faifh Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 "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. Yes, this all so much tinkering. I can do it. But what my suggestion was about, was the ability to offer some "compilation". Like a set of mods that are known to work with each other, and that install in one click. "Playtesting" is a pain when you are about the start playing Oblivion. What do you test, if you don't know the game at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nephenee13 Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 (edited) "Playtesting" is a pain when you are about the start playing Oblivion. What do you test, if you don't know the game at all? The flippant answer is you shouldn't mod your first playthrough, or at least you should play the game vanilla (with perhaps just the Unofficial Patches) for a bit, just to get a grasp of what the game is like to begin with. And, fundamentally, modding is not a plug and play experience. If you want to get into modding Oblivion, you will have to exert some time, effort, and thought on the matter. There is literally no way to make a single compilation for newbies, because you could ask a dozen people and get a dozen different sets of "absolutely required mods". What is right for me isn't right for say, David Brasher, and almost certainly what is right for him isn't right for you, and so on. Edited January 23, 2012 by Nephenee13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
faifh Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 Indeed! I kind of expectet that flippant answer, so thank you for giving my chance to go into that. Why do we expect from someone coming in 2012 to Oblivion (maybe over Skyrim and now wants to see the earlier as well) to first play old "crappy-looking" Oblivion, while there are so many great mods out there than can enhance his/her experience by a great deal. While I agree about the game-changing mods, there are so many that just enhance Oblivion to look like a more a recent game, or fix simply broken stuff (the big patch e.g.) Likely if you ask 12 people, you might get 12 different answers. But why not have different compliations available then for those of the 12 that want to pull their sleeves up to make one. Like for example as a new comer I trust David Brasher to know far more about Oblivion modding than me, and think his compilation is a cool thing to start with. If Nephenee13 comes up with a different compilation, its my freedom then to decide which one sounds better. It would be really cool if there was one simple way to get yours or David Brashers compilation installed without getting all geeky about the Oblivion modding details. There are some guides out there, and even if you want the modding result just like the guide says, and you work your way down step by step, you are still busy for a day, and you need to be somewhat more computer-savy. I'd compare it to Linux in the 1990s. Back then installing Linux on a system required some planing and testing. You compiled your own kernel, your tool-chain etc. and a few days later you got even X running! Nowadays you trust your distribution of choice to make many basic decisions for you and when you ran through the simple installer you got a decent system. At the end you can still personalize it. And if you don't like the standard choices debian does for you, you choose Ubuntu, or Mint, or Gentoo, or Redhat, or Suse, or Slackware ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nephenee13 Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 Likely if you ask 12 people, you might get 12 different answers. But why not have different compliations available then for those of the 12 that want to pull their sleeves up to make one. Because people would have to put them together, get permissions from all the mod authors involved, maintain them with updates, deal with supporting people who use them, and just generally it would be an unbelievable pain in the ass. Modding is not handed to you on a silver platter. It is the result of thousands upon thousands of hours of unpaid work by thousands of people across the world. I only became involved with Oblivion modding a little more than two months ago, but I didn't ask for things to be given to me fait accompli, I sat down and learned this stuff. There were screwups, borked installations, numerous crashes and all sorts of headaches along the way, but that is just the way things are if you want a modded game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
faifh Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 (edited) Likely if you ask 12 people, you might get 12 different answers. But why not have different compliations available then for those of the 12 that want to pull their sleeves up to make one. Because people would have to put them together, get permissions from all the mod authors involved, maintain them with updates, deal with supporting people who use them, and just generally it would be an unbelievable pain in the ass. Modding is not handed to you on a silver platter. It is the result of thousands upon thousands of hours of unpaid work by thousands of people across the world. I only became involved with Oblivion modding a little more than two months ago, but I didn't ask for things to be given to me fait accompli, I sat down and learned this stuff. There were screwups, borked installations, numerous crashes and all sorts of headaches along the way, but that is just the way things are if you want a modded game. The same used to be true for GNU/Linux systems. Except the Open Licenses used there from begin on allowed repacking. Anyway, because of the copyright restrictions every mod has, maybe instead of one big file, an installer that downloads and installs the mods. Where you can simply supply one configuration file, as "compilation" that pulls it all together downloads it for you, and gets it in the correct order and so on. Maybe NMM is what can do it. I will look into it. The idea is, you get some mod list worked out that works all well with each other, the load order and all that, put that configuration online, and I can simply install it within 10 minutes at most (excluding download time) I can't believe that my vision of being able to play a modded Oblivion without having to be a geek is so difficult to get across. Edited January 23, 2012 by faifh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nephenee13 Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 The same used to be true for GNU/Linux systems. Except the Open Licenses used there from begin on allowed repacking. Anyway, because of the copyright restrictions every mod has, maybe instead of one big file, an installer that downloads and installs the mods. Where you can simply supply one configuration file, as "compilation" that pulls it all together downloads it for you, and gets it in the correct order and so on. Maybe NMM is what can do it. I will look into it. The idea is, you get some mod list worked out that works all well with each other, the load order and all that, put that configuration online, and I can simply install it within 10 minutes at most (excluding download time) I can't believe that my vision of being able to play a modded Oblivion without having to be a geek is so difficult to get across. Ugh, don't use NMM, just learn how to use Wrye Bash, it'll save you so many headaches later. Anyway, it won't work. This isn't Linux, stop acting like its at all a comparable situation. I could copy my Data folder, zip it up, send it to you (theoretically, that would be like 20 gigs at least), and there is a good chance it wouldn't work right. There are so many individual tweaks, system-specific settings, personalized touches, that make such an endeavor doomed to fail. Also, modding games like this is probably one of the geekiest things you could possibly do. Its like, the embodiment of pure geekdom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
faifh Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 Also, modding games like this is probably one of the geekiest things you could possibly do. Its like, the embodiment of pure geekdom I see where you come from. You just don't want it to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nephenee13 Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 I see where you come from. You just don't want it to work. I would put forth that you may not know nearly as much about this as you think you do. Just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
faifh Posted January 23, 2012 Author Share Posted January 23, 2012 (edited) I would put forth that you may not know nearly as much about this as you think you do. Just a thought. I would put forth that you may not nearly as much be capable of imaginative thinking beyond the current status of affairs than you think you do. If you copy your whole harddisc to a different computer it won't work. But there is an installer CD, and you say update/modding a single game is so much more complicated than a whole operating system? Nephenee13, you do not contribute, except throwing around negativity. So please just quietly leave this thread? In my opinion you just feel endangered by your imaginated geekdom if someone else seeks to make the same things more accessable. Making mods is still geeky, but applying them should not be. Edited January 23, 2012 by faifh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omeletted Posted January 23, 2012 Share Posted January 23, 2012 I faifh, I know where you are coming from but Neph is right. Any kind of compilation is way too much of a pain to even get started on and the majority of the modders still around won't agree to one. Just search on Beth for these kind of threads if you want to read about all the reasons, they invariably get locked in the end as well. Heck, there's one active thread right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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