Write a concise guide for stabilizing and fixing Oblivion?

[BFG99]

Just curious if anyone would be interested in such a guide, especially when various forums (such as this one) already cover the topic, at least in part.

 

I've managed to stabilize Oblivion on my 10 year old laptop to the point I've had zero crashes in over 50 hours of playtime. None. Nada. Zip. And that's with 140 mods. I've learned a lot and thought I could share it with others.

 

If I did write such a guide, it would cover everything stability- or bugfix-related I could find:

4 GB Patch, OBSE, EngineBugFixes, Oblivion Stutter Remover, INI edits, Shaders change, an Alt-tab fix, ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated, BlackScreenSneakFix, Consistent Beggar Voices, Ely's Universal Silent Voice, kuertee's Cleanup, RefScope, Unofficial Oblivion Patch, Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch, Unofficial DLC Patches, Weapon Expansion Pack for Oblivion Nthusiasts, BOSS, BSAOpt, LandMagic, Ordenador, PyFFI / Python, TES4Edit, TES4LL, TES4LODGen, Wrye Bash.

(Feel free to suggest any I missed.)

 

I would try to keep things brief as no one wants to read a book - it wouldn't give the full instructions for each one (since that already comes with the file).

 

I also spent a lot of time repacking, combining and optimizing BSAs, which significantly improved stability. So I'd cover that too.

 

[DrakeTheDragon]

Well, there's only very few guides like this already, and the more, the merrier I always say.

 

But keep in mind, if you want to publish this guide as a file entry, you might need to also provide some files. Most guides in the past only got away with being a file page despite not a file/mod, because they were also serving a couple of customized/tweaked INI files for several/certain mods as well and the like. So there was something to "download" after all.

[BFG99]

I wondered about those two points, I must admit. Honestly, if there are enough other guides already covering these topics - and they are up to date - then there is no need for yet another one! I was hoping to create a single, always up to date document that people could go to instead of Googling, looking at multiple forums, wiki pages, etc...and more importantly, is concise enough people will read it, and has the visibility that being a âmodâ on this site affords.

 

But you also raise a more important issue. I donât see that I would have anything, except the document itself, to download. I mean, I could post tweaked Stutter Remover or Ordenador INI files, but what worked best for me isnât necessarily best for everyone. This isnât actually a mod.

 

It may be that this would be better for UESP or a forum. But those wouldnât have nearly as much visibility.

 

Also, the only thing I am bringing that is probably ânewâ is figuring out how to eliminate BSA file conflicts, and pulling everything together into a single step by step list.

 

Open to suggestions on what, if anything, to do...

[Striker879]

What about something like alt3rn1ty's Wrye Bash Pictorial Guide ... the downloads are annotated screenshots. In your case they could be text PDFs with screenshots as required.

[BFG99]

Not a bad idea! I did contact the Nexus moderators and they asked that I post anything like this as part of their wiki, not as any mod. But a step by step guide like that wouldnât work on a wiki.

 

What I would REALLY like to do is to write a program that allows people to seek out and eliminate BSA filepath conflicts quickly...as I am rapidly learning that is one of the main reasons for crashes yet few realize it. Plus nothing like that exists right now. But I lack the coding skills; my method was a slow Visual Basic macro in Microsoft Excel which is all the coding ability I have.

 

The other idea would be an all in one batch file that runs PyFFI, Ordenador, TES4LODGen, Land Magic, BSAOpt, etc. all in the right sequence and all at once...but again, I lack the skill.

[LuxDivinity]

I'm interested, I heard about the BSA filepath conflicts CTD theory in the past, but no one has ever written how to easily find and resolve this conflicts.

 

If you could also clear up some of the common doubts there are about game optimization - for example running PyFFi second time on already PyFFied mesh can introduce CTDs in the game, some .ini settings - that iPreloadSizeLimit, believed to do something in the past - https://sites.google.com/site/ballofflame/theoblivionperformanceproject, now ignored, first come to mind, but there are many others.

 

and expand on other things, than most stabilization guides do - install OSR, set bReplaceHeap = 1, iHeapAlgorithm = 6 and iHeapSize to 1024, your game is stable now xD,

that could be very cool!

[BFG99]

Hmm...you raise some interesting points there.

 

First, thanks for the link - it would make much more sense to contribute to that than to start over, I would think. (At this point I donât plan to continue with this project.)

 

Identifying and eliminating BSA conflicts: there are two ways I can think of, an easy one and a hard one.

 

Easy:

1a. Create new vanilla BSAs by combining the contents of the original vanilla BSAs with those of any DLC (SI, Knights, etc.) plus the unofficial patches. DO NOT TOUCH the Misc BSA though - doing so can break face generation.

1b. Drop the resources of all other mods into the Data folder - unzipping any BSA files if those mods come with BSAs.

(This eliminates all conflicts between the vanilla, DLC and unofficial patch resources. Any conflict between a loose file and a BSA registered in the Oblivion INI file will never cause a crash. The loose one is always used.)

 

Hard:

2a. Do 1a as above.

2b. Also make an unzipped copy of those BSAs, and an unzipped copy of all mod resources, and put them into subfolders, one per mod.

2c. Use something to scan the subfolders for file paths - I used an Excel VBA macro I wrote - and note any duplicate file paths.

2d. If there are any file paths shared between the BSAs created in 2a and other mods, the conflicting files either must be deleted or placed loose into Data.

2e. For file paths shared between two non-vanilla mods, use the command promptâs FC command to determine if the files are duplicates. If the two files truly are identical then no action is needed. If they arenât, you must choose one to delete.

2f. Combine the remaining non-vanilla files into new BSAs, and register the new BSAs in the INI file.

 

The hard path takes a lot more time and may not be worth it, but thatâs what I did. The only advantages are that you get to pick which version of a file to keep, and modded files end up in combined BSAs which means more efficient disk use and less seek time (especially if you have multiple copies of a file).

 

But the work is WORTH IT: I went from frequent crashes to only 2 in 60 hours of playtime - and both of those crashes were attributed to a buggy script from one of my mods.

Edited October 12, 2018 by BFG99

[BFG99]

For the other things you mentioned, I will say I donât have much experience. PyFFIng (or Ordenading) a second time seems like a bad idea in general but I could try it. Would be interesting.

 

If you are going for stability, I recommend turning the heap stack replacer of Oblivion Stutter Remover off entirely...I had crashes attributed to it no matter what heap size or heap mode I used.

Edited October 12, 2018 by BFG99

[BFG99]

Where did you hear that running PyFFI more than once could cause CTDs (or even make additional changes to the meshes)? I can't find it anywhere using Google.

[LuxDivinity]

I found that when going through the comments in SoC Resource Pack - https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/43115?tab=posts , see 16 August 2016, 3:15AM mhahn123 post.

Personally I run meshes through PyFFi a couple of times and whenever the mesh has already been PyFFied it's size doesn't decrease/increase by a single byte and it never made a problem for me, but then you'd have to ask him about it.