I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know where to go for answers

[SlipperyAvacado]

I can't, for the Life of me, figure out how to get costume textures to work in Oblivion, I finally got the menu textures to work, but either the Mesh of the Texture of the actual item will not display, I just get those BIG, STUPID, YELLOW, BOXES. I'm an idiot and I do not know what I am doing wrong, please help me before I ruin up my game.

[Lisnpuppy]

Are you just trying to change the textures of an existing item or are you trying to add them as a stand alone item?

[DrakeTheDragon]

By "big stupid yellow boxes" you probably mean the "I'm a missing mesh" error indicators shown in game, when the NIF file referenced to from inside a plugin is not found, i.e. missing.

 

What mods are you trying to use? How are you installing them (what manager or manually)? And which ones don't work?

 

A missing mesh is either missing, because the mod is packaged incorrectly, which is unlikely to be the culprit here, as it would've been realized and fixed ages ago, or an installation error/mistake.

 

If "replacement" textures don't show up, i.e. the original game's textures are still used instead, this would be a result of Archive Invalidation not having been applied. But this doesn't seem to be the problem here, so we can forget about that one for a while. And if you got the menu textures to work, which would mean a menu texture "replacement", it would mean Archive Invalidation would already work anyways.

 

So installation issues it is, most likely.

 

And yes, this is exactly the right place for answers to this kind of questions here.

[SlipperyAvacado]

Its just the Capes and Cloaks mod, I've kinda been using it to troubleshoot. I do think it is a problem with how I'm installing it, I even installed OBSE but that didn't seem to do anything, and I can't figure out how the OBGE works. I pu tthe texture files from the mod in the texture folder, and I put the meshes in the meshes folder, and I put the actual mod file where it belongs, but it still wont work.

[SlipperyAvacado]

Okaaay, so now I cant find my meshes folder, all I see is an OBSE folder where the meshes were. Kinda just wanna wipe the slate clean but I don't know how and the guides I've read make no sense to me. I tried to install another mods that lets you see through the windows but it kept my game from loading so I had to disable it. I feel like that guy in a cartoon who ends up wrapped in wires when trying to fix something.

 

help me

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, for what it's worth, in a clean slate game's data folder there will be no "meshes", "textures" or whatever folders. Only a select few folders will already be present, all else will still be only found inside the game's BSA archives instead.

 

The game's resource handling is functioning relatively simple. There's a set structure of folders, and the structure is completely identical inside and outside of the BSA archives. When outside there is no folder or file, the one from inside the BSA archive(s) will be used instead. When you're using the disc version of the game, not Steam, then only the files inside "textures" will need a working Archive Invalidation, or the game will still use the ones from inside the BSA instead of externally found ones. When you're on Steam, however, then without Archive Invalidation this is true for just about every file or folder as well.

 

If a mod's archive contains files and folders like:

/meshes/clothes/<some mod-specific-name>/<some-mod-specific-name>.NIF

/meshes/clothes/<some mod-specific-name>/<some-mod-specific-name-2>.NIF

/textures/clothes/<some mod-specific-name>/<some-mod-specific-name>.DDS

/textures/clothes/<some mod-specific-name>/<some-mod-specific-name-2>.DDS

Then these have to go right into your data folder in exactly that same structure, NEVER like so:

/meshes/<some-mod-specific-name>.NIF

/meshes/<some-mod-specific-name-2>.NIF

/textures/<some-mod-specific-name>.DDS

/textures/<some-mod-specific-name-2>.DDS

If a mod's archive contains a "meshes" folder, then this one has to be "merged" with the existing one inside your data folder. If no such folder exists already, then it has to be created, or better yet, merging will create it anyways.

Never should there ever be folder structures like "/meshes/meshes/..." or "/data/data/meshes/...", or even "/meshes/textures/...".

"meshes", "textures", "sounds", yes, also "OBSE", are top-level folders inside the "data" folder.

 

If a mod's archive contains a "data" folder instead, this, too, has to be merged with your "data" folder, neither put "into" the existing one, nor should the existing one ever be "overwritten" by a mod-introduced one, or else everything you installed previously will just be gone for good.

 

Keep in mind, when on OS like Windows from Vista upwards and your game being installed at the default location, inside program files, it is very likely the infamous User Account Control (UAC) will intervene with any and all 3rd party apps (like mod managers, especially when not having admin privileges) trying to access this place, and have them put the mod files somewhere into "/User/<your-user>/appdata/local/VirtualStore/program files (x86)/" instead, and while the Windows Explorer will still be showing them, as if they "were" inside the actual game's folder, the game cannot be fooled by it and won't find the files.