Vanilla Oblivion and mods

[nosisab]

The question on topic can be dealt with at least two view points, as say

 

a - One can mod on a vanilla environment reusing pre-existing models with new formIDs and names, make some leveled lists to then and the like.

 

b - One can attempt to mod under a heavily modded environment, maybe overhauled, with the thought: my mod is simple enough to justify not installing a whole vanilla environment.

 

I could put some own opinions at this point, several 'I think than...', but here is where the 'I know' from the ones that experimented, suffered with issues, had his mods plagued by others (or worse, plagued someone else) are the best fitted to point to the potential troubles, dangers, advantages and restrictions of each case and maybe yet others situations beyond those.

[chris 07]

What? There's nothing wrong with it, i sometime's have to do it depending on the modding situation and it has NEVER failed or given me any bugs as of yet.

And for the second one of course you can, you just have to remember to make sure the people dling that mod has the mod that the mod that you made needs.

[nosisab]

What? There's nothing wrong with it, i sometime's have to do it depending on the modding situation and it has NEVER failed or given me any bugs as of yet.

And for the second one of course you can, you just have to remember to make sure the people dling that mod has the mod that the mod that you made needs.

 

Yes, I can't think of things going wrong if you care in not altering anything in the game (by accident, I mean) and if you modded in a vanilla environment ...

 

I'm more worried about the troubles that can lurks behind modding a apparently simple mod, under a heavy modded environment. Is it, advices and orientation from the more experienced modders will assure me a lot.

thanks

[DarkWarrior45]

I'm more worried about the troubles that can lurks behind modding a apparently simple mod, under a heavy modded environment. Is it, advices and orientation from the more experienced modders will assure me a lot.

thanks

 

Well, let me tell you how I mod. I do mods on my laptop, which has a vanilla install of Oblivion and SI with the latest patch. I mod in a vanilla enviroment. I do my initial testing in a vanilla enviroment. Then, when I do a very serious test, I take the mod and install it on a very heavily modded Oblivion install on my gaming rig. That way I can see exactly how that mod will behave both in vanilla and heavily modded enviroments and also see if I need to solve compatibility issues.

[Vagrant0]

Most of the vanilla resources are safe to use for modding without any sort of name change or duplication. Any mods which affect those base resources (texture packs) will also affect the ones you used. This is because most changes to statics are done by altering just the .nif or .dds files associated with the, and do not change anything within the CS. Because of this, even if you had made a duplicate, it would likely still link to the default mesh, and be affected by those changes regardless.

 

As far as statics and activators go, typically, you only want to make new forms in the CS if you're using an existing mesh differently than normal (different scripting, different attributes) or if you are planning to attach a different .nif (retexture) to them at a later date.

 

As for reducing conflicts, unless someone has a mod installed which royally screws up (changes) vanilla resources in the CS, there shouldn't be any. And in that case, it's not your fault, it's whichever bonehead made that mod.