three

(64 bit extender, extend the oblivions exe to be 64-bit)

(Qarl's Texture Pack Redimized) / If size doesn't matter

(The Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch) / If applicatable on vanilla.

 

Regarding leveling/scaling, I don't think there is one replacement that can be called the best idea, maybe have a few to chose from in a installer wizard?

 

What do you think, would doing something like this be possible?

 

Since it would the Mod Manager intact as soon a newbie advances to "CHIMM" status, s/he might exchange mods to his/her own will anyway to use more exotic or controversial ones, just as the user wishes. If there isn't a good newbie collection most can agree on newbies should be confronted with, than why not make several to chose from by all means :)

[PrettyMurky]

You'd need permission from each of the individual mod authors.

 

Besides; most mods are straightforward to install; and those that are not would be unsuitable for a 'one size fits all' compilation.

[faifh]

You'd need permission from each of the individual mod authors.

 

This is what I feared! A few mods have a GPL or similare Open Source or other reuse license attached to them, but most are simply without any license, even of simple use, thus you are not allowed to repackage them or even alter 'em. I think its too bad that there might have been less forsight to cater for that, what is the cream and butter of community Source development, but who am i as newcomer to tell a whole community? I'm sorry :(

 

Besides; most mods are straightforward to install; and those that are not would be unsuitable for a 'one size fits all' compilation.

 

For you maybe. I can just tell from my own experience, even working down a guide is quite a pain. Every mod is installed somehow differently, all are packaged in a different format (rar, zip, omod) and every one require you to read some readme to work it through. I think its great there is so a rich mod environment available, this is far but common for many games, but for a non-geek its quite almost close to impossible to get a well revamped Oblivion.

[David Brasher]

Mods are modular (which is the nature of modules.) So one good thing about mods is that you can pick and choose exactly what you want. One size does not fit all. Everyone has different tastes. The chances are high that nobody in the world uses the same mod list that you do. There may be people who have lists that are almost the same, but you neglected to use their two or three personal favorites.

 

I was looking at your mod list, and I only use about four of those mods. So it turns out that my list of must-have mods that I can't live without is totally different than yours. There is nothing wrong with that. You like your mod list just the way it is and it gives you happiness.

 

But there are probably a lot of people with tastes similar to yours. They could use your mod list as a good starting point. Then they could delete a few of your mods that they don't like, and add a few that they personally like.

 

Mods are always being updated. So if you packaged a complete bundle of mods, then it would soon be outdated. Like your bundle might include version 1_3 of a good mod, but then 1_4 gets released. (And then 1_5 might even be released before you can address the issue.)

 

Author permissions are what would sink the project. Many mod authors closely protect their work and will not allow anyone else to distribute it. So some mod authors would refuse to allow you to add their mods to your bundle pack.

 

But you can still take action. You can make a forum thread or upload a document that would be like a tutorial or recipe for building an Oblivion game just like the one on your machine. What you would do is post links to every one of the mods on your list and make sure the links work. You would work out the perfect load order for that collection of mods and post it. You would write up a good long document explaining exactly how your mod collection changes the game and what features it offers. This would be your advertising to get people excited about your Oblivion build so that they will follow your instructions and set up their game that way. You would write some unified installation instructions on how to install the mods in the list. You would list pitfalls that gamers can fall into and what to watch out for when installing these mods.

 

The advantage of doing this would be that you would need no author permissions. The mods would always be the newest version, because you would be posting a link to a mod, not a mod. You would have done the research and got the load order correct, and all your playing would be a big play-test for mod conflicts and stability. People would know that your build works, have instructions on how to install it, and would have good documentation on how it changes the game.

Edited January 18, 2012 by David Brasher

[faifh]

I have been working mostly through one guide and compared it with others. Still its a whole day you need to do, to get a semi-"recent" Oblivion, and I'm a geek, and as newcomer it still was a hurdle to do. And I don't how many required me to build omods myself instead of just providing a prebuild. And why the .rar archives? I agree, this permissions thing is a bummer :(

 

How about from zero to 2012 download manager/installer wizard. Something that grabs all the things automatically? Anything that allows a user to install oblivion vanilla, get the official updates, and then press just one or two buttons to get something that shows what oblivion can be.

Edited January 18, 2012 by faifh

[Fonger]

And I don't how many required me to build omods myself instead of just providing a prebuild.

try NMM to install the files as omods

[David Brasher]

You don't really need OMODs. Unless you like to build OMODs for fun, my advice would be to install the mods that come that way as OMODs and install the mods that do not come that way as non-OMODs. That could save a new Oblivion player a lot of frustration.

 

I don't know why people ever package mods in .rar format. The 7Zip format (.7z) compresses files to a smaller size and is available to more people. But if you are a mod downloader and user, you will want to get software to decompress both formats.

 

As Fonger said, you might want to check out the new TES Nexus Mod Manager program. It comes rather highly recommended, and is said to make installing and organizing mods much easier.

Edited January 19, 2012 by David Brasher

[faifh]

Some mods had installations by "copy into Data and say yes to overwrite". This is very unfortunate. Others had that stupid rar file, which I needed to depack. Then wanted me to create one or even several .omod which again packed the whole stuff, which on installation is again unpacked. And the whole thing was large enough it took minutes every time. Sigh. By all the love that went into, its just a pain to get a max revamped oblivion, so you get the most out of it.

 

I will look into NMM.

Edited January 19, 2012 by faifh

[Balakirev]

For you maybe. I can just tell from my own experience, even working down a guide is quite a pain. Every mod is installed somehow differently, all are packaged in a different format (rar, zip, omod) and every one require you to read some readme to work it through. I think its great there is so a rich mod environment available, this is far but common for many games, but for a non-geek its quite almost close to impossible to get a well revamped Oblivion.

 

RAR and ZIP are simply archival methods. They open to the user the same way, and can be easily handled identically for manual installation. I personally use RAR as a dearchiver, since it opens so many other archiving formats.

 

OMODs are great for mods that require a series of user choices, as these can be automated through the OMOD process. That said, they can be installed manually, and just require reading the manual to do so. As everybody should read manuals that come with mods anyway, when OMOD and manual versions of mods are available, you can safely bypass the first for the second.

 

Take comfort in the fact that those of us who are heavily into mods are used to spending days doing an initial setup when we first reinstall. I've got 230+ mods running in Oblivion. Doesn't get done in half an hour, but I love the result. :)

[David Brasher]

"copy into Data and say yes to overwrite".

 

This is standard procedure when installing mods in the old school way. It is nothing to really be afraid of. It is wise to watch what is being overwritten and abort installation if something is being installed that you don't like, but all these changes are reversible if you make a mistake.

 

So when the process asks about merging folders, say yes. When it asks about overwriting files in the merged folders, think a second about each file, and then most likely say yes.

 

Most mods will come as .7z files or .rar files. It is how files are compressed to make downloads faster. You should expect to have to decompress files when you download mods.

 

One thing that has not really been talked about yet is that you should not install a bunch of mods at once. Your game will likely break, and you won't know which mod did it. It is best to install a couple of mods, play-test them, and then install a couple more mods and play-test them. It sort of stinks when you discover you have a bad mod problem, and you have to diagnose a system of 100+ mods and narrow it down to one specific mod causing the problem. It is much easier to know that the last mod you installed is the bad one, because your game was running just fine before you installed it.