Just bought PC Oblivion

[Striker879]

Looks like kaymre has already answered the keyboard run question. I personally use the capslock to toggle run on and off. One thing to note is that it works as a true toggle, meaning that if a save has run set with capslock on and I exit the game and then restart from the desktop with caplock off that save will now be using capslock off for run and capslock on for walk. A simple way to get it back to the 'right' way is to toggle capslock while a loading screen is displayed (such as you get when you go through a door into a new area the first time in that game session). Or you can just ignore it and it will still work fine, toggling to the opposite state when you hit capslock.

 

My reason for the explanation is I wonder if that may be related to what you were experiencing.

 

As I've said a number of times before on other threads, it's really me who should be thanking you for allowing me to 'borrow' your problem. Back when I worked a big part of my job (and a part I enjoyed) was troubleshooting and problem solving. You are one of many who help keep that big gray lump on my shoulders from turning to mush (and I don't think you've ever been short with me, just those who need to add their two cents without reviewing the rest of the thread and your reaction just mirrors my own silently expressed one).

[Stemin]

I meant to post this yesterday...

 

So ok after my keyboard experiment I decided to play Oblivion on the 360, something I haven't done in about 2 months. After about 20 min's of playing I stopped and really analyzed my character and realized that compared to Skyrim, the character movement is a sloppy mess on Oblivion period. I really started looking at how the character moved on the 360 and realized he just kinda slides along while exhibiting a movement action. It doesn't feel like he's glued to the ground like the character in Skyrim.

 

So I thought maybe I've been too hard on the PC version. So I load it back up and now the character won't move normally with the gamepad even. Something is seriously wack here.

[Striker879]

If you didn't have bad luck you'd have no luck at all eh? Don't worry you're not alone ... it takes one to recognize one.

 

Do gamepads have profiles that are possibly stored on the gamepad itself (just bouncing an idea)? I play 1st person myself most all the time so I don't notice how the game movement appears. I'll be looking for what you're talking about next time I play ... probably a detail that I didn't notice any time I was in 3rd person because I went to 3rd person to check out something specific and then switched back.

 

I have found over the years that while most FPS titles stick to a 'standard' keyboard layout for keys outside of the WASD (space bar is fairly standard for jump for example) there are always those that have their own 'take' on what should be used for what. I found Oblivion's keyboard mapping counter-intuitive at first, and was considering remapping everything to FPS standards. I'm glad I stuck it out and got used to their keyboard map. In a FPS perhaps it makes sense to use spacebar to jump as that's a common thing you do in FPS games. In Oblivion opening containers/bodies is a far more common task than jumping. Their mapping makes sense when viewed that way, so you see in the end they've won me over.

[Stemin]

Do you happen to know what would happen if I deleted my .ini files? Would Oblivion regenerate them, or would I have to reinstall?

[Striker879]

That is the way to get a fresh Oblivion.ini (found in your Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion in Vista and Win 7 or Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win XP). The game will create a new one when you start the game (going to the menu screen and then exiting is enough) using the file Oblivion_default.ini that's found in your game install's Oblivion folder (same folder as Oblivion.exe and OblivionLauncher.exe). I'm not sure about BlendSettings.ini and ConstructionSet.ini (if you have the CS installed). I'd leave them alone myself ... actually I always rename Oblivion.ini to Oblivionini.old so it's easy to revert back if an experiment goes awry (or to use as a reference for reapplying the tweaks I know worked). If you have any mod added ini files I'd leave them alone ... often they'll be installed in an 'Ini' folder sub to your Oblivion folder though some can be found in your Oblivion folder.

[Stemin]

Hmm. I forgot about the mods. I was hoping to undo all the changes I had to do for that one controller mod since its been long enough I don't remember what I changed. I only have that HGC body mod installed, but I did install things like OBMM, Boss, etc. that I think made backups to the .ini so I'm not really sure which one needs replaced.

[Striker879]

By mods I was more speaking about mods like Ashes to Ashes or NPCs Yield (another that comes to mind but I don't use it is Oblivion Graphics Extender). Often mod added ini files will be found in a folder you create (Oblivion\Data\ini in the case of Ashes to Ashes and NPCsYield, however it is possible to put Ashes to Ashes.ini in the Oblivion folder along side Oblivion_default.ini and it still will work ... other mods may also use that location).

 

I wasn't sure how far along your own modding may have progressed but I think my extra detail just unnecessarily confused things. In your case all you need to worry about is the file Oblivion.ini found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion. I like to rename rather than delete the old ini because having it there to compare to is handy (though having multiple versions hanging around can get confusing ... if you're a packrat like me document the reason for the ini backup with comments at the top of the file, just precede each new line with a semicolon and use Enter to new line rather than allowing wordwrap in Notepad).

 

On modern hardware when you rebuild your Oblivion.ini often the game does a poor job of recognizing your graphics and so will default to low resolution. It's just a matter of getting the settings back to where you had them before and it will be fine.

[GnatGoSplat]

I've gotten to where I've done just about all there is to do in Skyrim, so I also got Oblivion for PC and am in the same boat. Skyrim worked great with the Xbox 360 controller on PC. Oblivion's support for it is terrible. I tried the keyboard and mouse thing, and I hate it. It's not that I just need to get used to it; I've played through and completed entire games like GTA III and both Bioshocks using keyboard & mouse so I'm plenty accustomed to it. I just hate it, so I'm also trying to get the gamepad to work.

 

So far I have everything almost mapped to where it works like Skyrim (using Xpadder), but unfortunately I still have to use the mouse to drop an item or change between inventory, quests, and map menus. I also can't scroll the map using the controller, I have to use the mouse for that. Like you, I've also noticed movement oddities. For me, my controller left stick seems like the speed works the reverse of the way it should. A light push of the stick and my character seems to run, while a full push of the controller slows down to barely moving. The only solution I found is to set the game to "always run" to where my character moves at the same speed no matter how much I push the stick. It annoyed me that pressing Capslock actually toggles it in Windows as well, so I mapped my controller's LB button to toggle "Always Run". Now the character moves as fast using the left stick as the keyboard in "always run" mode, which actually seems rather slow. Is there a "turbo run" mode, like pressing and holding LB in Skyrim? I also notice the character tends to drift, and changing direction seems quite awkward and not linear. It's as if the game internally only supports 4 directional movements of the character and nothing in between. Does my experience echo yours?

 

Other than that, I've also found Oblivion gameplay to be very difficult compared to Skyrim! I'm just on the 1st quest after escaping the prison. There doesn't seem to be any way for me to get past that Daedra at the lobby of the tower in Oblivion without health potion - which I can't afford. I ended up having to high-tail it out of there, I guess I'll need to go hunting for life potion elsewhere before I try that again.

 

You mentioned not being bothered by the graphics, but I'm actually finding that the NPCs look so horrible compared to Skyrim that it's quite distracting. They're really cartooney and ugly, I'm sure they look bad even by 2006 standards. I'll definitely need to find a mod for this. Only problem I'm finding is a lot of these "better faces" mods don't look anything like the screenshots, which I've come to learn are often highly Photoshopped glamour shots. There ought to be a rule that visual mods require unmodified screenshots right out of the game.

[Striker879]

On your always run question, you will find that as your character's speed attribute increases your running speed will increase. When I'd switch between my old character and new character early in the new guy's 'life' I felt like I was crawling everywhere. Now that the new guy's buffed his speed a bit I don't notice much difference.

 

In the vanilla game using mouse and keyboard you have only four directions you can go with the keyboard (forward, back left and right) but an infinite control of direction when combined with where you're looking with the mouse. Horseback took some getting used to as you only look around with the mouse and control direction using WASD. Were it not for the fact that in the vanilla game you need to get off the horse for all combat it makes a nice way to travel as you can go one way but look another (within limitations).

 

I remember well my first attempt at the Kvatch gate ... I'd picked all the defaults when creating my character. A level one or two Imperial who does not have any prior experience playing the game is just scamp bait. Try a dark elf character when you're starting out ... their 75% resist fire comes in handy when in Oblivion.

Edited April 16, 2012 by Striker879

[GnatGoSplat]

On your always run question, you will find that as your character's speed attribute increases your running speed will increase. When I'd switch between my old character and new character early in the new guy's 'life' I felt like I was crawling everywhere. Now that the new guy's buffed his speed a bit I don't notice much difference.

 

Thanks, good to know the speed will increase! I did notice my athletics skill would increase the more I run.

 

I played for a few more hours last night, and I think there are 8 distinct directions when using the controller: the primary 4, and then diagonals. I managed to get a more acceptable experience with my controller. For some reason, the commonly-published joystick parameters for the 360 controller don't work for me at all. Maybe it's because I'm using it together with the .xpaddercontroller file posted here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Controls. Anyhow, the common parameters look like this:

 

(from http://support.2k.com/entries/20022097-playing-oblivion-with-a-controller, and other websites as well)

;X = 1, Y = 2, Z = 3, XRot = 4, YRot = 5, ZRot = 6

iJoystickMoveFrontBack=2

iJoystickMoveLeftRight=1

fJoystickMoveFBMult=2.0000

fJoystickMoveLRMult=2.0000

iJoystickLookUpDown=5

iJoystickLookLeftRight=4

fJoystickLookUDMult=0.7500

fJoystickLookLRMult=0.7500

 

Not only was the left stick speed reversed (light push runs, far push crawls), but the aiming speed with the right stick was too fast and I had a hard time focusing on enemies. I changed the multipliers to where my ini looks like this:

 

;X = 1, Y = 2, Z = 3, XRot = 4, YRot = 5, ZRot = 6

iJoystickMoveFrontBack=2

iJoystickMoveLeftRight=1

fJoystickMoveFBMult=0.5000

fJoystickMoveLRMult=0.5000

iJoystickLookUpDown=5

iJoystickLookLeftRight=4

fJoystickLookUDMult=0.3000

fJoystickLookLRMult=0.3000

 

That fixed the reversed speed problem on the left stick, now it correctly runs when pushed all the way and walks when pushed a little bit. Right stick is also now much better and I can actually hit those scamps with my arrows. However, it could probably stand to be reduced even more as I noticed the aimer is a bit slower in Skyrim, which I am accustomed to. Using Xpadder, I have arrow keys mapped to a full press of the left stick which seems to work great for menus. Unfortunately, I still have the annoyance where if I don't push the stick super straight, my character will intermittently jump to either diagonal direction. I'm not sure if there's anything I can do about that.

 

I also still have to use the mouse to handle inventory, map, and quests, which is annoying.

 

I remember well my first attempt at the Kvatch gate ... I'd picked all the defaults when creating my character. A level one or two Imperial who does not have any prior experience playing the game is just scamp bait. Try a dark elf character when you're starting out ... their 75% resist fire comes in handy when in Oblivion.

 

Yeah, I think I pretty much started with all defaults too. A female Nord archer who is definitely scamp bait. It might save me trouble to start over with a dark elf, but I feel like I'm a bit too far in to start over. I found it helps a lot to save after every kill, and wait 1-hour if possible to restore health (really good tip that was mentioned earlier, I probably would have never thought of it). Dremoras were really difficult with the one-handed sword, but went down easily with the steel claymore which I didn't realize I had at first. I managed to close the Kvatch gate, but get killed in short order in the castle at the point where the soldiers quit following and the scamps use magic. I'm stubbornly determined to find a way through it without turning down difficulty though!